Picnik crosses the pond, teams up with Photobox, QOOP

It's a virtual arms race among Web-based photo editors. Each one is trying to partner with as many third-party services as possible in an attempt to gain mass appeal. This morning Picnik, which has already begun to get some traction as the primary editing tool for Flickr has teamed up with Photobox, another large photo host in the United Kingdom.

Photobox is about a fifth of the size of Flickr in active users, and the two have very different services. Photobox provides 1,000MB of storage and gives users more space each time they order prints while Flickr operates on a paid premium membership that requires a yearly subscription of $25.

Also starting today Picnik users will be able to print their shots using QOOP which lets you print your photos on items such as coffee mugs, posters, and T-shirts. Users of Flickr and Picnik won't find this very useful since Flickr's offered QOOP integration since mid-2005. However, folks who are using Picnik as a standalone editor and replacement for desktop software will find that it's an important partnership. In my chat with Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato back in February, he had noted that a good deal of Picnik users fit that demographic, and that they simply take the edited shots back to their hard drives instead of to other services.

Picnik users now have new options to print their photos using QOOP. They can also grab and edit photos from Photobox. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)