Worth Your Time: Free Photo Editing Website Leads to Better Photos

After taking a photo, what else is there to do besides framing it and displaying it on the wall?

Something I found better you could do with the photo is to give it kick with your creative side by editing the photo at Picnik.com, a free website that allows you to upload and edit your photos without the hassle of downloading programs to do so.



After you sign up using your email address, it’s super simple. You begin by selecting the photo you want to edit by uploading it from your files on your computer. Once the photo is uploaded to the site you can start to edit it right away.

There are one click fixes you can apply to the photo before adding the creative additions. Some of these one click fix buttons include: cropping, resizing, rotation, exposure and color correction.

Conveniently Picnik's website allows you to see the changes to the photo as you make them, which makes it easier to change your mind and red-do the changes. In fact, Picnik has an undo history button which allows you to undo any edit at any time even when it was first uploaded to the site.

The basic Picnik service is free and includes a surplus of creative editing tools. However, Picnik also offers a premium service for $24.95 a year giving you more effects to choose from to add to your photo.

The basic website offers more than 30 special effects, including numerous color effects from black tones to sepia tones, along with add on features like frames, borders, vignette edges and even text.

Here's a photo of my niece that I edited a year ago to make it more festive than just a plain birthday photo.

Before


After


When you're done editing a photo, you can save the it to your computer or upload it to any of the compatible sharing sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I found that the Picnik website is well organized with tabs that clearly state where to go depending on what you want to do; like uploading photos, library of photos you have already edited, an edit section, a creative add on section, and a save and share section.



Overall, Picnik has a lot to offer as a free online photo editing tool application and allows you to create photos you would normally pay a bundle for.