Storts Family

If you’re lucky enough to have a Nintendo Wii, you may know that one of the funnest things about owning one is the ability to include additional accessories or addons to your gaming experience.

Ever since the console launched, a whole flurry of these Wii addons have become available. There are so many of them to choose from, how do you know which ones to buy and which ones to skip?

Let’s take a look at the 5 coolest Wii addons to enhance your gaming.

Wii MotionPlus

The Wii MotionPlus is a simple addon for your Wii Remote controller. Just attach this expansion device to the bottom of the Wii-mote and you’re all set.

The addon increases the accuracy of your controller by using additional sensors to respond to any of your motions in a 3-D space. This allows for noticeably enhanced gameplay control on compatible games, including Wii Sports Resort and a variety of other titles.

Wii Wheel

Another cool addon to have is the Wii Wheel. The peripheral simply turns the Wii Remote into a steering wheel. Just snap in your Wii-mote and you’re good to go.

Now, there is a trigger on the back of the wheel to function the Wii-mote’s “B” button, but that’s it. The addon itself adds no functionality, just the feel of a steering wheel in the player’s hands.

It doesn’t look like much, but it sure is a blast to play Mario Kart Wii with this thing.

Wii Balance Board

The Wii Balance Board isn’t just for exercise games. The accessory acts as a video game controller, just like the Wii Remote. Using Bluetooth technology and multiple pressure sensors, the board is able to sense your weight and balance to interpret the movements of your feet.

A wide variety of titles utilize the Wii Balance Board addon, including the popular Wii Fit. Be sure to check out the Top 5 Wii Fitness Games To Get Into Shape From Home.

Wii Zapper

If you are a fan of first-person shooters and basically any shooting style video game, you may want to consider checking out the official Wii Zapper peripheral.

Like the Wii Wheel, the addon is simply a shell for you to attach the Wii Remote up on top and the Nunchuk in the back. Uniting those two together, the result is a more gun-style controller that’s easier on the arms and gives you greater control when playing games that test your shooting skills.

Nyko Perfect Shot

If you’d prefer a pistol-like design, the Perfect Shot from Nyko is one of the best gun shells on the market.

The addon features a comfortable ergonomic grip and, unlike the Zapper, its design requires only one hand for operation, allowing your other hand to wield the Nunchuk or other accessories at the same time. Best of all, though, is its satisfying spring-loaded trigger. This is a third-party addon done right.

What are some of your favorite Wii addons? Do you play with any of these? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit : nicolasnova

Similar MakeUseOf Articles

• Top 3 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Walkthroughs (8 comments)
• Your Quick Guide To Searching the Internet From The Wii (11 comments)
• Top 5 Wii Fitness Games To Get Into Shape From Home (13 comments)
• Top 3 Sites For Nintendo DS Walkthroughs (6 comments)
• Top 2 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Cheats (13 comments)
• How To Connect Your Nintendo Wii Console To The Internet (5 comments)
• DeSmuME- Free Nintendo DS Emulator to Play NDS Games on PC (21 comments)
• Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup (14 comments)
• Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox (6 comments)
• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (18 comments)

Often times when we shoot photos, we get so caught up in what we’re shooting (as we should be) that we often don’t think about how we’re composing the shots we take. Or sometimes when taking candid shots, there’s little time to think about composition because we’re trying to capture the moment.

But thanks to post-processing techniques, we can crop photos in ways that make our images more appealing to the eye.

One of the basic and first elements that most photographers learn about in composing a shot is using what is called the imaginary Rule Of Thirds, which consists three sections and four quartiles of which you place your subject. The definition by itself doesn’t makes much sense, so let’s look at illustration.

In this original photo of my son, I composed this shot with his head almost dead center in the frame. Believe me, it looks like he stood still to take the photo, but not hardly. As usual, I had a few seconds before he was off and running.

The composition is okay, but when I’m making use of the Rule Of Thirds, I can explore some other creative ways to crop (and thus re-compose the shot). Thanks to image editing programs like iPhoto, the cropping tool comes with a Rule of Thirds grid that can be used when cropping photos.

One of the basic rules for this technique is to place your subject’s eyes in one of the four quartiles of the grid.

The theory is that taking the subject out of the middle of the frame creates some tension. I like to think that in placing the subject off-center, it leads the viewer’s eyes into the image, instead of the subject of the image coming straight at them.

When you click on the cropping tool in iPhoto and start to move the handles, the grid appears so that you can use it to crop your shot. With my son’s eye placed in the top-right quartile (and the right-third of the grid), the photo seems more appealing, and it eases you into the image.

Some recent cameras also come with a Rule of Thirds grid that can be used while composing shots in-camera. But the idea is to keep the imaginary Rule of Thirds in your head as you shoot photos. While I typically zoom in and shoot close on my subjects, I try to also leave some space for creative cropping.

Another reason for cropping is simply to get rid of the dead or distracting space in an image.

Say I really liked this photo, but as a candid shot I had two distracting subjects in it. Well, I can use the cropping tool to try to get rid of the distractions as much as possible.

Again, the Rule of Thirds can be applied to help better compose the crop.

Cropping for Prints

When it comes to printing photos, many beginning photographers don’t realize that they should crop images to fit the size of prints they plan to make.

If you don’t make the crop, the printing process will do it for you, and it might crop off parts of the photo you didn’t want cropped. Again, in many image editing applications, the cropping tool comes with pre-defined scales to help you accurately crop your images.

So for instance, if I want to make a 4×6 print of this photo, I can constrain the crop to fit the dimensions I need. I do lose part of the photo, but if I didn’t crop ahead of time, the printer might crop off some part of his head.

Even when you’re using an online or in-store printing service, you can use the editing tools to crop your photo before you send them off for printing. Cropping yourself provides you more control over the process.

Note, however, in the online editor in screen shot above, I am not able to freely crop as much as I can as in iPhoto. Thus, in this 4×6 crop I would lose a part of my son’s head in the actual print. So using an off-line image editor is typically better and provides you more control.

Creative Cropping

The Straighten tool, found in all popular image editors, is another technique for cropping images. Though its purpose is to straighten crooked images, you can also have some fun with it and “un-straighten” a photo.

In this photo, I first used the Straighten tool to tilt (un-straighten) my son’s head.

And then I used the crop tool and the Rule of Thirds to further compose the shot.

Sure, I chopped off some of his head, but the crop gives a fun look to the subject of the photo.

Cropping photos in an image editor does take some time. There’s no real automation process that will fit all images. It requires you to make some artistic judgements.

Also, as with any rule, the Rule of Thirds is just a guide, and can be effectively broken. But I think for beginning photographers, it’s a technique that will guide you in composing shots during and after the photo taking process.

This is just a short introduction to photo composition and cropping. If you’re looking for a drop-dead easy way to crop, check out our MUO articles, EasyCropper: Upload and Crop Pictures Online and OnlinePhotoTool.  And for other post processing techniques, check out 10 Must-Know Introductory Photoshop Skills for Beginner Photographers.

Let us know about your strategies for dealing with this subject. If you have a link or two to an interesting crop, let us know about it.

Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.

Similar MakeUseOf Articles

• The Basics of How to Properly Resize Images in Photoshop (2 comments)
• Use Pixer for Easier Image Batch-resize Tasks [Mac Only] (4 comments)
• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (43 comments)
• Photoshop Tips For Black & White Photography (9 comments)
• How to Take Good Pictures For a Blog (8 comments)
• How To Automatically Batch Rename Photos With Dates They Were Shot (12 comments)
• Edit Your Images In A New & Better Way With Seam Carving (15 comments)
• Browse Nikon Images on Your iPhone with Nikon’s Learn & Explore (2 comments)
• 6 Digital Photography Websites With Free Tutorials (2 comments)
• 5 Useful Websites For Photographers (11 comments)