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

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We’ve covered NY-based graphics suite Aviary several times since their initial launch. Today I learned about Sumopaint and it is very slick. It has most of the basic features of Photoshop or PaintShopPro. From what I can tell Sumopaint has basically all of the drawing tools along with actual layers. Some of the tools include: blending modes, layer effects, brush tool, ink tool, and a text tool.

Images can be saved locally or into a Sumopaint account. I did notice that the local save function didn’t work in IE. There are a variety of community features including voting and a comprehensive photo search for photos stored on Sumpaint.

Kevin Tofel was impressed with Sumopaint when he reviewed it on their initial launch this past summer. Brad Linder wondered if it was a dupe of another online photo tool, Splashup. I could see my sister using Sumopaint for her basic graphic creation needs.

I assume once they exit beta, some sort of premium services will make up their business model.

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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.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

Source:Mashable!

Yahoo has announced that it will be shutting down Yahoo Live, the company’s attempt to cash in on the live broadcasting trend popularized by startups like UStream and Justin.tv. According to the Yahoo Live blog, “… we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products.”

The service first debuted in February this year, with a few novel features like offering up simultaneous multiple streams (though competitors quickly followed). Nonetheless, live video isn’t cheap – especially when you’re on the scale of a company like Yahoo. After persistent rumors that it would enter the live video space, Google said that it would not be adding the feature to YouTube anytime soon because of the huge bandwidth costs that would ensue. And Google is in a much better financial position than Yahoo at the moment.

So, while the shutdown of Live could be viewed as a Yahoo problem – the company is in the midst of layoffs with its stock trading near multi-year lows – there has to be some concern over the implications it has for live streaming on the whole. While some of the startups in the space have shown decent traffic growth over the past year, if Yahoo wasn’t able to attract a big enough audience to make it work, you have to wonder if the other, considerably smaller companies pursuing the niche will find enough users to make a real business of it.

On the other hand, the shutdown could simply be a part of broader cost-cutting at Yahoo, and not necessarily a verdict on the state of live video. Allen Stern reports that the company might have also shuttered Yahoo Kickstart, a career site for students and recent graduates.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:The Daily Poll: What’s Your Level of Interest in Lifecasting?Yahoo Answers Dominates Q & A - No Wonder Google Gave UpRIAA Asks for Lower RoyaltiesYahoo to Close Podcast DirectoryRumor: Yahoo Soon To Offer DRM Free MP3sThe Daily Poll: Live Video – Who Will Win?The Daily Poll: Catching Up Socially

Source:Mashable!

Touchnote launched in the United Kingdom today with the goal of making the Internet just a little more personal. It allows you to send real mail to the people in your life in the form of custom cards that you create from your digital art.

For those of us who live and breathe an online life, we can sometimes forget to keep in touch with our offline friends and family. Social media makes everything about connecting so easy that actually writing a letter or choosing a card and mailing it gets tossed by the wayside.

Everyone enjoys getting snail mail, though, and Touchnote lets you use your digital content to make personal greetings for the people in your life. You can share what you make online with those who wouldn’t see it otherwise, which is a great way to include them in your digital world.

Touchnote gives users a simple interface to upload digital art from their computer, in the form of JPGs not larger than 5MB. You can then personalize the front and interior of the card using an easy, no-learning curve online editor.

Once you have made your card, you are given the option to mail it directly to a friend (currently £1.99) or mail it to yourself for a real signature. Once you have added the friends or family address and put the card you created into your shopping cart, you can create another card that is completely new, or select the option to create another one similar to the one you just made.

This is a very basic Web site, but it offers a service that will bring your on and offline worlds a bit closer together. It’s easy to use as well, meaning that even the less tech savvy can figure it out without trouble and start sending custom cards to friends and family right away. Yes, there have been a few others like it, but this one has a bit of an edge on simplicity alone, I think.

Company Name

ViewBug

20-Word Description

A fun environment where members can win daily and weekly cash prizes based on creativity and originality of their media.

CEO’s Pitch

We are a small team of young and creative individuals who are committed to offering a collaborative online environment that allows our members to win cash prizes. We promote creativity and award originality. Share your art in a fun and rewarding way.

We offer many opportunities to win money. We pride ourselves on keeping a close relationship with our members; we want them to: be creative, have fun, learn from others, share their creations with the world & be rewarded! Our mission is to give back to the community and our members, who are the ones that keep us going.

Mashable’s Take

Sharing your creative output with the world is pretty much natural. You put photos up on Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, PBase, or elsewhere. You upload videos to YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, etc. You might even publish your music to the Web for all to hear. ViewBug just so happens to mash all these areas of artistry into one venue. And it puts an interesting, competitive spin on it all.

If you simply want to post content to ViewBug for the sake of posting content, you may. You don’t have to seriously compete for prizes if you don’t feel so inclined. But if you do want to battle the user base for props and cash, ViewBug can make that happen. Just take the current crop of challenges as examples.

There are four currently in play. One has to do with “Color,” another is about “Light and Shadow,” a third labeled “Architecture,” and the fourth for “Halloween.” With two days left to play, the Color Challenge has a pot of $200 up for grabs, with $100, $150, and $150 going to each subsequent title, respectively. As you might expect, photography is by far the biggest draw. More than 500 images are vying for the money, whereas videos count at 13, and music a mere single. There are also “doodles” and “twitbugs” to consider.

Suffice it to say that ViewBug is a real treat for those keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. The more you contribute, the better your chances at some real returns. And when I say returns, that doesn’t just go for cash promised. The ViewBug environment and interface is quite slick, and while you can take it to be a place simply meant for challenges to be waged, the roundup of communities alone looks attractive. The potential financial rewards are more of a bonus, a cherry on top, rather than the bread and the butter for the service.

On the whole, ViewBug looks like a really fun time for all. It’s a haven for the creative class, and it just so happens to trumpet tangible benefits to keep things buzzing and interesting. Which is something to appreciate. It won’t interest all visitors, of course. But it’s garnered enough movement to make it something to keep coming back to - again and again and again.

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.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Update: I was able to catchup with Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV and asked him about the move today. He said, "I love REV3 and the people there and sometimes you need to adjust to the market and see what works and doesn’t and I love those guys and wish all of them super well and hope they Kill it and do nothing but awesome things! As for Wine Library Tv I will continue to Crush it on winelibrarytv.com everyday!"

Update 2: On the TWIT podcast last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis said regarding the staff size at Revision3, "30 (staff) is kind of high for that kind of company."

Revision3 has announced some major show changes today. Epic-Fu will no longer be carried by Revision3 at the end of December and the Wine Library TV show will be removed as of today. Several other shows have also been cut. CEO Jim Louderback also noted that they are working on a variety of new shows that may hit the lineup soon. Wine Library TV joined the lineup back in June with a slimmed down version of their daily show. Louderback notes the huge popularity of Diggnation as one of their "winners".

Mashable is also reporting that some staff members at Revision3 were fired today including their head of business development Damon Berger. It’s important to note that we will never know the real reason for these people being let go.

In other online video news, Robert Scoble has announced that he is "restructuring" his WorkFastTV show which is broadcast live from the Revision3 offices. No further details have been provided about this restructuring. I think the show has made some good overall progress since I provided my initial commentary and suggestions for improvement this summer. I’d like to see them make the site a bit more friendly. Remember that with video you could be sitting on the site for quite a while, make the appearance relaxing and engaging.

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Last night we asked if Adobe has lost its mind with regards to their pricing model for Creative Studio 4. Today NYC-based Aviary has announced that they have released their set of apps to the public and removed the private beta sticker.

Mashable notes, "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."

Aviary has also released their pricing model which ranges from a limited version for free through a full version for $150/yr. If you use this special link, you can grab a $55 discount on a yearly membership.

We’ve written about Aviary before including Aviary co-founder Michael Galpert’s guest post on "What do you pay for?" where he looks at free vs. paid services.

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.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yahoo Rearranges Homepage, Moves Logo To CenterYellowPages Redesigned to Better Accommodate Local SearchFlickr to Get More Social With Homepage RedesignFacebook Sets Second Redesign Launch Attempt for TonightFlickr Now Streaming the Library of Congress’ PicsWebjam Launches - MySpace Plus Netvibes on SteroidsReddit Goes Open Source, Takes Aim at Digg’s Shady “Algorithm”

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.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Who’s Investing In Facebook: Google Or Microsoft?Is Yahoo Still in the Race for Facebook?Bubblicious: Facebook Valued at 100x SalesFlickr Facebook App is Now AvailableViacom: We Won’t Buy Facebook, But Maybe YouTubeWill Microsoft Buy Facebook?Flickr Uploadr 3.0 Now Live

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.

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