Fun and Simple Photo Editing

I’m a fan of a relatively new website called Picnik.com. It may make you forget expensive photo editing programs even exist. Here’s what to love.

• It’s online, Web-based software. All you do is access your pictures on your computer or use the ones you’ve uploaded to sites such as Flickr.com, Facebook.com, photobucket.com and webshots.com, and those in your Picasa Web albums. Pick a picture to edit and get started
• It’s free. There’s a $24.99 upgrade for additional features, but most of the regular editing tools are free. If you want more fonts or creative tools, I recommend signing up for the full version.
• Picnik’s tools work with Macs, Windows and Linux operating systems.
• It’s fun. I played with a couple of pictures to see what could be done. I added shapes, captions and used the editing tools to improve the look of an old photo.
• This Web-based program has a lot of power. You can sharpen blurry pictures, straighten crooked ones, correct redeye, fix exposure settings and a lot more. You can even resize pictures and select a format for saving (JPG, PNG, TIF, etc.).
• Finally, once you’re done, you can share the images by e-mailing them to family and friends or posting them to a list of Web sites, such as Flickr.

You’ve got to try this to believe it. While it won’t replace the sophisticated programs like Adobe Photoshop, it goes a long way to do more than the basics.

I’d like you to sound off about your favorite photo editing program. For years I used Microsoft’s Digital Image Pro, but now that’s been discontinued. What do you use to “fix” your pictures? Click Comments and let me know.

Next week I’ll be back with more information on our Italian soldier.