Webware

Tools that let you edit photos in the Web browser have come a long way in the last few years. We wanted to take a moment to do a feature comparison with a grouping of editors--big and small, to see what each one is capable of.

Most of the services on this list take advantage of Adobe's ever-developing Flash platform, which in its latest iteration got a huge boost with support for the large images coming out of today's high-megapixel cameras. On the flip side of that, several of the non-Flash-based editors use AJAX to make the changes happen without reloading the page. The benefit here is that you can run these on machines without the latest versions of Flash installed.

While not an exhaustive list of features, we wanted to focus on some of the ones that really mattered, like how much each service costs to use, how large of a photo you can upload, and what makes each one special. Here are the results:

Two small caveats about size: In most cases, any difference in the maximum photo resolution is a result of which version of Flash the tool--or the user--is running. In Aviary's case, its Phoenix photo editor uses the Flash 9 spec, thus only supporting images up to 2800x2800 in size. Its next release, due later this year, will nearly double that resolution.

Also, the maximum resolution doesn't necessarily mean if your original photo is bigger, it won't take it. Instead, what many of these services will do is simply scale it down to something that's more manageable both for your machine and its servers. Photos with odd aspect ratios are often constrained within the proportion of pixels any given editing app can render within its available workspace.

So which one is the best?

That's a difficult question. It depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to add glitter graphics to a picture to put on your MySpace profile, you should go with Lunapic. If you're trying to edit the RAW photos you just took on your new SLR, you're only going to be able to do it on Snipshot's paid pro service.

Picnik has just rolled out some neat new features for casual enthusiasts of photo editing.

Now found on the bottom of the editing environment is something called a "photo basket," which includes a pool of photos garnered from cloud services like Facebook, Flickr, and Photobucket, as well as uploads from users' hard drives. It also doubles as the new multiphoto uploader for those looking to unload the entirety of their memory card.

Switching between your photo sources in the basket is nearly instantaneous, and more importantly, it doesn't take you away from what you're working on. The photo basket is more than just a productivity booster; it's the home of a new feature that lets users create works of art using individual photographs as layers.

Sure, it's missing the other 80 percent of what's found on something like Adobe Photoshop, but with the use of transparency, text, and the myriad of filter effects, you can create some truly good-looking creations with a very minimal amount of effort.

Picnik now lets you put together multi-photo creations using layers. Like advanced photo editing applications each layer can be given different blend modes, transparencies, and color masks. Seen here is a collection of four photos stacked on top of one another with varying effects added on top of one another.

(Credit: CNET Networks )

When Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato demoed this for me a few months back he insisted this wasn't the first step in making Picnik compete with tools like Scrapblog or Glogster. Instead it was in response to users, who had been requesting support for layers since launch. Part of that request included contextual menu support, so if you're working with more than a few layers you can simply right click to manage what order they appear in.

One thing to note is that there are some limitations built to entice users into upgrading to Picnik's premium subscription service. One of those is in the number of photos you're able to drag up into the canvas. Free users can use up to five in any given workspace, whereas premium users can add as many as they'd like. The collage feature caps off at five photos for free users and 36 for premium. Likewise, free users can only upload five shots at a time, with premium users getting 100. These are all limitations that will eventually be lifted as other premium features filter down.

As a treat for Webware readers Picnik has given us 30 free 90-day premium upgrades to give out. The premium membership will take away the ads and give you advanced access to some of the more advanced features like the extra filters and a fonts. To get yours just enter your contact information on this form (note: this link opens as a pop-up). We'll pick the 30 winners randomly, and you have until midnight (PST) on Sunday to enter. We'll send the winners their prizes on Monday.

My favorite types of Web apps are those that try to emulate the look and feel of software. Cutting-edge UI can be useful, but sometimes you just want something that feels familiar. In the case of Pixlr, a new browser-based photo-editing tool, the target is clearly Adobe's Photoshop.

Pixlr lets you grab photos from your hard drive and edit them in a software-like environment. Included are some advanced tools like customizable brushes and multiple layers. Most people won't need these features, but they're there--and free of charge. There's also a small collection of filters and adjustments. The results are a little more polished than other Web photo-editing tool offerings, but some are harder to tweak. I was able to create some truly brilliant looking effects on a bland photo without too much work. It helps if you've used Photoshop or something like Paint.net before, as some of the menu structure is the same.

After editing a shot the only way to get it off is to download it back to your hard drive as a JPEG or PNG file. There's no uploading to other services, nor does it yet have the capability to pull down shots from photo hosts you're already using--two things that have become a bit of a standard.

When stacked up to Fotoflexer, Picnik, or Photoshop Express, Pixlr shows some of its early age. It's a crowded market and these tools have been stacking on cool and useful features at a rapid clip. The inability to crop, add text, and redo anything you might have undone is a bit of a deal killer for me. Also missing is a history tool, something which, after having worked with Photoshop for a few years, I find to be an absolute necessity--especially when working with layers. Still, despite its shortcomings, I've got high hopes for this photo-editing app. It's very fast, free, and amazingly developed by just one person.

Pixlr looks a lot like a desktop application, but it runs right in your browser. All you need is Adobe Flash.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Adobe just updated its Photoshop Express service with a handful of relatively unexciting but useful new features. The most important one is the inclusion of printing through Shutterfly, making it easier to take edited photos and get them printed either for yourself or to send as gifts. Previously you'd have to pull down the photos off of Adobe's servers or send them to a partner server to have them printed elsewhere. Now you can just get them ported out with a single click.

There's also a new Adobe AIR uploader that lets you send photos from your desktop to Photoshop Express' cloud storage servers for editing with a simple drag and drop. Between the Web and desktop uploader, I actually found the Web version just a tad slower, although both are exceptionally easy to use. Either way you're still stuck with Adobe's 2GB account cap. The good news is that you can now shrink exceptionally large photos with the new resizing tool that gives you some quick presets for popular formats--mainly blogs and social-networking profile photos.

Another update of interest is the inclusion of music for use in slideshows. A similar offering showed up in Adobe's Flex-based editing tool for videos (coverage) and lets you put your creation to rights managed tracks. I couldn't manage to get any of the songs to show up, but the drop down menu can be found alongside the other settings when you're in the slideshow editing environment.

Photoshop Express' latest major update included integration with Flickr and several other social photo sharing sites.

Adobe's AIR uploader lets you drag and drop photos from your desktop to upload to Photoshop Express.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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)

Picnik, one of my personal favorites for editing photos online launched a new array of advanced editing tools a few hours ago. You can read about some of them from our earlier post, or the official announcement over at the company's blog. The biggest news is that many of the ones that previously required a paid, premium membership are now available to free users.

I got a chance to talk to Picnik's CEO Jonathan Sposato about the update, as well as the past and future of the company. The big topic was the looming release of Adobe's Photoshop Express, something that doesn't seem to have Sposato and company too worried. "Adobe has a business to protect. Picnik has a business to build," Sposato said. He also noted that early looks of the product (see coverage) show that there might not be integration with social services people are already using--something Sposato believes critical to Picnik's adoption, and that has served the company well.

As for competing services encroaching on Picnik's space, including FotoFlexer, which unveiled its no-fee Pro service last month, Sposato says his company is confident about the current road map and feature release schedule, which is set to trickle down to free users (just like what happened today). "We've got more engineers now, and that means we're able to turn out new features faster than before."

Looking back, Picnik became the official editor of photos on Flickr in December and has since experienced tremendous growth. The company wouldn't share its official numbers with us, but noted that Flickr has provided double digit percentages of site growth in addition to the highest ratio of users that give the free service a try and then upgrade to the premium membership. Sposato also noted that Flickr users are almost always uploading their shots back to the service, often replacing the original shot with the edited one--a process that is now reversible with the new history feature similar to the one for files seen over at Box.net.

Web based photo editor FotoFlexer has been given an update this morning that's specifically designed to accommodate the needs of advanced users. The company is calling it "pro," although it's not quite a full replacement for traditionally "professional" photo editing applications such as Adobe's Photoshop. It's also not going to be a pay service, despite the pro moniker.

Among the major additions is the inclusion of curves and high resolution editing, which let users work with large pictures in their native resolutions. The new features also let users adjust coloring, contrast, and exposure. There's also a new feature called "smart scissors" that resembles the magnetic lasso tool found in Photoshop, although it uses FotoFlexer's "Predictive Pixel Partitioning" technology to determine the object's borders without user input.

One feature that may useful to people who use the service often is a new preference saver. It will automatically tune itself based the tools used on a regular basis and have them set the next time the user logs in. It's easily comparable with Photoshop's workspace preferences, letting users adjust what tools they want open each time they start editing a photo.

In addition to the pro-oriented tools, FotoFlexer has also added new color effects (like Photoshop's filters), along with a new way to add borders to photos that makes the process require less clicks.

I'm still partial to competitor Picnik when it comes to online photo editing because of its deep level integration with Flickr and Box.net, but FotoFlexer definitely remains one of the best online editors, especially for users who don't want to shell out the $25 a year for Picnik's pro offerings.

The new smart scissors feature lets users pick out someone from a photo like they would with Photoshop's magnetic lasso, although with a little more ease.

(Credit: Arbor Labs Inc.)

Fauxto, the Webware for photo editing that looks a lot like a desktop application, has a new look and feel. It's relaunched as Splashup and has added several new features that in many ways bring it closer to Fotoflexer, one of its main competitors. This was an interesting product for me to come back to, mainly since it was one of the first Web-based photo-editing apps I got to look at after starting at Webware, and since then the genre has seen tremendous growth.

The real draw to the app has always been its use of layers, which give you a very powerful way to manipulate and create new images using bits and pieces from one or more original photos. Up until a few months ago, other Web-based photo-editing apps didn't have this functionality.

Undo and redo buttons are now standard.

The biggest change since I looked at the service late last year is the addition of undo controls that let you go back a step in case you make a mistake. It's also gotten much better at linking up with places where your photos might reside, such as Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa. Similar to how other Web photo-editing services have handled this, you simply need to authenticate Fauxto to each service by logging in, then you can freely browse all your albums. Originally you were limited to whatever was on your hard drive, or a URL. Likewise, saving is now far better, and you can save locally (in multiple formats) or export the shots back to the site or origin, or whatever supported sites you've given login credentials.

There are also some new tools that are aimed at the higher-end user such as a lasso and cropping tool, along with a tool that lets you take any selected imagery and copy it into a new layer. For grabbing quick shots of your face, there's now a built-in Web cam tool that will take a quick snapshot, although it's nowhere near as advanced as Fotoflexer's iteration that does on-the-fly filter and liquefy effects.

Picnik is launching a new premium subscription service tomorrow morning. $24.95 gets you a year of access to a slew of advanced effects and fonts. Many of the premium effects have been available during the service's beta testing period, but there are some new ones that do a pretty incredible job of taking a drab photo and making it look special.

The biggest thing premium users will notice is over a dozen effects that aren't available in the standard version, and seven brand-new ones. According to CEO Jonathan Sposato, the No. 1 request from users is more effects to play with, and there are now plenty to choose from. My personal favorite is the new "cross process," which emulates the real-life technique of developing photographs in the wrong chemical solution. In most photos, the effect is just stunning.

Premium effects are denoted by a premium tag. For some fun, check out the HDR-ish and night vision filters.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

As a value-added feature to users, Picnik will be releasing one or more new effects every month. I asked Sposato if premium effects would eventually make their way into the free version as a result of this, and the answer is yes--although not right away.

The second biggest user request is annotation, which the service has addressed with a brand new feature called shapes. Shapes offers things like speech bubbles, geometric shapes, and even licensing shapes in case you want to add watermarks as part of a copyright or trademark notice. To complement the feature, the text tool is getting "super fonts." Premium users will soon be getting a much larger library at their disposal. Sposato thinks it's a great hook to get power users who expect a similarly large repository of fonts to choose from when comparing Picnik to a desktop photo app.

Also new are three ways to frame your shots, which is the third most requested user feature. Two of these are new since the open beta, with the coolest being a faux Polaroid creator that lets you fake the look of the iconic instant photographs. There's also a museum matte tool that puts a slick-looking two-colored frame around your shot.

Besides the new premium features, Picnik is now connected to Photobucket to let you edit your shots, or those of other Photobucket users. You can do the same thing with Facebook. I originally saw this functionality on Fotoflexer (hands-on), and there's really nothing more fun than being able to browse and edit your friend's shots, especially if they're a good photographer.

So is $24.95 a year worth it for a Web photo editor? I think so. The free version should be just fine for most folks, but if you're looking for a little more power and versatility, the Premium service is a pretty good offering--especially considering you'll be getting additional features on a monthly basis. If you store your photos on Web services like Flickr, and now Photobucket, Picnik is great for editing them without having to edit a local copy, and then reupload it. Likewise, the service is fast and a whole lot of fun to use.

If you want to give the premium service a spin, Picnik is offering users a one-week free trial. Starting tomorrow, you'll be able to sign up for it on Picnik's front page.

Picnik's new premium service offers a handful of cool-looking, and actually helpful ways to tweak your photos.

(Credit: CNET Networks)