FotoFlexer Raises The Bar On Online Photo Editing
Michael Arrington
57 comments »
Online photo editors keep getting better and better. For hardcore image manipulation, desktop software like Photoshop or Gimp will always have its place, but online editors are free, easy to use and a lot of fun. We covered most of the online editors back in February (Fauxto, Picnik, Picture2Life, Preloadr, PXN8 and Snipshot). But a relative newcomer on the scene, Berkeley-based FotoFlexer, is worth a look.
The site first launched in July with basic functionality and integration with Facebook. This last week they relaunched a new site with more tools, direct access to your desktop/laptop webcam, and they also now integrate with Flickr, Picasa and MySpace.
Upload a photo, or grab one from a supported service, and edit it by changing colors, adding effects, bulging or pinching areas (to make body parts look larger or smaller), etc. You can also turn any image into a sketch or cartoon. I spent about 10 minutes creating the different versions of the picture to the right (original is top left). The most fun is changing hair color, although the image third down on the left is my personal favorite.
Fotoflexer says they incorporate their own artificial intelligence algorithm to figure out the right way to alter images. And whatever it is they’re doing, it works. You simply point out a few areas of the site you want to remove or alter and it figures out the rest of the pixels pretty quickly. You can do all of this in Photoshop, but it takes a lot longer. And unlike most (but not all) of the online photo editing tools we’ve previously covered, FotoFlexer also supports layering for more complicated image editing.
FotoFlexer also now integrates directly to your webcam and to take a quick snapshot and edit it. Many of the effects are similar to the Photo Booth application that comes installed on all Macs.
The integration with third party services is a great feature as well. Pull down photos from Facebook or another service, alter them and re-upload in a few minutes.
The service runs in Flash and was built on the Flex platform with mostly custom tools. The company has not raised any capital and has 15 employees, all in the Silicon Valley/Bay area. About 50,000 people use their Facebook application and/or the website directly. I expect that number to grow as social networkers discover the joy of turning their pictures into cartoons, or turning their hair color to Fuchsia.
So …. “(to make body parts look larger or smaller)”, right …. ??
Good link …..
It’s snipshot.
You got great photo editing skills, Michael!
Hi Michael,
Is it true that some companies can sell photoshop for dollars? I have received plenty of mails in this past 5 days.
Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
Pretty impressive overall. Really amazing how fast AJAX has become obsolete in the face of the amazing power of Flex.
Nice
@John - I don’t think Flex is and will be replacing AJAX. It might be the other way around. Also there’s SILVERLIGHT!
this is perfect for all the superficials on myspace with all their photos and all.
girls will morph themselves into the so-called perfect ratio, and guys will - need i say more…
Best online photo editor i’ve used. Thanks for sharing Mike.
My Mac could do this right out of the box What’s the big deal?
Pretty slick for an online photo editor.
Great TOOL for all the trolls wanting to impress the ladies on all their ” social sites” or, the porn related photo sites. next photo site will be yourgoobers
Can you spot the real Michael Arrington?
Hey Mike, if you wanted to dye your hair red you should have let me know
I can hook you up with the best colorists this side of The Castro.
I looked at FotoFlexer and think it’s a great site. The interface is smooth and the functionality provides interesting features. I especially like the one-button effects, and the advanced cut-out features. It seems they’ll need to continue innovating with the one-button features to remain cutting-edge in this space. Besides power-users, I bet 90% of PhotoShop customers would be better off with FotoFlexer.
love those shots of your head shot. pretty funny stuff.
i wrote on anotehr very cool potential photoshop app. http://cutcaster.blogspot.com/.....mages.html
there are a number of commercial applications with new technology like this. i bet someone like adobe will buy them.
15 employees for this? That’s ridiculous. There’s not much novel filter-processing going on there and most of that code is easily found online.
BTW, anyone check out the bios? None of them sound like they actually work for the company…
BTW, you can learn more about the Flex platform at http://flex.org.
Mike
@Mitch it also says they’re unfunded so they probably need outside interests to pay the bills and the recoloring feature that got Michael’s hair and kept the texture is pretty novel. Compared to Picnik, who most people point to in this space, they seem pretty novel. Picnik doesn’t even allow for multiple images on their cavas like these guys do or have half the features yet people say they’re pretty novel…
overall it seems like a major step forward for the potential of Flex.
Really, though, what a pointless app. Why are all these shitty apps popping up to cater for the people who have far too much time on their hands and spend all day adding things to their facebook or myspaz pages? I mean, great, you can now give yourself different coloured hair and a big nose. Whoopie-doo!
Please let Adobe release an online version of Photoshop to wipe out all these silly apps.
It has to be said, Mike with a slightly narrower head is doing it for me :0)
PhotoShop would love to release an online application like this, and Adobe even promised to do so by this month! But where is it?!? It’s not coming. Companies like Adobe will always struggle with providing online apps that are ad-supported. They’ve been internally debating this for months, will likely continue the debate for years, but will always decide to protect the cash-producers like PhotoShop. Companies are in business to make money, that’s what they do. No web-based Photoshop for you.
It’s really cool..
checkout my toon at ToonDoo.com,
http://www.toondoo.com/View.toon?param=43170
Hey Mike, Heston from FotoFlexer here. You make a good point that “You can do all this in Photoshop, but it takes a lot longer.” As the guy in charge of user experience here at FotoFlexer, I can attest that this is one of the primary reasons our users keep coming back — we give them the functionality to personalize their images without requiring that they spend the time to become a Photoshop expert, and without spending the money on expensive software.
This specifically reply to #20 Mark’s comment above.
I strongly believe in creativity and innovation. And honestly, I think it’s new applications like Fotoflexer that compels Adobe and Photoshop to improve their products. Hence, don’t bash Fotoflexer - it’s not pointless and it’s a step forward.
with this product, i think michael will finally start getting dates on match.com
Leo, I think you’re wrong. Adobe will definitely release something. Having an online app is such a big opportunity for them to take the market away from the smaller companies who are saturating the market. Lets be honest, all these online apps are very basic in comparison to Photoshop - and while this is a positive its also a negative. I havent used flexer so I shouldn’t be so quick to judge but I know theres much more I’d want to do then basic photo editing. Like I said, the myspaz kids will no doubt love blowing each others faces up to resemble John Merrick. But other then this basic kind of editing what else could it be used for?
Haven’t half the world and their brothers and sisters got a cracked version of photoshop these days?
yummypii, I wasn’t really bashing so much. But these apps are only a progression regarding the online photo editing apps. Photoshop is way, way ahead of these. Now WHEN they manage to get something online they will wipe them out - Its a given (if of course they DO release something) I’m sure most of these online apps pull the features from photoshop anyway, they aren’t new ideas. Its just a matter of what parts they can replicate without the developers and cash Adobe have behind them.
Wow, michael.
You’re a cool fotolexer artist.
@Mitch #17: I have known quite a few companies that are a 2-3 man team that build an extensive bio/about us section on the company site to make it look like they are larger than they really are. This typically helps in the sales department and its a snap to create the extra emails.
I’m with yummypii, if not just for the cool name. Imagine if no online photo editing applications were released because of the slight chance Adobe MAY release something, one day. It definitely stunts innovation. Having something out there which can be continually improved on is the way to go. As this seems to incorporate the use of layers, its already a step forward in my eyes.
You have to remember some people want a fast way of cropping images or adding text. These basic functions are probably the ones most widely used by the majority of people who aren’t professionals.
If it has a redeye tool then its ok in my book…
Mark,
First of all, people should use a product before jumping to conclusions, kinda like reading a book before writing a book-report. Anyway, Adobe struggles with cannibalization in this space. They just cannot offer enough functionality online, without eating into their revenue for shrink-wrapped products. Adding to their problems, they are very aware of corporate “respectability”. It would be difficult for Adobe to accept ads for many products out there. If this opportunity is a no-brainer for Adobe, and they control significant resources, then why haven’t they launched a competing product yet? I guarantee they’ve debated it endlessly, and come to the conclusions described above.
You make an important point about younger people (below 30) using a product like FotoFlexer. Perhaps most important for the success of FotoFlexer and other browser-based products is their focus on younger markets. The young ‘uns are crawling all over FaceBook, MySpace, etc. They want fun, simple ways to play with their and their friends’ pictures. FotoFlexer and the like gives it to them.
And finally, perhaps even some online daters would like to transform themselves into John Merrick (in certain ways, at least).
Who is John Merrick?
Just chiming in to say that the left column, third one down, is absolutely horrifying. Yikes.
@Hornswaggled #29:
Fair enough. If that’s the case, my recommendation for them though would be to leave off
Zach Stevens
With more than 4 years experience in the health and fitness world, he has built strong personal relationships within the health industry, and has an in-depth understanding of the modern advances taking place there.
I’m sure Zach is a really healthy guy but not quite sure how his experience is relevant to online photo processing…
This is fun! I’m a Mac owner and do enjoy their Photobooth app, but this has way more features.
Perhaps I just didn’t look into it enough, but where is the hair color changing app? I think I’d look hot as a redhead.
can someone tell me what type of working mode you prefer,
the IN BROWSER MODE or FULL-SCREEN MODE ?
and why ?
Thank you for your opinion
Heston from FotoFlexer here. Yes, we do have 15 employees. They’re real, and they’re spectacular. (Seinfeld, anyone?)
Mike looks very scary and creepy….
thanks very much scary.
EXCELENTE PRODUTO.
ABS
PAULO ARAUJO
is that perez hilton in the upper right photo?
Now if they could do the Scanner Darkly effect, they’d be in business…
Man, you can never go as far as calling this photo editing - that’s what Photoshop is about and it doesn’t even compare. This may be raising the bar on online photo effects, but editing? If it can’t give me the basics of actual editing (cutting, cropping, retouching, layering), it’s not editing but fancy gimmick for the myspace crowd.
This is great solution for quick and small editing when you just don’t want to open large software suite for fast re-sizing or cropping. I think we are long way away from Photoshop style software to be available as an online tool, but it is a start in right direction for now.
is this a blog for bling people??
“This is great solution for quick and small editing” and stuff…
you must be kidding. The results are as much a desaster as the idea to call it an editing tool. You ImageMagickLib in PHP made this possible more than 5 years ago… not to mention that there are loads of Editors even in Flash that are better…and older.
I hope this doesn’t become popular.
DiggUser
http://www.chancechat.com
portuguese post about this…
[...]bom essa é uma nova aplicação disponível na Web que tem a mesma finalidade que o Adobe Photoshop[...]
ps.: very nice =D
[]’s
Erko Bridee
i wish everyone who “commented” here actually tried the application before posting their nuggets of “wisdom”.
maybe we’re just now hearing from the Adobe PR flacks.
http://www.dumpr.net has some cool effects, when is there going to be an article about it ?
As far as the Scanner Darkly effect, at http://toonamation.com we have the tech to do it quickly and automatically.
I found another one that is pretty good today… it’s at:
http://www.fauxto.com
Anyone know of a better one? I’m too broke to buy photoshop!