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February 4, 2007

Online Photo Editing Overview

Michael Arrington

68 comments »

The launch of Picnik a couple of days ago brought us yet another online photo editing tool. Like Fauxto, Picnik uses Flash, whereas most of the earlier editing tools all use Ajax for in-browser editing.

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, Webshots 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. Here’s a few of the better ones, along with our most recent testing notes:

Fauxto

Fauxto is a Flash-based Photoshop look-alike. 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

Picnik is the new kid on the block, and they’re the best so far. It is also Flash based, it is the fastest of the bunch and the user interface is the most intuitive. Once you are done editing, you can transfer your photos directly to Flickr. Picnik has replaced Ajax-based PXN8 as our favorite online photo editing tool.

Picture2Life

Picture2life is an Ajax based photo editor. It’s focused on grabbing and editing images that are already online. The tool selection is average, and the user interface is poor. There are some bugs on the site. Photos can be transferred to Flickr, 23 and Imageshack after editing.

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 - some of the other services are just as good or better and also offer Flickr integration.

PXN8

PXN8 is the best of the Ajax based editors (and the best overall until Picnik launched) and has a great user interface with the main features highlighted on large icons. The basic “enhance” feature does a very good job of fixing the obvious problems with pictures. Edited photos can be transferred to Flickr or Webshots’ AllYouCanUpload service.

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.

Read FranticIndustries for their take as well.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 2:39 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Ryan Stewart

    February 4th, 2007 at 2:43 am

    Fauxto and Picnik are both written in Flex which means they could make great Apollo apps. I’ve talked with both of these teams about their “Apollo strategy” and while neither one of them has confirmed anything, it seems like they’re interested in the technology.

  2. RBA

    February 4th, 2007 at 2:47 am

    Do you t think the mother of all photo editing software is really sitting pretty watching all this happening? Somehow I think Adobe is going to surprise us this year, with things where we weren’t expecting from “that kind of company”, kind of like Amazon did in 2006.

    After all, not all major web developments have to come from the GYMs, right?

  3. Michael Arrington

    February 4th, 2007 at 2:51 am

    Ryan - Yes, totally. I can’t wait to see the photo apps that come on the Apollo platform. They’ll should be much better than the Picasa attempts at bridging online and offline photos.

  4. RBA

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:04 am

    BTW when I was talking about Adobe in comment #2, I wasn’t refering to Apollo/Flash/Flex/etc but about complete web-apps.

    Adobe once said a Photoshop-like app could not be done via web. Do they still think that way? I think not.

  5. Gil Megidish

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:08 am

    http://www.dumpr.net does some cool photo effects. It works with flickr api, picasa web urls, myspace, file upload, zooomr and a bunch of others.

  6. JasonM

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:13 am

    Micheal
    The Pixn8 image link (www.pixn8.com) directs you to a dodgy domain squatter causing lots of popups … I need to bring back my google bar.

    The Pixn8 text link (www.pxn8.com) works fine.

    Jason

  7. Michael Arrington

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:28 am

    Thanks Jason. Fixing now.

  8. Oliver Luker

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:45 am

    One photo editing site definitely worth a mention is pixer (www.pixer.us) - again, ajax based, and very lightweight - but a great example of how for some tasks you just don’t need too much interface. Upload, tweak, and go!

  9. franticindustries

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:59 am

    @Michael: I don’t want to cause any unnecessary fuss, but this seems like a steal of my article, published yesterday. The exact same 6 online image editors are used, only I’ve gone much more in-depth on them. None of my text is stolen, so I don’t have the intention of accusing anyone of plagiarism, however the concept of the text seems eerily similar.

    If you’re interested in seeing my article, please contact me on the e-mail I’ve provided (I haven’t included my website here to avoid being marked as spam by Akismet).

  10. Michael Arrington

    February 4th, 2007 at 4:06 am

    franticindustries - don’t know what your blog is, so email me a link (editor@techcrunch) and I’ll take a look and add a link if appropriate.

  11. Rajeev Vashisht

    February 4th, 2007 at 4:26 am

    I agree with you online softwares are wretched at speed, better to buy your copy of licenced software and have a good nights sleep.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  12. franticindustries

    February 4th, 2007 at 5:33 am

    @Michael: I’ve sent you an e-mail, but just in case, the site is franticindustries.com.

    Anyway, whatever your answer may be, I’d like to reiterate once again that I believe this is just a weird coincidence. However I’ve had to point it out - otherwise someone might think that I’ve stolen the idea from you.

  13. Ashish Mohta

    February 4th, 2007 at 6:54 am

    @RBA: You are right.Even after reading this article, I was wondering what ADOBE is upto.Though the application is no doubt heavy on any machine with an average machine but its the mother.

    Adobe should definetly come up with some inventive idea of online photo editing with some good feature.And when it does people using any of these tools will be shifting to it.

  14. Emily Lloyd

    February 4th, 2007 at 7:15 am

    Re: Fauxto’s target market–though I realize this may not be large enough to constitute a “target market”–I work at a large library and most of the patrons that use our computers don’t have computers at home. We have Word installed on only a few computers, Photoshop on none. Online editing tools are a great boon in this situation–

  15. pankaj

    February 4th, 2007 at 8:39 am

    I Like Picnik. Simple and integrates with my Flickr account. I was really anticipating something similar from Flickr themselves in one of the recent flickr outages :)
    Picnik has one shortcoming though, it does not import multiple photos from my computer. From flickr, it imports all the sets well and lets me jump to any photo and edit it.

  16. sam

    February 4th, 2007 at 9:15 am

    mike…

    not to pick hairs… but every computer that’s purchased does not come with sofware to ‘handle’ images… there are plenty of used computers that are sold, there are plenty of computers that are used with linux…

    there are a great deal of computers in the US market that still run on a variant of windows 2000..

    so.. if one is considering providing a web based app/service for dealing with photos.. there is probably a large enough number of computer users with systems to comprise a targeted market.

    peace..

  17. rick

    February 4th, 2007 at 9:58 am

    Online photo editing is so 2005! To Sam’s point, it’s a freebie on every new PC. Online video editing is what it’s all about and where cheap and esay to use applications are harder to find. Michael, give us an update on the field of video editing players some time soon.

  18. David Rothman

    February 4th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    I posted a comparison chart of a number of online imaging editors here.

    Notes about the chart are here

  19. Anthony

    February 4th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

    I feel for the web2.0 start ups with mission statements such as: “Our goal is to create simple software that works.” (this example is from PXN8, but there are dozens more).

    I think we’d see far more success if web2.0 startups narrowed in on a market.

    “Create simple software FOR WHO??”… the answer should be a tight, specific, measurable answer.

  20. kan

    February 4th, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    Fauxto make flex not flash..
    it is a really nice example of Flex in action. :)

  21. Christian Watson

    February 4th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    There are actually a few others worth considering, such as Cellsea and VicImager, which do have as many features (if not more) than the ones you mention above.

    I did a comparison of them myself a while back: http://www.smileycat.com/miaow.....00267.html

  22. Rickster

    February 4th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    I have noticed that most of my clients do not realize that there is photo/image editing software that is pre-loaded on their computers.

    These days, almost everyone needs to be able to edit or reduce the image quality.

  23. matt

    February 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    Also, check out Resizr.com, it’s not quite as good as some of those other apps, but it’s brutally simple for a specific set of users.

  24. jamalak

    February 4th, 2007 at 9:59 pm

    Thanks for your article Michael. I translated it to french here http://jakhiad.free.fr/blog/in.....ligne.html

    Feel free to contact me for any question.

  25. Garrett

    February 4th, 2007 at 10:06 pm

    interesting article, thanks. keep up the good work

  26. Mike

    February 4th, 2007 at 11:15 pm

    Coolers!! I’ve heard about another app named “Peditor” http://www.peditor.com which is coming this summer. Let’s see what they’ve got.

  27. Niall Larkin

    February 5th, 2007 at 1:57 am

    Really valuable review Mike.

    Re: PXN8. As you rightly pointed out, the basic ‘enhance’ feature is key to pxn8 ’s appeal. PXN8 has been a life saver many times when I wanted simple, fast editing done without having to engage my brain.

    Re: fauxto. I have photoshop at the office on my desktop. Increasingly, I need photoshop when away from my main machine. And those occasions can be painful. In future, this is when I will be turning to fauxto.

  28. flickrville

    February 5th, 2007 at 5:36 am

    I agree with you picknik is the best out there at the moment.

  29. Dave

    February 5th, 2007 at 6:57 am

    Amazing Tech Crunch did a comparison of various Web 2.0 tools in a specific category. That is what we want, not stories in isolation, not Google everyday, not more dead pool!

  30. mike schleifstein

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:02 am

    snipshot is flash based and not ajax, hence why it works some much smoother and faster than pxn8 (at least in my opinion)

  31. Saar

    February 5th, 2007 at 10:22 am

    Mike - Most people don’t want to learn photo-editing no matter how easy or cheap it becomes. We have tried to create an easy and affordable service at Photochop.com. Most jobs are completed within an hour and you only pay if you like the completed photo.

    We manage over 120 editors, and growing, and make photoshop editing easy. We also provide white-label services for many companies that want to provide premium touch-up services for their user base.

    best,

    Saar

  32. knight

    February 5th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    you missed the best one
    editor.cellsea.com

  33. Jonas

    February 11th, 2007 at 1:25 am

    In my blog, I write about uninstalling ALL applications from my desktop and only run online tools. I just did a post with a screencast of Fauxto on my blog.
    http://www.myuninstalledlife.com/fauxto

  34. Bal

    March 1st, 2007 at 2:30 am

    maybe it could seem somewhat offtopic, but when we speak about web 2.0 online tools we should also mention http://www.flashfilterlab.com . it is creating flash content online made with flash itself. Is there also an article for this kind of tools?

  35. Wettervik

    March 1st, 2007 at 8:09 am

    Great research. One of the pioneers http://www.phixr.com is not even mentioned. Great, and totally unbiased article. As always, thank you.

  36. Matthew Nuzum

    March 2nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Fauxto has a horrible privacy policy. To use it, to even see what it is, you have to give them an e-mail address, and no where do they state their policy on sharing or using it. As a matter of fact, they look like they’ve hacked out sections of the privacy policy (there are three ways we collect user information: a and b), which leads me to believe they started out with a good policy then a decission maker said, “wait… we make good money selling those e-mails to marketers, take that part out!”

    Speaking of which, where is this site’s privacy policy?

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