How quickly things change on the Web. Google has closed Picnik but it has arisen from the ashes as PicMonkey – still very good as one of the best online photo editors.ong>
I really did not expect online photo editing to ever happen, but Picnik.com has brought online photo editing to the Web as the screenshot attests to. And if you can live with the online ads – its also free. I suggest that you live with ads because the service is quite good and fast. The latter speed is achieved by using the latest Flash Player (you may have to upgrade, but that will only take 2-4 minutes and you get steering directions). Let me say, as a confirmed Photoshop CS3, Photoshop Elements and PaintShop Pro user I was impressed with the quickness of Picnik – and hence the underlying Flash Player engine.
The other impressive aspect of Picnik was the completeness of the basic photofinishing features. Not do not expect to have any masking, layering or image blending features associated with desktop photofishing tools. But there are Crop, Resize, Color Correction, Sharpening, and the requisite red-eye removal tools for basic edits. Add to this are Creative features such as Effects , Shapes, Touch-ups, Frames and advanced feeatures.
If you are willing to pay $25/year the number of creative options are increased notably including making the online ads vanish, fullscreen operations, and more options in general. Picnik.com is able to upload images from your PC or from any of the following online catalog services: Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket and Webshots. Users can add or edit images on all of these websites. In addition if you copy the image location from any web page, Picnik will import it and allow you to save onto your pC the edited image. Very nice. This service is well worth exploring because it gives you a darn good photo editor – anywhere on the net. See the full review of Picnik.com here.