Have a Picnik with your photos

So you want to do some nice photo editing and maybe even a few fancy effects. But you don't want the hassle of learning some graphics program. Go to Picnik and use the free tools there.

All the photo adjustments are easy to access and very easy to use. Yet the results are great!

To make this app even sweeter, you can work on a photo from your computer, from Flickr, from a Picasa Web Album, from the web, from a webcam, or even from a Yahoo! image search result.

I did find that if I played around for several minutes with all sorts of adjustments to a large photo (1600x1200, 1+MB) Internet Explorer 7 crashed. It may have to do with temporary files in use, a bug in the beta Picnic software, or possibly an MSIE issue. I will stress-test FireFox similarly soon. But even though IE 7 crashed, after accessing the site again, the original adjusted image I'd made appeared. Cool.

With this online Flash-based application, you can:

• Resize
• Crop
• Rotate
• Adjust "exposure", including using a histogram, if you prefer
• Adjust color saturation and hue
• Adjust red-eye
• Add Sepia effects
• Add Black and White effects
• Boost color saturation
• Soften the image
• Sharpen the image (though the controls seemed to sharpen too much even at a low setting)
• Add a frame ("border") and matte
• Create a vignette

Most of these effects use a slider bar to control degree of effect applied. Instant on-screen results show. I found the operation fast (I use a cable modem), effective, and the results good looking. I was able to apply more effects than I normally use in much less time than with my graphics program.

The Picnik people promise even more effects are coming. An enhanced (paid) version will give you even more options, but the basic version offers much more than I expected and yet is very easy to use. Even in Beta, I recommend you give Picnik a whirl. Grab a photo, edit, use some creative tools, then save and share. It's easy and fun.

Keep up with Picnik happenings via their Picnik blog.