Online photo editing tools

I see many of you play around with your photos in Photoshop (or whichever program you use) to crop, resize, put frame on or slightly edit your photos (hey! no cheating on makeup!) But not everyone has Photoshop or knows how to use it (I think having it is the easier part, lol)

I posted this on my journal, as a info for my flist (I guess...) but I think some of you might find it useful. These are all easy-to-use online photo editing tools.

So, reminded by the recently launched Adobe Photoshop Express, I remembered two other online photo editing sites I love, so I'll post it here, in case you didn't know.

¤ Adobe Photoshop Express ¤

I expected much more, since the Photoshop is worldy famous for all their gadgets and options for creativity and manipulation.

Simple interface, looks professional and serious, easy to navigate, a bit slow.

* you must have account to use it* option to connect to your Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa accounts.

* you can upload pictures up to 2GB

* creating albums.

* Basics: crop&rotate, autocorrect, exposure, red-eye removal, touchup, saturation

* Tuning: white balance, highlight, fill light, sharpen, soft focus

* Effects: pop color, hue, black&white, tint, sketch, distort

* embedding photos

Click to expand...

It's still in beta, and I'm sorry to say, it's obvious. I just tried to edit my photo and it keeps saying Preparing photo for Edit...and that bar just rotates but not loading...But when I tried it 2 days ago it worked fine, so maybe it's just a little glitch. I hope they'll be adding much more options in the near future. Right now, they offer you almost the same thing as you can do in Picasa.
¤ Picnik ¤

I discovered Picnik accidentally on Box.net. Then I saw it on Flickr, which is awesome. Picnik's look is adorable, makes it more fun and simple to use. Recently it made much more options available for Free users (they also have Premium users).

* option to connect to your MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Webshots, Photobucket, Picasa accounts, Yahoo search and even your webcam * you don't have to have account to use it

* they don't offer storage, but after editing you can save it to your computer or one of your photo hosting sites (Flickr, Photobucket...etc)

* Basics: auto-fix, rotate, crop, resize, exposure, colors, sharpen, red-eye

* - effects black&white, sepia, boost, soften, vignette, matte, infra-red film, lomo-ish, holga-ish, HDR-ish, night vision, cinemascope, orton-ish, 1960's, tint, invert, duo-tone, heat map, cross process, focal b&w, focal soften, focal pixelate, focal zoom, pencil sketch, neon, doodle, gooify, pixelate, posterize, film grain, snow (many of this stuff weren't available for free users until recently so I was thrilled when I got notification e-mail...

- text lots of different fonts

- shapes hearts, stars, flowers...etc. Additional ones for special occasions: Christmas, Valentine's, Easter, St. Patrick's...

- touch up Unfortunately only 2 options: teeth whiten & blemish fix.

- frames 5 frames

- advanced Curves and Levels - this is for Premium members only

* You can find an add-on for Firefox

Click to expand...

I hope they'll keep improving and adding more and more options, which seems to be possible, how they started.
¤ FotoFlexer ¤

I started using FotoFlexer after I saw it on Photobucket (Picnik is associated with Flickr and FotoFlexer with Photobucket). It offers almost everything I said about Picnik. Only difference is between shapes they offer for creating.

* uploading photos on your FotoFlexer account, not sure about limit* after editing you can save it to your computer or one of your photo hosting sites (Flickr, Photobucket...etc)

* you can connect to your Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, Flickr, Phanfare, SmugMug, MySpace accounts, Yahoo search, webcam

* you don't have to have account to use it

* Basic: same as for Picnik

* Effects: Blur edges, blueprint, neon, greyscale, invert, painting, cartoon, pop art, bronze, sepia, old photo, ink stamp, color rotate, pixelate, soften, tint, duoe-tone, heat map, sketch, color cketch, fresco, film grain, night vision

* Decorate: stickers, text, draw, erase, fill, grab color, speech and thought bubbles, insert-a-face, fun cards, borders (frames), poster

* Animate: stars, lovies, stickers

* Beautify: smooth, sharpen, fix blemishes, smooth wrinkles

* Distort: twirls, stretching, squishing, bulge, pinch

* Layers: complicated to explain, go and see and play a bit

* Geek: smart resize, smart recolor, smart cutout, smart scissors, curves, morph, webcam

Click to expand...

And additionally
¤ Picasa ¤

Picasa is a photo organizing software you download to your computer. It offers simple editing, such as,: cropping, resizing, saturation, color, auto-fix, red-eye removal, back and white, sepia, sharpening and some other stuff. If other editors are too much for you and you don't need that much, Picasa is great for you. Only as I said, Picasa is not online editor. You must download the software. Also, if you use Picasa web albums, Picasa organizer has a button which allows you to simply send the photo to your online album.

***
I hope any of this comes useful to you!

If you need some help or have questions, just ask.

This was an excellent writeup. Very good overview. I use Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro pretty much exclusively but i always get friends asking about software to use and it would be nice to just direct them to a web site and not have to load or run anything else.

Thanks!

I don't have Photoshop, which is what people usually use for photo editing, and if I had it I'd need lots of time to learn to use it, as it is quite complicated and extensive. I use Paint.NET as software for making icons and such, without going online. But these online sites are so easy to use, and you can do lots of stuff with them. Enough for people who need just quick and simple editing.

the point you make is real good. Have you tried to resize (especially make larger) any pics with any of the online programs? I think this is hard to do well for a budget program.

i have it but have been using Paint Shop Pro (PSP) so much longer that i tend to use that a lot more plus i think its maybe a tad easier to use. Any graphics work i do is for me or for friends so its not like i have to use a particular program. PSP used to be a very rudimentary program like 3 years ago but since being purchased by Corel they have really beefed it up to try and compete with Photoshop (like being able to use Photoshop plugins) but Photoshop still owns this market segment with professionals.

thanks again

Thanks! Very informative.

Originally Posted by Darla_G /img/forum/go_quote.gif the point you make is real good. Have you tried to resize (especially make larger) any pics with any of the online programs? I think this is hard to do well for a budget program.
i have it but have been using Paint Shop Pro (PSP) so much longer that i tend to use that a lot more plus i think its maybe a tad easier to use. Any graphics work i do is for me or for friends so its not like i have to use a particular program. PSP used to be a very rudimentary program like 3 years ago but since being purchased by Corel they have really beefed it up to try and compete with Photoshop (like being able to use Photoshop plugins) but Photoshop still owns this market segment with professionals.

thanks again

I've been resizing photos in Picasa and Picnik, but not in Foto Flexer. Picasa doesn't have option to put pixels you want the photo to be. You just mark the area you want cut out. But in Picnik you have pixels shown, and you can choose whether it will give you proportions or not. It worked fine. Simple to use.
Try it out! And tell me what you think!

I like Picnik and the one with PhotoBucket. FlauntR is also interesting. You might want to check it up.

Oh I didn't know about FlauntR. I posted about those I knew. Looks really interesting. I'll check it out. Thanks! ;D

Thanks for posting! I've been wondering about these lately

Thanks for all the info!

Thanks for the reviews! I'll have to check them out.