It’s difficult to understand why Google didn’t develop an online photo editor: it would’ve integrated with Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs and other Google services. Right now, Picasa Web Albums is just an online extension of Picasa, a popular software that lets you manage your photos. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, most Google services work online and don’t require additional applications.
Instead of migrating Picasa online, Google acquired Picnik, an online photo editor that already integrates with Picasa Web Albums and many other photo services.
“Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser,” mentions Google’s blog.
Picnik will not be discontinued and Google promises that the service will continue to support all the existing partners, but I suspect that Flickr will no longer use it as the default photo editor.
It’s a bit early to start claiming that Flash’s days are numbered, but there are a few of us that are frustrated with Flash’s performance (and crashiness). If you’re starting to get frustrated about dealing with Flash, but are still craving full-featured web applications, there’s some good news on the horizon. New apps are starting to get developed with comparable functionality to Flash, but with no Flash in sight. Sketchpad is a great example of this.
Sketchpad is a nicely designed web-based painting and drawing application. It’s not going to replace Photoshop, but it’s certainly full-featured and fast enough for quick edits. In fact, Sketchpad is surprisingly frugal with processor cycles, and snappier than I’ve come to expect from similar web apps.
Thumba is an fast image editor that allows you to manipulate images on the go without installing any software/plug-ins to your computer. Using Thumba you can resize and crop your image, rotate it, flip it or and even produce a mirror effect. You can also tweak your image using one of several brushes including a blur brush, sharpen brush, color brush, spray, gray scale and pinch.
Moreover can also add various effects to your image using Thumba and adjust settings such as color, saturation, brightness, etc.
What makes Thumba really different than other online image editors is the underlying Microsoft Silverlight platform which makes Thumba way quicker than flash based image editors. Once you are done editing an image, you can easily save it to your hard drive.
Features:
Light-weight online image editor.
Use one of several brushes to manipulate the image.
Add effects like blur, noise, photo, distortion, etc.
Photoshop is an amazing image editing software that lets you do unthinkable effects with images and photos. While there are many tutorials online that teach you how to use Photoshop, Tutzor lists collection of high quality photoshop tutorials that show how to achieve concrete effects with step-by-step illustrated instructions.
For instance, you can learn how to design your own war movie poster or how to get a Star Wars text effect, apply water effect on the image and more. Each tutorial includes high quality images with step-by-step illustrations. Browse tutorials by type (Design, Drawing, Text Effects, Interface etc) or search by keywords.
Features:
Free high quality Photoshop tutorials with detailed examples.
Step by step illustration on how to achieve specific effects in Photoshop.
Browse tutorials by type (Design, Drawing, Text Effects, Interface etc).
Submit your own tutorial and get some cash. (100$ per tutorial)
Picnik seems to be the most popular online image editor in this list. The interface of the site is beautiful, responsive and can put many desktop applications to shame. You don’t need to know anything about photo editing to use Picnik. Most noteworthy feature is its integration with other Web2.0 services. You can pull photos directly from most photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Photobucket and pretty much provide any image URL to start editing it. No registration required.
FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF and DNG).
True Full Screen viewer with image zoom support and unique fly-out menu panels
Crystal-clear and customizable one-click image magnifier
Superior Red-Eye effect removal/reduction with completely natural looking end result
Image modification tools: Resize/resample, rotate/flip, crop, sharpen/blur, brightness/contrast, etc.
Eleven (yes, 11) resampling algorithms to choose from when resizing images
Image color effects: gray scale, sepia, negative, Red/Green/Blue adjustment
Image special effects: watermark, annotation, drop shadow, framing, bump map, lens, morph, waves
Multi-level Undo/Redo capability
One-touch best fit/actual size image display support
Image management, including tagging capability, with drag-and-drop and Copy To/Move To Folder support
Histogram display with color counter feature
Compare images side-by-side (up to 4 at a time) to easily cull those forgettable shots
Image EXIF metadata support (plus comment editing for JPEGs)
Configurable batch processing to convert/rename large or small collections of images
Slideshow creation with 150+ transition effects and music support (MP3, WMA, WAV…)
Create efficient image attachment(s) for emailing to family and friends
Print images with full page-layout control
Create fully configurable Contact Sheets – just like the pros (and save $$$ on ink)
Create memorable artistic image montages from your family photos for personalized desktop wallpapers (Wallpaper Anywhere)
Acquire images from a scanner
Versatile screen capture capability
Powerful Save As interface to compare image quality and control generated file size
Run favorite programs with one keystroke from within Image Viewer
Create a no-install fully portable version of the program which can be run from a removable storage device
Docs and other Google services. Right now, Picasa Web Albums is just an online extension of Picasa, a popular software that lets you manage your photos. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, most Google services work online and don’t require additional applications.
(and crashiness). If you’re starting to get frustrated about dealing with Flash, but are still craving full-featured web applications, there’s some good news on the horizon. New apps are starting to get developed with comparable functionality to Flash, but with no Flash in sight. Sketchpad is a great example of this.
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