Top 10 Photo Editing Sites

Cameras have come a long way, but photo editing was something which became commercialized only 10-15 years ago. When we had no means to edit a photo, we saw posters and ads made on a painter’s canvas, creative photographers edited or manipulated their photos by piecing two negatives of different shots together. At the dawn of Digital photo editing, we saw some amazing creativity on magazines, banners and posters. But still the layman had no idea what digital processing/editing was.

And then almost 10 years ago, when Photoshop was available commercially, people realized the power of a photo editing tool. As years passed by, countless photo editing tools became available. But at the same time, they were being sold at a higher price.

With digital cameras making the scene, almost every person developed a hobby in editing their own photos, and social networking sites gave them the opportunity to showcase their work.

But after shelling out for an expensive digital camera, the consumer is forced to shell out some more money to buy these digital editing softwares, putting the hobby on hold. But there are a few free websites which offer some amazing tools for photo editing. Here’s listing out a few.

Website: www.pikipimp.com

Pikipimp is targeted for the social networking users. It’s just the perfect site to edit someone’s picture into something hideous and funny.

What we found good: You can change any person’s look using the preloaded ’elements’, otherwise known as filters or effects. There are a handful of fun effects like beard, hair styles, eyes, ears and many more. And for the naughty people out there, there is a kinky effect - bikinis (I’m really curious to see how people make good use of this effect).

What we found bad: It is ONLY for editing photos for the social networking sites, so enthusiasts and professionals can find themselves a bit disappointed.

Website: www.fotoflexer.com

The User Interface (UI) of fotoflexer is easily one of the best UI’s seen in a photo editing site. A very clean and easy to use flash based UI, makes it the ultimate site for novice photo editors to learn the basics. Personally, we found fotoflexer the best photo editing site. There are so many good features on this site, we would have to write a special review for it.

What we found good: The simplistic buttons and menu will let the users do some fun work from the start, without spending most of their time trying to find out what a specific tool is meant to do. From adding text to glitter to photo effects, fotoflexer does most of the best of editing with the click of two buttons, for which other sites and tools may have a complex procedure.

What we found bad: The only thing that this site was missing was the marquee and the magic wand tool.

Website: www.lunapic.com

Lunapic may not appeal to users at the first look. The homepage gives a feeling that this site would not be good at all. But as they say, never judge a book by its cover. Lunapic is the perfect photo editing site for amateurs and professionals alike.

What we found good: Lunapic is all about the tools and effects provided on the site. By just looking at the arsenal of tools and effects on the site, any person’s imagination will start to work and will be busy for hours in editing various photos. Lunapic provides tutorials in the form of forums. This is a very good idea, because imagination has no limits and various users keep posting walkthroughs about something very creative.

What we found bad: Not all effects are good looking and cannot be aligned as per choice, for example - lens flare.
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Website: http://aviary.com/

Aviary is like the complete Adobe suite online. On opening the home page, you find six tools, Image Editor (Phoenix), Color/Swatch Editor (Toucan), Effect’s Editor (Peacock), Vector Editor (Raven), Image Markup (Falcon) and Audio Editor (Myna).
Having six web based tools under 1 site is highly commendable. But since we are just looking at photo editing sites, we shall only talk about Phoenix. All the tools under aviary are flash based and there is a video tutorial for every tool which gives you a general, but brief idea about the tool itself.

Phoenix
Phoenix is loosely based on the Photoshop User Interface, making it the perfect photo editing site for enthusiasts and professionals.

What we found good: Since it looked a lot like Photoshop, even the functionality was similar to an extent. Access to Layers and layer filters along with the magic wand marquee tool, makes it a very good site for photo editing. You can add layers from raven and you can even save your work in a .png extension. That means you can use the same project on Photoshop. And you can easily shift your work between any tool of the suite. Phoenix is defiantly up there for being one of the best photo editing sites. It also features a huge tutorial page.
What we found bad:
max resolution 2800x2800. Cannot directly upload to any social networking site.

Website: www.picnik.com/app

Painting sky, coloring flowers, sprinkling dew, blooming blossoms, fluffing clouds, is what the load screen reads while the flash application opens up. At first glance it looks like it’s just another tool to edit photos for social networking sites. But, picnik has some very good features making it a very good photo editing site.

What we found good:
Once again a site with excellent UI. Picnik makes it very easy for users to edit their photos. The results of the effects and touch-up features are outstanding, making it a very good tool to maintain and fix your own photos.

What we found bad: A few very good effects and features not available in the free version.

Website: www.photoshop.com

It’s not possible to know about photo editing and not of photoshop. Photoshop pioneered digital photo editing and made the tools accessible for everyone. Without doubt photoshop is the most preferred photo editing software. But due to its expensive rate, not everyone can afford it. But they also have a free photo editing site. The site requires registration (free), but hey, that’s ok.

What we found good: Being experienced in creating editing tools, Adobe has once again kept a very user friendly interface. The basic editing tool is good. You can create albums and tags and descriptions for your photos.

What we found bad: no layers, bad and minimal effects available.

Just to add a bit more about photoshop online. It was very strange and confusing to see the photo editing guru come up with such a strange web tool. photoshop.com had to be included for its brand and name, but it thoroughly disappointed us.

Website: www.pixenate.com

A very small site and very simple to use. Pixenate is an HTML-based editing tool. Best used for quick fix of a photo.

What we found good: The whitening tool is great. Filter tool is amazing to change the backdrop of your photo.

What we found bad: Very less features. Direct upload only to flikr.
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Website: www.splashup.com

Another website based on Photoshop. Splashup is completely reminiscent of the lord of photo editing tools.

What we found good: Layer effects, the marquee tool and an option to capture an image of the webcam are some very good features.

What we found bad: Splashup tries very hard to be as good as photoshop, and that is a bad point. The first impression is that this site will cater to needs of an avid photo editor but with very less filters and effects to work with, Splashup scores negative.

Website: www.picture2life.com

Another top site for photo editing, picture2life requires registration and once you’re done with the process, you can access the amazing site for basic photo editing.

What we found good: At the first view, what got us most interested was simple zoom feature. You can simply scroll on the photo you have uploaded to edit to resize it accordingly on the screen. Picture2life also provides a very easy to use, Resize feature. The UI is easy and the ‘One Clicks’ feature steals the show.

What we found bad: No doubt it’s a very strong web-based editing site, but it lacks the particular fun factor, being some unique effects and filters, that a few users may find on other sites.

Website: www.pixlr.com

Hardcore Photoshop users can feel at home at pixlr. The interface is just the same as the older versions of Photoshop, making the hardcore Photoshop users feel at home.
But as I said before, if anyone has integrated the power of Photoshop on their site, it’s always a plus point.

What we found good: There are a number of sites out there that have a very similar UI to Adobe Photoshop. But not every site has come as close to the original as pixlr. From stamp tool to color dodge, to layer effects, pixlr is a very strong photo editing site.

What we found bad: Using photoshop daily, there was nothing much to complain about from pixlr because it does a wonderful job in re-creating Photoshop. But amateurs and freshers may have some difficulty in adapting to the tools initially.

Note: All except Pixenate and Phoenix provide the feature to upload it directly to myspace, facebook, twitter, orkut and many more social networking sites.