I explored Picnik, a photo editing tool that was fast and free. You didn't have to register or log in, which was a nice touch, but you can register for more options, and you can upgrade to Premium, which lets you download up to 100 photos at a time, as compared to 5 for free. You could select a demo photo to practise on and learn how to use the editing tools.
The straighten slide bar let you manually adjust the straightness of your picture and placed grid lines across your photo so you could get it perfectly level or at the angle you desired. I liked the fact that it gave you so much control. It was more flexible than the one I use in Paint Shop Pro. I also liked the zoom tool better. It was in the lower right corner and used a slide feature to zoom in and out rather than clicking in increments with your mouse.
You could change the size by entering in a percentage with the re-size tool. The crop option lets you choose between pre-sets like 4x6 and shapes like square. There is an auto fix button that will automatically adjust your photos for you, as well as two slider bars that let you fine tune the adjustments. You can set the sharpness for just certain areas instead of the whole picture, which helps if it's just needed for the eyes, for example.
When you save your photo after you are done editing it, it lets you select the format, but also lets you select how much you want to compress it if it's a jpg file.
The Create tab is where the fun options begin. Click on Dots and Dots and your picture turns into many small dots, kind of like an impressionistic painting. There is a brush tool that lets you paint an effect in or out of portions of the photo. Some effects were not available unless you had the Premium version. You could select the fade slider and fade a color picture to black and white or change it to any degree of sepia that you would like. The boost option really brightened and saturated the colors. You could choose the soften feature, then use the brush to make some areas of the picture clear while leaving the background muted and soft. The vignette option created a smudgy black area around the outside edges of the picture to give a fade effect. Very nice, and you could choose colors as well as black. There was even a button to give a soft, ethereal Orton effect called Orton-ish.
You could create rounded corners on your photos with the 60's option. I really like the button called Focal B&W. You could click on the photo where you wanted your focus, then that area would stay in color and the rest of the photo would turn to black and white. You could get a similar effect with the Focal Soften tool. Click on the area you want sharp, then the background is softened and out of focus. Focal zoom was an option I've never used. The area you click on stays focused, but then there are lines zooming in from all edges so it creates the effect of movement in toward the object. Way cool! As well as having Pencil Sketch, they had a neon option, which made your photo look like it was created with neon light strips. Very interesting effect. Doodle let you draw on your photo. You could create puzzle pieces of your picture if you had the Premium version. The snow feature made it look like it was snowing in your photo and turned out pretty realistic looking.
The shapes options included adding stamps or shapes like hearts or lips to your photo, or putting a beard shape on a face or adding a crown to some one's head. You could insert speech bubbles. One useful feature was a stamp for a copyright symbol you could add to your photo.
The Touch Up Feature let you change eye color, fix blemishes and whiten teeth. It was rather limited as far as frame options, but had a few basic ones to select from.
There is a Developer Toolbox where people can create their own image effects and have them put on the website if they are selected. The Clone feature was only available in the Premium version, and that is one of the most useful tools for photo editing. The Premium version is available for $24.95 a year.
I noticed that after I had been working for awhile and trying a lot of features, the program started to slow down, perhaps as a result of a bandwidth problem. That's something you don't have to worry about with a program installed on your hard drive. Picnik probably won't replace the photo editing programs I own (Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements), but I probably will use it at times for some of the special effects that aren't included in my software.
I could use it in the library to create posters for announcements or advertising events.
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