TechAddress

20 Great Online Image Editors

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:32:16 +0000

The online image editing space has grown rapidly in the past year, providing great free and subscription-based options for users of all levels. These well-rounded services let you import images from your social networks, touch up photos, promote your work, and more. Here are 20 online image editors that are worth a try.

What are you looking for from an image editor when you go online?

Alilg.com

Alilg.com - A simple and free editor that looks a lot like Photoshop, but without as many tools and effects.

Aviary Phoenix

Aviary Phoenix - Allows you to import from photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Facebook, work with layers and other tools. Offers free editing with the addition of a small watermark, as well as subscription plans for more advanced work. You can read more about Aviary here on Mashable.

DrPic.com

DrPic.com - Upload your image to this free image editor and take advantage of their numerous tools and then save it either to your disk or to the Web in your choice of formats.

FlantR.com

FlantR.com - FlauntR is big on backgrounds, fake magazine covers and basic editing tools. Gives you the chance to purchase prints of any of your creations.

FotoFlexer.com

FotoFlexer.com - A completely free editor with numerous tools such as distortions, layers, effects, smart scissors and a whole lot more.

Lunapic.com

Lunapic.com - Is a bit rudimentary and not quite as smooth as some of the other options out there, but it is free and simple to use.

MyImager.com

MyImager.com - This editor has a rather odd interface in that everything is done using a dropdown menu which causes the page to reload when you make a change. The service only accepts GIFs and JPGs, and is free, but advertisement heavy. You can remove the ads for $1 a month.

Online-Image-Editor.com

Online-Image-Editor.com - Good for minor editing, and obviously directed at the social networking crowd since it has a tool named “Glitter Wizard.”

OnlineImageEditor.info

OnlineImageEditor.info - A subscription-only image editing solution that offers some advanced tools and the ability, upon subscription, to install image editing on your own site if you choose.

Phixr.com

Phixr.com - Offers up basic photo editing tools that are easy to use. You can save to popular formats and upload your finished images to all of the popular photo services.

Photoshop.com

Photoshop.com - Adobe finally brought their famous photo editor to the online world. It doesn’t have all the features of its offline sibling, but it does offer a wealth of handy and easy to use tools as well as 2 GB of free online storage. So far it only accepts JPG files for upload.

Picture2Life.com

Picture2Life.com - Picture2Life offers numerous tools and shows you an automatic preview for each one as soon as you open them up.

PikiPimp.com

PikiPimp.com - PikiPimp offers very simple editing tools, but is heavy on adding “bling,” text, glitter and animations. Will also let you put your creations on items in your PikiStore.

Pixenate.com

Pixenate.com - Pixenate offers a lot of tools for touching up personal photos, including one specifically for tooth whitening, which is a new one we haven’t seen before.

Pixer.us

Pixer.us - A free editor with preview and a handful of effects such as colorfix, blur & sharpen, sepia tone and more. Very straightforward and easy to use.

Pixlr.com

Pixlr.com - Free image editor that might remind you of the offline version of Photoshop. Available in numerous languages and has an API that is free to use.

Picnik.com

Picnik.com - Import images from sites such as Photobucket, Picasa, Webshots and more. Also offers numerous tools, fonts and shapes for free. More tools are available with a premium subscription of $24.95 a year.

Snipshot.com

Snipshot.com - Allows you some basic editing tools and the ability to save to the Web or your computer. You can open any image from the Web you have a URL for and more effects and tools are available for a premium subscription fee.

Splashup.com

Splashup.com - Splashup offers a full featured online editor, but you can also download Splashup Light for mobile computing and simple editing on the go.

Webresizer.com

Webresizer.com - Offers you extremely simple tools to resize an image, crop it, optimize it and make the image more usable online.

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, PicWorks

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Touchnote Wants to Bring Back the Postcard

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:32:55 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Company

Widgadget

20-Word Description

Widgadget is the community portal for widget creation and distribution. It wishes to popularize widgets for users, bloggers and brands.

CEO’s Pitch

Widgadget is designed to help users, bloggers, brands and agencies spread their content exponentially, to get more websites/blogs traffic and to improve brand loyalty. It enables all users to see the best widgets and to create their own in three steps:

The registered user enters their feeds, then, he or she designs the widgets with sizes, colors, images, logo, titles, etc., and finally, adds information that enables the widget to get well-indexed in the gallery (titles, description, tags, etc.). Once created, the widget can be spread throughout social networks, blogs or desktops. The statistics allow every user to track word of mouth effect.

Mashable’s Take

Widgadget lets you create and distribute customizable widgets for whatever you want to promote, such as your website, blog, company, product, service, etc. Widgets can be created in Flash or Java, depending on where you want to use them. You can also embed your widgets on many different platforms, such as social networking profiles, blogging platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.), websites and start pages such as Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes, etc.

There are several competitors in this viral marketing widget space such as Gydget, Gigya, and Clearspring, which have all carved their own niches. For example, Gydget focuses mostly on the music industry, so most of their widgets promote musicians. All of these platforms provide easy to design widget tools and also a distribution channel with ways to monetize and analyze your viral marketing campaigns.

Widgadget offers all of the same core features without any major new features or niches, so it’s difficult to separate them from the pack. One of the things they do well is their customization for each member depending on what type content is being created and distributed. For example, their service is different for members creating widgets for personal use, business, blogs, or advertising for clients. Also, while creating widgets, the service’s performance seemed to be slightly better than the experiences I’ve had on some services such as Gydget for example.

Being able to track each widget and analyze the traffic and popularity of each creation could prove useful for future campaigns. In addition, being able to view all of the different widgets that you’ve created on one screen is very helpful as well. However, I was not thrilled with the inability to add any audio or video content to widgets, which is a feature many of their competitors have. This is significant because some studies have proven that some of the most successful viral marketing campaigns usually (NOT always) include some form of audio or video content. Being able to embed audio content like a song snippet, narration clip or video from YouTube has become a standard option these days.

Here’s a sample widget created on Widgadget in minutes for Mashable.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Online Image Editor Aviary Launches (Discount for Mashable Readers)

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:32:34 +0000

Source:Mashable!

News is leaking out of Revision3 that a number of employees have been laid off. According to an email from one of those being dismissed, the layoffs are “due to budgetary cutbacks that have been a direct result of the economic meltdown.”

The company, which is founded by Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose of Digg, raised $8 million back in June and has lured some high profile talent to its video network over the past year, including Veronica Belmont and Gary Vaynerchuk. Nonetheless, the production costs for the company’s professionally produced shows can’t be cheap, so it’s not too surprising to see them joining the increasingly long list of Web startups making cutbacks.

We’ve contacted the company for additional details and will update our post if we hear anything more specific about today’s cuts.

Update (11:14am PT): Expect a blog post concerning the layoffs to be posted by Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback shortly.

Update (11:30am PT): Revision3 has posted some details to their blog. In addition to the staffing cuts, a number of shows are either being cut or leaving Revision3, including Wine Library.

Source:Mashable!

Aviary has left private beta and launched their online image editing service with a new domain name (http://Aviary.com) as well as several new features. Most notably, their Phoenix online image editor now includes an option to install a Firefox extension that will allow you to perform screen captures and more.

Other new features include Peacock, a special effects creator, and Toucan, a color manager that lets you create and find swatches that you can store online and use in the editor. One of the biggest new additions to the newly launched Aviary service is a vector editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, which will only be available to subscribers.

There are several premium subscription online image editing services that compete with Aviary such as Picnik, SnipShot, and OIE, to name just a few. There are also many free services such as FotoFlexer, Pixlr and Splashup. While comparing Aviary to some of the other editors, it became clear that they offer the most aesthetically pleasing user interface and the most Adobe-like experience (similar to PhotoShop and Illustrator).

The performance of the platform was fine, but that will vary depending on the size of the image file and the quality of the user’s Internet connection. This leads to my biggest concern: Will subscribers be able to work in offline mode if they cannot connect to the Web for whatever reason? This can be a major roadblock for greater acceptance by design professionals because they need to be able to work on images at any time and any place. Providing an offline mode option via a desktop app that syncs with the online service would be a win-win for everyone involved.

Discount: The first 100 Mashable readers to register will receive a special discount of $55 off Aviary’s yearly $149 subscription price. To get your discount go here and click on the black “Welcome Mashable readers!” bar at the very top of the page.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Flickr Releases New Homepage to the Public

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:35:54 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Flickr has been beta testing their new and improved homepage for a few weeks now, and has today finally released it into the wild for public use. I must admit I was a bit concerned the Timothy Leary style Explore page panda was going to be part of it, but we can all rest easy - it is not.

Flickr talks a bit about the newer, more streamlined and easy to navigate homepage on their blog. They have even included some handy video screencasts for you to learn the differences and the reason behind the redesign. Though the benefits were immediately apparent when I logged in.

Moving the ads and related sponsored services block down to the lower right is perhaps my favorite change of all. I got tired of seeing ads for Moo Cards and custom credit cards every time I went to log into my stream. The whole page looks much better without that front and center.

I also like my photo stream being moved to the top, as well as those of my contacts and friends. The pictures are, after all, why we are using Flickr, right? It’s about time they got featured. I see the multiple language greeting is still in place, which should make old Flickr loyalists happy and continue to confuse Flickr newbies for a while, same as always.

Having my contacts toward the top was a great move, and so was adding the continually refreshed Explore area. Each time the page refreshes, you get a new set of explore photos. This is nice, since Explore is often a feature I forget to use on Flickr.

It seems Flickr took a page from Twitter and FriendFeed’s recent design upgrades and chose to make changes that would drive us to the social features of the site and increase time spent on Flickr overall, but not turn off the regular Flickr crowd. That is a smart way to handle it, and should make the transition easier for those users who have trouble with change.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Facebook Trumps Most Photo Sharing Sites With 10 Billion Photos

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:35:03 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Sometimes I forget how big the Internet is, and then something reminds me just how flabbergastingly, enormously huge the damn thing is. This time it’s Facebook, whose software engineer Doug Beaver announced that it now hosts a total of 10 billion photos. And it’s not even exclusively a photo sharing site!

Furthermore, since Facebook stores four sizes for each stored photo, this actually translates to 40 billion files. However, what I find fascinating about this is that Facebook is no Photobucket; it’s not just some repository (at least from what I’ve seen) where people dump all kinds of images just because they can. Vast majority of photos I see on Facebook are actually real life photographs taken by users; I’m not sure if this means much in the grand scheme of life, universe and everything, but it seems like quite an accomplishment.

It’s also a worrying sign for photo sharing social networks such as Flickr. Yes, Flickr has many additional features, and the images can be bigger, but ultimately people use Facebook for the same thing - sharing photos with their friends. Add to that the fact that photo management on Facebook is very elegantly done, with some simple editing options such as rotating and tagging added into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a nice, large photo sharing site for not-too-demanding users - and all your friends are already using it. It’ll be interesting to see what photo sharing social networks will do to differentiate from Facebook.

If you’re the number crunching type, here are some other facts and figures from Facebook’s photo vault:

* 2-3 Terabytes of photos are being uploaded to Facebook every day

* They have just over one petabyte of photo storage

* They serve over 15 billion photo images per day

* Photo traffic peaks at over 300,000 images served per second

Perhaps that’s why Facebook Chat and Live Feed keep dying on me.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Photobucket Adds New Themes and Album Management Tools

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:30:15 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Photobucket has announced some new features for their online photo sharing service including the ability to add themes to albums and better album management tools.

You can now select themes from a large library of selections in categories like Sports, Nature, Holidays, and more. If you can’t find a theme that you like or just want a unique one, you can create your own customized theme. Just select an existing one and make it your own. The themes can be applied to your photo or video collections.

Photobucket has also improved photo album management with new tools. For example, you can organize your photos and videos with a drag and drop feature, and add titles, descriptions and tags to any item in bulk, which will save a great deal of time. You can also now sort the order of media in albums any way you want, and the search feature has been improved, allowing you to search albums based on title, descriptions and tag content.

These new features allow Photobucket users to express themselves in a more visual way. Being able to add customizable themes to albums and the enhanced album management features raise the game for the service. While these aren’t groundbreaking additions, they do improve the online experience and provide more fun for users.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Photo Site Mpix 2.0 Launches With Sharper Focus

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:31:10 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Mpix is a photo sharing and order fulfillment site mostly geared towards advanced amateur photographers. They launched in 2003 and recently unveiled Mpix 2.0, which includes new products, services and an improved ordering experience.

When it comes to servicing the growing demand for high quality prints, there are many similar photo services out there, such as Shutterfly and Photo.com. However, Mpix tries to differentiate itself from the crowded pack by providing premium level services and products to all members, instead of the usual basic and professional level packages that their competitors offer.

At the heart of their service is their professional lab, Miller’s Professional Imaging, which handles all of the requests for high quality prints and more. Miller’s has been in business since 1964 and has become one of the most well-known professional photography labs in the country.

The ordering process has been tweaked to improve the amount of time it takes to place orders and view images online. The viewer is pretty good and the performance of the site is brisk.

Some of the new products include things like larger variety of photo album sizes and styles, life-sized wall clings for sports enthusiasts, and more types of photo frames. New services include much demanded items like drop-shipping, new border options for photos, and even a brace-removal option to improve your kid’s smile.

Overall, Mpix has improved their online service in a space that’s becoming increasingly popular due to the explosion of digital photography. As the costs of professional class cameras continues to drop and more people become interested in doing something with all their high quality photographs, services like MPix will continue to be in high demand. They will certainly have their hands full satisfying the requests for processing prints and new products.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Ponoko’s Photomake Turns Hand Drawings into Reality (100 Invites)

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:30:05 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Ponoko’s Photomake offers a unique service. They can take any hand-drawn image you upload and turn it into an actual physical model and ship it to you. They accomplish this with their state of the art laser cut printers that take scanned images and create molds that produce the final physical object.

You can use any photo application to create a design, such as Photoshop, Gimp or even Microsoft Paint and just upload the image via their website. If you don’t want to use an application you can simply draw the design by hand on a plain piece of paper and scan it as a JPG, GIF or PNG and upload the image the same way through their website and they’ll create the physical manifestation and deliver it to your doorstep.

There’s an online Showroom that displays the types of things you can create with Photomake. You can also just purchase some of the items created by others through the same process. For example, who wouldn’t want to own this John McCain necklace?

If you create an account on Photomake’s site then you can track the entire process of your creations via email or even RSS feeds. If you’re interested in giving this unique service a try for free then just be one of the first one hundred Mashable readers and make it happen. The invite code is: mashable.

There’s no question that this is going to be a popular and successful service. The cost of creating a model via this process has drastically decreased through the years to the point where just about anyone can afford to use it. Photomake can help anyone with some creativity and just a tiny bit of artistic ability. Even if you can’t draw at all, you can still submit an image and Photomake will do the rest.

Here’s a video of what Photomake can do:

connect with this author:

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.