Wiredness: Quick and familiar Web-based photo editing

Wiredness is a new Web-based photo-editing tool. There are a ton of these out there now, and they just keep getting closer in functionality to their desktop counterparts. What makes Wiredness easy to use is its interface, which has file, edit, and tool menus you'd find on a desktop app like Picasa or Photoshop Elements.

For casual photo work flow, you can either upload a photo from your hard drive or pull it in from a URL. The max size for files is 5MB. The service handled my 7.2-megapixel test photo without a problem. There are tools for resizing, rotating, brightness, and contrast, along with some Photoshop-esque filters. The resize tool is probably the one "wow" tool, as you have an option to select exact specifications or use an easy slider that will show you a live preview of how big the image will be. It's total eye candy.

There's no service integration with sites such as Flickr or Photobucket for ferrying photos back and forth, but you do have the option to output any image to ImageShack or Glowfoto with zero configuration, which is good for quick sharing with family members.

Admittedly this service is young and missing some of the features you'd find on a competitors such as Picnik, Fauxto, SnipShot, or Pixenate. The key difference is that all those photo tools run in Flash and require users to install the Flash plug-in on their browsers. Wiredness and Phixr (which we looked at on Monday) are both managed with HTML and will work with any browser right out of the box.

One thing to keep in mind with many of these services is that they're not aimed at professional photographers. What they are good for is making quick edits and tweaks to photos while away from your home machine.

The Wiredness interface feels like working in a Windows application. You can also have multiple tools open at once.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

[OmniH]

FlickR Integration

Thanks for the article. I am working on integrating a FlickR browser style system into wiredness at the moment so that you will be able to browse / open and search for images to edit from FlickR. At the moment you can only open recently uploaded files.

[JohnnyL]

Very Minimalist

I would find this app usefull for on the go simple editing but beyond that it has way less functionality than even the most rudimentary desktop app. Free apps like Faststone and IrfanView are much more capable as far as editing goes. I really like the idea of free desktop apps or even ones I pay for such as photoshop elements that I feel give me something now and not looking to maybe make a downstream buck off of me in order to pay for themselves. Most of these webware apps are free now but looking to see what kind of stream on income they can maybe make off you in the future which could end up costing you much more in the long run. Besides, I think the time will come if its not already here when I will be able to run a good portion of my desktop off of a USB key. This way I can take MY desktop with me without having to be online. Unless you can always find free interent access when you need it I don't won't to pay for it on the go in order to edit photos.