Picnik is closing, site similar to picnik?

19th April of this year is the last day of Picnik. Picnik was a web applicattion for simple image editions online, created and maintained by Google. Particulary, I have used a lot this application for many reasons: simplicity in use, good interface , fast, and many useful functions.

But, there is another (also free as Picnik)  possibilities that we can use. In this post I´m  going to show only a list with some of this alternatives.  I only pretend to present the applications with a brief description of the functions that they have as special features.

FotoFlexer

Like several other online photo editors, Fotoflexer integrates major services  like Flickr, MySpace,Picasa, and Facebook to pull your photos down for editing. Once you’ve found a photo you want to “flex,” the app will jump you out to a full-screen editing canvas, where you have quick tabbed controls for all the usual editing goodies like rotation, a cropping tool and a resizer. The real claim to fame however, is Fotoflexer’s Smart Cutout and Recolor effects, which can help you cut out various pieces of a photo, or recolor them to match the tone of your choice. Once you’ve got a cutout, you can add it into another photo, or bring another shot in to the workspace. Fotoflexer lets you have as many layers as you want, and you can move them up and down, or merge them by simply right-clicking. Again, it’s probably one of the few Web apps for photo editing that offers contextual menus.

 

Pixlr.com

Pixlr is an online photo editing tool. Fast, simple and enough features to make this a great find for low- to moderate-level photo editing. You can create a new image, upload an image, or grab one directly from a URL location.

If you are already familiar with Photoshop, you will find the Pixlr Editor menu options familiar both in layout and in how they work.To use them, you need to have some basic understanding of how image edit tools (i.e., fill, crop, blur, smudge, etc.) work.

Pixlr offers “Grabber for Firefox,” a free download that enables you to right click on any image in a web page and load it into Pixlr for editing. This Firefox add-on also lets you capture the whole or parts of the browser content (print screen). There is also a “Grabber” version you can download for Window’s users.

The Pixlr Express tool is so simple anyone can master it in seconds. The Pixlr Editor has nice features but requires some knowledge of photo imaging software or you will get lost.Pixlr’s user interface is very easy to navigate and user-friendly.There are not enough Pixlr tutorials, however, what they do offer is presented in easy-to-understand layman’s terms.

One of my pet peeves about Photoshop is that it can be really intimidating for beginners. Pixlr’s tutorials show examples and clear steps to use their tools to get similar results you could get from Photoshop, only without the “fear factor” or intense learning curve.To get a better feel for Pixlr and how you can get the most out of its features, read their blog before diving in.

Picture2life.

Picture2Life is full of stuff, including one of the longest special effects lists among the editors in our chart. A unique collage creator lets you insert several photos into a canned or custom-built template. Like Photoshop Express, it has built-in tools for storing, organizing, and sharing photos. I loved the ability to save a sequence of effects you’ve applied to one photo–say, cropping it, giving it a sepia look, and adding a border–and then transfer it to others with one click.

Like FotoFlexer, Picture2Life automatically downsamples your high-res photographs, a step that speeds up image processing; you can override it, but only up to 1600 by 1200 pixels. I wouldn’t bother, though, since other services match most of Picture2Life’s capabilities without the hassles.

But Picture2Life’s Flickr-import interface is so confusing that I thought I’d failed to do the job when I’d actually succeeded. This is also the only service in the roundup that doesn’t show what an effect will look like on your photo until after you’ve applied it (at least undoing is easy). A prominent button lets you see pictures at full size, but you get no on-screen controls for shrinking or magnifying them. The link to online help vanished when I was in editing mode, and the useful-looking Learn More buttons didn’t do anything when I clicked them. (Picture2Life’s makers tell me they’re working on a version that fixes these issues and improves the interface.)

Picture2Life is conveniently integrated with virtually all popular social networking sites to upload your pictures to/from the editor directly:

• Facebook
• Flickr
• Box
• Webshots
• Picasa
• Phobucket
• Bebo
• Twitpic
• Friendster
• Myspace
• Twitter

 

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References:

– Fotoflexer: a free, easy, and powerful Web photo editor.

– FotoFlexer: official site.

– Pixlr: official site.

– Picture2life: official site.

 

 

 

 

Tags: design, tools

Category: Others