Freeware

Picnik: Photoshop, Meet Picasa, Meet the Web

Developer: The Picnik Team
Version: N/A, Beta
Price: Free while in Beta
Check Picnik Out Here.

If you’ve read some of my other reviews, you know that I hold Photoshop [review] and Picasa [review] in very high esteem. Photoshop is all about image editing power and can dominate every other program when it comes to hardcore photography work. But it comes at a high price tag and contains way too many options for the average user. Picasa, on the other hand, is all about ease of use and a free software goodness. Although it is designed to be an image organization tool first and foremost, it can be used to do minor modifications to your photographs. But it doesn’t have the power for professional use.

So what are you to do if you want something in between? Well you visit Picnik, of course. Still in beta testing, Picnik is a Flash (and other web technologies) based image editor with a surprising amount of power. Surprising because I had no idea that the internet could be used to do such amazing things to my pictures. These Web 2.0 Apps sure are getting better.

One of the coolest things about Picnik at this point is that it is totally free. There are “Plus” portions of the site, such as various filters, effects, and advanced options that will become somewhat costly later - but for now they are totally on the house. That’s kind of neat, but chances are that you won’t use most of the “Plus” rated stuff anyway unless you are trying to make your photo look as off the wall as possible.

But that’s not to say that there are not things here that you won’t instantly fall in love with. Quite simply, if you don’t already have a copy of Picasa or iPhoto lying around, there is nothing that can tune up your photos as fast as Picnik. This makes it perfect for people who want to tinker with their pictures while on a friend’s computer as well as those who just want a simple photo editing program without the extra bloat of using an image browser like Picasa or iPhoto.

 

When you first visit Picnik, you’re treated to a very Web 2.0, Mac OSX Leopard looking environment - complete with that grassy background. You’re asked to create an account, but it isn’t really necessary. Once you click that Get Started Now button, you’re whisked away to a photo editing world where you can upload your own pictures straight from your computer, download pictures from a variety of other websites like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums and Facebook, or use your webcam to capture pictures. There’s even a handy Firefox extension that displays an “Open in Picnik” right click menu item.

Uploading from my computer took about a minute for a 3.2 megapixel image, so I would hate to see how long the load time would be for a 10 megapixel image from my DSLR. Picnik doesn’t support RAW files anyway, so I would never recommend Picnik for high end photographers or DSLR users.

After the initial load time, Picnik is relatively responsive with most of my workflow. The tools located along the top row, such as the crop tool, rotate tool, sharpen, and resize are all very snappy and I never experienced any slowdown until I started playing with the stuff located under “Create”.

The majority of those special effects require quite a bit of horsepower from your computer - but they are customizable and a lot of them do look pretty good. As you get towards the bottom of the list, to the “Plus” items, the filters get a little hokey, but they can still net you a lot of nice effects.

Saving was a piece of cake when I was done with my edits. Just a couple of clicks, choose my file type, and that’s it.

While I can’t really see myself using Picnik on a day to day basis, it is a fun little site to tinker around on. Maybe I’ve got a picture that my girlfriend wants to see in black and white. Maybe I was working on a picture that would look cool with a vignette and I’m too lazy to open Photoshop or the GIMP [review] to do it manually. There are quite a few uses for Picnik - but not really for day to day use. You should certainly give it a try though.

Check out Picnik for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

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