Peter Sbarski27 March 2007, 7:06 AM
Adobe promises that Photoshop will be online in six months but there are free, excellent alternatives you can use right now. We've taken a look at a couple of them.
According to online rumors, Adobe is planning to release an online version of Photoshop within six months. It will be a light, cut-down version but it will be free (ad-supported) and supposedly, according to Adobe, of "higher quality" than other alternatives.
No one doubts Photoshop's brand and quality but Adobe is a little late coming to the game. If Google or Microsoft release their own online editing suites - you just never know - Adobe could be in for a big fight. Second, one must never discount smaller players. Right now there are about five or six capable online image editing tools from smaller companies.
We chose two of them, Pixenate and Picnik, to have a look at today.
Pixenate
Pixenate comes in two languages, English and Spanish, but it might as well come in Pig Latin because the interface is very intuitive. Pixenate allows the user to perform three major kind of actions: upload image, manipulate it with different tools and add effects, and save it.
Most standard image editing facilities are present including enhance, crop, resize, rotate, red eye, whiten and so on. There are also a number of cool effects such as
lomo which makes the photo more vivid,
round which makes the corners rounded,
interlace which makes the picture look like an old TV image and
snow which adds a few snowflakes. Then there are a couple of other image filters such as oil-paint and charcoal.
Pixenate is quite nice to use but we did experience a few problem. A couple of times JavaScript errors prevented us from working. Reloading the site seemed to fix the problem. The button which "saves the image permanently on the Internet for use on MySpace, Bebo, etc..." (all it really does is give you a tinyurl address: http://tinyurl.com/ytwe84) worked only the third time we tried it. The selection window also refused to play with some of the effects.
Pixenate relies on standard web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript. You don't need to download any extra plugins for it to work and that's a big advantage.
It is fast, nimble and convenient. Check it out.
 Pixenate |
Good: Simplicity in design
Bad: Occasional glitches
Want: More features, better stability, tighter web integration.
Picnik
Picnik was built using Flash so you must have Adobe Flash Player installed. The upcoming online version of Photoshop will be based on Flash also.
Picnik looks superb with translucent tabs, menus and buttons. Google Docs and Spreadsheets can learn a bit from it. They look awful in comparison.
Similarly to Pixenate you can import, edit and save images. Picnik accepts images from webcam, flickr, websites and your computer. It also has an integrated Yahoo image search. When it comes to photo editing the standard features are there: rotate, crop, resize, exposure, colors, sharpen and red-eye.
No photo editing software would be complete without special effects and Picnik doesn't disappoint. A bunch of special filters including sepia, black and white, boost, soften, vignette and matte are available. The user can also make two kinds of borders.
There are six more cool effects but they are only available temporarily. They will soon be a part of the premium offering for which you will have to pay.
Picnik worked beautifully and quickly most of the time. It only stuttered on one occasion when we tried to zoom-in on an image. Also, auto-fix didn't seems to do anything at all.
At the moment Picnik comes across as one of the better tools. With an excellent interface and a host of great features it may go a long way yet. Recommended.
 Picnik |
Good: Intuitive interface, great features.
Bad: Loosing features to a premium version.
Want: Picnik to stay free and keep everything it has.