Cloud Gazing: Picnik

The thought of an online photo editor always seemed silly to me. Why waste the time uploading your images just to edit them. There are a ton of great editors for windows, why move it out to the cloud. That was before I really started using Flickr and other online photo sites. Even then I saw the online image editors as basic tools used for quick touch ups. Boy has things changed. The market is exploding with tools, you have picnik, Photoshop Online, Aviary and many more. I’m planning to do a review of  some the different products out there but that is for another day. Today I want to talk about picnik.

image

I started using picnik with flickr, it’s a convenient was to touch up your pictures, be it a quick resize,  crop or  rotate. From there I started using the Auto-fix and Red-Eye removal. Its quick and easy to use. It has a Standard Free Version and a Premium Paid version. The free version is very powerful and probably enough for most users.  Its the clever why that they integrate the premium features with the interface that entices you to upgrade.  For use it was the Halloween themed effects that moved use from to the Premium users.

image

Of course once we started using the premium version it became clear that it was worth the $25 (usd) it costs a year.  Some of my favourite features are:

  • Clone:  Which lets you copy another part of your picture. Great for removing a stray object from your picture.
  • Premium Fonts: The amount of fonts they give you access to is astounding.
  • Open your photos from wherever they are: You can pull your photos from almost any web site.
  • Save to…: You can save your pictures to your computer or to other sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and more.
  • Collage: the preset Collage templates allows you to make great collages with just a couple clicks of the mouse

image

Overall it’s one of the best image editing applications I’ve used online or off. If you use any online photo sharing services you should take a look at Picnik for your editing needs. I would go as to say even if you don’t share your photos online it might be worth a look.

Comments

Leave a Reply