Great Online Photo Editors


 

Web based photo editing software are very handy when you have to quickly finetune a web image or a family picture but there is no graphics software like Photoshop, GIMP or Picasa installed on you computer. You may face such a situation when you are in a internet cafe or when you don't have admin rights to install software on the computer.

No problem, there are tons of online photo editors to the rescue.Most of these online photo editing apps are free and offer similar workflows. You upload the image on the server, perform editing like crop/resize/zoom/flip/colorize/apply filters/rotate and then save the modified image on your local hard-drive. Since all computers come with basic software that rotates, resizes and crops photos, there needs to be a compelling reason to use an online service.

Uploading a photo to such a service, editing it and then downloading it back to your hard drive too high of a cost. To compensate for this, most services allow you to transfer the edited photos directly to Flickr, Web shots or other online photo services, saving users the trouble of making round trips uploading and downloading. Most of these online services also offer editing tools that go beyond simple rotation, resizing and cropping and start to creep into Photoshop territory. Some of the online Photo editors are listed below:-

FAUXTO
Fauxto is a Flash-based It is the only layer-based online tool that we know of, and is by far the best of the bunch. But if all you are looking for is photo editing, and you aren't familiar with Photoshop, Fauxto will frustrate you with its complexity. And if you are already familiar with Photoshop, chances are you have a copy already. Fauxto is lovely to look at and it is a really nice example of Flash in action, but I'm not sure who their target market is.

PICNIK
At the present time Picnik can only integrate with Flickr. It allows you to upload photos from your computer; snap one right off your web cam, or just upload one off the web (using yahoo or flickr search). In all, Picnik is a capable and very friendly-to-use image fixer for amateur digital photographers. Picnik has the nicest, most Web 2.0 interface of the bunch in online image editors. It offers excellent integration with online photo sites like Flickr and some fun creative tools, in addition to the photo correction basics.

PICTURE 2 LIFE
Picture2Life's tagline is "The easiest way to edit your pictures online" This sounded like it might really mean "dumbed down, lightweight online photo editor." But we found that not to be the case at all: The site offers plenty of editing and special effect options-including collage and animation features. However, the implementation of these features left something to be desired. Picture2Life gives you 25MB bandwidth per month with a free account, which for some cameras means a measily 10 pictures. P2L also offers an Internet Explorer extension, but we shy away from these as they slow down tab creation. The interface isn't as polished as Picnik, it doesn't have auto-adjustments or histograms, and ads clutter its pages. The service was also buggy in IE7, but since that browser is still fairly new, we should cut them some slack. Picture2Life offers a lot of interesting photo enhancements, but its interface is quirky.

PRELOADR
Preloadr is a Flickr-specific tool that uses the Flickr API, even for account sign-in. The service includes basic cropping, sharpening, color correction and other tools to enhance images. The fact that Preloadr is designed specifically to work with Flickr may not be an advantage.

PXN8
PXN8 is an online, stripped-down photo editor based on HTML, CSS and Javascript that runs right in your web browser. While the toolset is not expansive it still includes an extremely useful array of functions like resize, crop, red-eye removal, horizon levelling and even color corrections like brightness, saturation, hue and contrast. There are even some 'fun' effects like the Lomo tool which will add a dark 'artsy' halo to your photo. Images can be loaded into PXN8 from your local drive or directly from any web URL. you can also purchase and completely customize PXN8 to run on your own server for a flat fee of $749.

SNIPSHOT
Snipshot , previously called Pixoh, is another very-good Ajax-based editing tool that stands out because of its above average design and the fact that they have an API into their service. We prefer the features and UI of PXN8, but just barely.

Out of all these Fauxto is the only full-featured, free range, image editor online. It is the most advanced and Photoshop-like online image editor available. It was founded in the year 2000.

 

Photo Software