I don’t have Photoshop on my computer at work, but I’m constantly needing to edit photos. Our IT guy installed a copy of Gimp, but I don’t really like it at all, and it’s never worked properly on my machine, so I’ve been looking for another option.
Luckily, I’ve found one I like a lot.
Picnik is a Flash-based online photo editor that has both free and paid plans. I’ve been using it for about a week and have been so impressed that even though I have Photoshop at home, I’m thinking about spending the $25 for a year’s worth of premium access.
Why? The program is simple, seems stable and has a lot of features. I think I’ll be using it a lot when I’m away from my home computer, and $25 seems like a small amount for the convenience of the extra features, which include connecting to multiple social sites like Flickr and Facebook, full screen editing, no ads and unlimited upload storage.
But the free access is more than enough for most folks. You can upload a photo, then do basic edits like resizing, cropping, rotating, red eye, etc. Plus, there are several filters you can apply and shape “stamps” if you feel like goofing off. You don’t even have to register to use Picnik.
Also, there are several handy tools, like a bookmark applet, Firefox and Internet Explorer extensions and a Yahoo widget. The Firefox extension even lets you take a snapshot of your browser window and edit it in Picnik.
Really, if all you need to do with photos is some cropping and removing red-eye, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on Photoshop or even $100 on Photoshop Elements. Just use Picnik.
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