Free Online Photo Editing with Picnik
Picnik Allows Users to Edit Photos Online for Free
Sep 21, 2009
Picnik is a free, online photo editing service that easily integrates with many social networking sites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Photobucket, and others. While it’s not as detail-intensive as Photoshop or other, more professional types of photo editing software, Picnik makes it easy to incorporate all sorts of stylized effects on imported photos.
Picnik Basics
First of all, one of the most appealing aspects, at first sight, is that no registration is required. Free registration is an option, one that allows the user to upload up to 5 photos at a time, rather than the 1 for non-registered users.
While many of the features are available to free users, some require a Premium membership. Picnik Premium grants the subscriber access to more photo effects, fonts, stickers, collages, and other editing tools, as well as ad-free editing and a full-screen option. Picnik Premium is $24.95 a year.
Finally, when uploading a photo, there are options not only to upload from the user’s computer, but also to upload from Facebook, Myspace, Photobucket, and more. This integration works really well, and it’s not as slow as it could be. Once a photo has been edited, there is again the option to upload it back to whatever site from which it came.
Picnik Effects and Tools
Of course, in the user’s toolbox there are the obvious buttons to crop, resize, fix red-eye, and adjust color and exposure. Aside from these, if the user would rather just have the application take care of issues within the photo, there is an “Auto-fix” button that adjusts color and saturation automatically.
Effects are where Picnik really becomes fun. With a plethora of free effects (some are restricted for Premium users only), there’s little limit to what can be done to the uploaded photos. Included in these effects are Black and White, Sepia, Vignette, Boost, Matte, Night Vision, HDR-ish, Orton-ish, and many more. See photos for examples of some of these. Hours could easily be lost playing around with these effects.
In the “Stickers” section, there are lots of stock shapes to add to photos, like speech bubbles, beards, flowers, even dragons. Once again, some of these are limited to Premium users.
The “Touch-Up” section has a lot of useful features, such as a free blemish remover, teeth whitener, and a nice “insta-thin” that slims down the subject of the photo. In this section, most of the options are for Premium users, like adding highlights, lip color, mascara, and eye color.
For the more experienced photo editors, Picnik has an “Advanced” section, where users can fine tune their color balance, brightness, and tonal range. Burning and dodging are also included in this section, but everything here is only for Premium users.
Saving and Uploading Photos
When finished editing, users have the option of saving to a number of different locations. They can choose file compression and format, as well as change dimensions before saving. And in the top bar on the save screen, there are buttons to upload to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and others, as mentioned above.
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