Picnik's online photo-editing site now has ads except for those with premium accounts.
(Credit: Picnik)Picnik, an online photo-editing site, has altered course.
In a change announced Wednesday in the , the Seattle company said those with free accounts now will be able to use editing tools previously reserved for those who've paid for premium subscriptions--but they'll also see ads.
Premium subscribers won't get the ads, though, and will get a handful of other perks, including fonts from FontShop, better connections to social networks, and early access to new features. Subscriptions cost $24.95 per year.
"Our goal is to make Picnik the best photo editing experience available, regardless of whether you support us directly or our advertisers do," the company said on the blog.
Picnik isn't alone. Among others, editing powerhouse Adobe Systems is working on its online Photoshop Express product. Adobe had hoped to launch a beta in 2007, but the company is still working on the technology.
Update 6:20 p.m. PT: I misunderstood Picnik's statement that "Now all Picnik users will have full access to our huge range of edit tools, special effects, fonts, and shapes that previously were only available as premium features." Some features, including the tone curve editing control, are still available only to premium subscribers. For a full list, look at the chart on their blog. I adjusted the posting accordingly, including switching out the older image.
Picnik, an online photo-editing service, has released specifications that will let other Web sites use its tools.
The Seattle company on Tuesday released its application programming interface, or API, called Picnik-in-a-Box. "Sites can use the Picnik interface to load, edit, and save specific images provided by users, customize certain portions of the Picnik interface, and give users a superior image-importing and -exporting experience for applications or Web sites," the company said in a statement.
Web site developers wishing to employ the feature can obtain a key from Picnik that grants access to the API, Picnik said.
Among sites using the API today are Photoextract.com, Fineartstudioonline.com, Freewebs.com, Box.net, Photoworks.com, ZoomShare.com, and Fliptrack.com Flickr and Lexmark both use a more elaborate, customized version, Picnik said.
Image-editing powerhouse Adobe Systems is working on its own online editing tool, Photoshop Express.
Online photo editing has just taken a significant step closer to its computer-based predecessors: Picnik has added a curves editing feature.
Curves, one of the early killer features that drew people to Adobe Systems' Photoshop, lets people adjust in detail the distribution of light and dark tones in photographs. For example, it can be used to bring details out of shadowy murk or carefully increase contrast.
I didn't try out the feature: curves editing is reserved for those with premium accounts, which cost $24.95 a year. But it looks like it can edit red, green, and blue channels separately.
Picnik got a big boost when it began a partnership with photo-sharing powerhouse Flickr in December.
Picnik's image-editing tools now are available within Flickr.
(Credit: Flickr)Flickr members now can edit pictures online using Picnik's online tools, a significant change in the ability and focus of the photo-sharing site.
A new "edit this" option on each photo's page takes Flickr members to a "powered by Picnik" screen that permits them to change exposure, colors, sharpness, and other attributes, as well as add text, whiten teeth, fix red-eye, crop, and resize. The features duplicate those already available on Picnik's site.
Flickr and Picnik announced the deal in October, saying at the time it would launch "in coming months." Now the company announced the move on its Flickr blog. Some of fruits of the new option can be seen on the Flickr Picnikers group, including some images edited with Picnik.
Flickr pages now sport an 'edit this' option. Too bad all the options don't fit above the photo anymore.
(Credit: Flickr)Flickr got its start as a place to post photos, sharing and commenting and joining groups of like-minded photographers, but it's gradually growing beyond its roots. And the addition of the editing option marks a subtle change in how users could perceive the site: not just as the online mirror of a photo collection stored at home, but also a repository of finished images that don't exist elsewhere.
It seems unlikely that serious photographers will consider their Flickr photos to be their canonical collection, but the online editing does reflect a gradual shift of the photographic center of gravity toward the Internet. Along with sharing and editing, online sites offer services for printing, selling, geotagging, and archiving photos. And the sole superpower in the image-editing software world, Adobe Systems, is working on its own online editing tool, Photoshop Express.
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