Take Picnik for a picnic with Mozilla's Jetpack

Web-based image editor Picnik, which is now a part of Google, has long been the built-in editor for Yahoo's Flickr photo-hosting service. And if you've found yourself wishing it was just as simple to edit other images around the Web, you're in luck. A relatively new Firefox extension called "Instant Image Edit with Picnik" lets you edit any image on any site, using Picnik--all with little more than a right-click.

The extension was built using a new part of Mozilla's Jetpack API, which lets developers add items to the contextual menu of a user's browser. In this case it's a link to "edit image with Picnik," which shows up when you right-click on an image. Doing so kicks you out to Picnik's Adobe Flash-based editor, which will load up the image editor in a new tab without you even having to sign in or register for Picnik itself.

Instant Image Edit with Picnik does just what it says, and with great results.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn / CNET)

There is one big caveat, which is more an issue with the way Picnik acquires the images than what the extension does. Picnik cannot fetch images that are behind a VPN or password-protected page. This means you can't go and edit a photo you've received in your Web mail in-box without first downloading it locally, or hosting it elsewhere. That aside, with this installed you can get the same kind of Flickr-like simplicity for editing your photos in places like Picasa and Facebook--all without having to head over to Picnik to get things started.

Chrome users should not feel too left out, as there's a similar extension (and a first-party one at that) from Picnik that lets you do the same thing.

See also: Aviary's screen capture tool for Firefox and Chrome, which can slurp in entire Web pages for editing.