Using Picnik for Some Image-Editing Fun

Dear readers, I believe I’ve done a great disservice to you all. Despite mentioning the Picnik online image editing software in two separate ProfHacker posts (Productivity Through Firefox Extensions, from back in the day when I used Firefox, and Using Google Chrome and Chrome Extensions for Speed and Productivity after I switched), I’ve never written about Picnik proper. I feel bad about that, because I like the application, its ability to grab photos (and send them back) from wherever you store them—Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, your computer, and so on—and the availability of an API for even more “photo awesomeness” (as they say).

Believe it or not, the core functionality of Picnik is free. You don’t even have to register to use the tools; if you want to take it for a test drive, you can upload a photo, work with all the crop, resize, rotate, effects, and font tools that are available even for non-premium users, and save that image to your desktop (or send it to your photo-hosting service of choice) without giving away any of your contact information. It seems counter-intuitive in this day and age, but there it is. From what I recall, that process was true even before Google bought the company a few months ago. In other words, the Picnik folks have been operating under the “do good stuff, don’t be evil” guidelines for quite some time.

The next few screenshots show the simple, clean web-based Picnik interface; note that I’m not even logged in at this point, so all of these options are available to everyone (give it a try!). Also note that you can click on each image to see a larger version.

I would venture to guess that cropping an image is one of the most popular actions—maybe you just need to do some basic cropping (or resizing) of an image from your computer or from a file found online through a Creative Commons search—Picnik does that easily and well. Here is the crop interface after I uploaded one of my photos from Yosemite National Park.

Besides the crop, resize, color correction, and other basic tools, Picnik also includes several filters you can apply to your images. Note that some filters are for premium-only account holders—not all, but some. This would be a good time to mention the Premium account: $4.95 for one month, $19.95 for six months, or $24.95 for a year gets you more effects, more editing tools, more fonts, unlimited image editing history, unlimited connections to external applications, priority customer service, and an ad-free and fullscreen interface.

However, for the ways in which I use Picnik, the free account is wonderful (which in turn makes me want to throw money their way). For example, here’s a cool filter that was available to me via the editing interface:

Saving an image after editing it is simple as could be. In the example below I’m only saving it to my computer, but you can see in the screenshot all the connections to external sites—I could send it to Flickr, Picasa, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and more (including ordering a print or emailing it):

For a few years now, Picnik has been the default image editor in Flickr. This is still true, despite the recent purchase of Picnik by Google and the fact that Flickr is owned by Yahoo!. The Flickr-Picnik integration might change in the future, but for now it’s a huge bonus for Flickr users. As outlined in the Flickr FAQ for Picnik, one of the options under the Flickr “actions” menu on each photo page (when you are logged in and the image is yours) is “Edit Photo in Picnik”. This action opens your image in a Picnik editing interface while still within Flickr:

From this point you can edit within Flickr and replace the stored image with the new one, all without leaving the Flickr-Picnik interface, or you can open the image at Picnik.com; you can also connect your premium Picnik account to your Flickr account so that the “super duper version” (their words, I swear) will open within Flickr. It’s worth noting again that base Picnik is free, free-Flickr account holders can use free Picnik, premium-Flickr account holders can use free Picnik, and any premium Picnik users can use premium Picnik with any level of Flickr account.

As if all that wasn’t enough, there are some tools that allow you to easily get images from the web into a Picnik editing interface. Specifically, there are extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer, plus a bookmarklet for these and other browsers, plus a Yahoo! Widget and, as I mentioned earlier, an API that allows developers to build their own tools.

Here’s an example of the Chrome extension in action. The extension takes a look at all the images on the web page you are viewing and offers them as options to select and send over to the Picnik editing application, thus streamlining the process of searching for and then editing images.

Picnik isn’t the only free online image editor out there, but it’s one I really like. What about you? Do you use Picnik and have tips and tricks to offer? Want to know more? Leave your comments below.