If you're looking to make photo edits without needling to pour over thick manuals, Picnik may be more your speed than something like Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended ($699 to $999 list, $199–$899 list for upgrades, 4 stars). The free Web-based image editor makes it a snap to tweak photos—as well as create collages and share pictures on popular social networking destinations—from any Web-connected PC. There is a charge for using some of the more advanced features, and you can't open photos directly from the desktop, but Picnik is still a very capable photo editing app.
Despite being a Web-based application, Picnik doesn't require that you create an account—you can simply upload a photo from the main screen and begin editing. You can upload one photo at a time without an account, but you can do up to five at time with a free account. If you simply want to sample the application to see the extent of its editing capabilities, Picnik has three demo images to sample. It's all very inviting. The one drawback? Due to its cloud-based roots, uploading images is a requirement—you can't simply click on a photo to open it.
Interface and Usability
Five tabs adorn the top of the interface: Home, Library, Edit, Create, and Save & Share. From Library you can upload new images, create a slideshow, view history, check out photos in Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums and other accounts that you have the option to connect—very handy, as Picnik doesn't have its own default photo-organization area.
On the Edit tab I could easily auto-fix, crop, rotate, resize, sharpen, remove red eye, and more. These all worked as advertised and simple to use, as Picnik's entire interface is designed to facilitate no-brainer image editing. In fact, Picnik gives you brief, but clear, instructions in a small dialog box that explains how to use a feature. Clicking Red-Eye, for example, instructed me that I need to click the center of each eye—and it worked well.
Create let me add effects, text, frames, and other visual goodies; Save & Share gave me the options to save the photo to my computer (BMP, JPG, GIF, PDF, PNG, TIFF), export to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and other social networks and services (more on these features later). When you save photos into one of the available formats, you can select the picture quality by using a slider, which was a nice touch.
The options under each tab are in large print, and have intuitive, "I just get it" menus. Adding effects typically consists of using sliders to determine brush size, hardness, and strength, which the average person will immediately latch onto to over adjusting percentages—one of the downsides of using GIMP 2.6.1 (Free, 4 stars) and Paint.net v3.5.5 (Free, 3.5 stars), which aim to rival Adobe Photoshop in varying degrees. It even has a handy zoom slider that is infinitely more intuitive than constantly clicking on an image in order to get a closer look.
Creative Tools
Cropping is simple, as is altering the resolution manually, or selecting one of the preset dimensions used for Flickr Buddy Icon, Twitter Picture, YouTube Thumbnail, and more. I'm surprised more video editors don't include these social networking avatar presets as it makes it remarkably easy to make custom images for a variety of settings without worrying about the photo being too large or looking up the required dimensions.
Of all the features available, creating collages proved to be the most fun, as it let me upload several pictures, select a border, and collage style, and save it to my hard disk. It's this type of built-in application creativity that GIMP and Paint.net lack, as they're more focused on higher-end editing capabilities such as layering (a feature that Picnik lacks).
Picnik Premium
Upgrading to the premium version ($4.95 per month, $19.95 per six months, $29.95 per year) opens the door to a new features unavailable in the free version. You'll get such as limitless photo history, professional fonts, the ability to upload 100 images at a time, and seasonal content all year long such as adding zombie effects (which would normally only be available around Halloween). But several year-round effects and frames under the Create tab carry the "Premium" designation, too.
Photo Printing and Sharing Options
Picnik has partnered with Qook to enable user to print images as physical photos, or onto mugs, postcards, posters, wrapping paper, and more, but you must sign up for a Picnik account to do so. You have limited options for sending images to your computer printer, which let you choose from a number of pre-determined dimensions (unfortunately, you can't utilize a custom layout as you can with GIMP).
If you'd prefer to share to social network friends, there are numerous options available such as e-mailing, adding to Google Buzz,Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, Webs, and Webshots. It's quite simple to execute; for example, clicking the Twitter icon on the Save & Share tab let me sign into my Twitter account. There were only 110 characters available for me to craft a message (the other 30 were reserved for the photo link), but it was a remarkably intuitive way to tweet edited pictures. Picnik has tight integration with Flickr, so when I opted to share, I selected a photo set and the appropriate tags, and it appear in my Flickr account nearly instantaneously.
Should You Go On A Picnik?
Picnik has an appealing balance of ease-of-use and feature set that will make many non-pros happy. It's infinitely more user-friendly than GIMP, and has features (such as collage creation) that aren't present in Paint.net. You may only be unable to layer, upload more than five images at a time with a free account, or open an image on the desktop without first uploading it, but Picnik is a free, Web-based photo editing application with tremendous usability and mass appeal.
• Fotoflexer
• Picnik (October 2010)
• 3D Image Commander 2.20
• Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011
• Paint.net v3.5.5
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