PICTURE THIS
There are several web sites that let you edit photos online for free; you don’t have to install anything. Our three favorites are Pixlr, Picnik and Photobucket, all ending in dot com.
— Pixlr is sort of amazing. You can use the basic version when you just want to crop a photo, remove red eye, improve the contrast, apply teeth whitening and so on. The advanced tools will turn your photo into a painting, make it look old-timey (“vintage,” they call it) and apply other special effects. This was the fastest online editor we tried.
— Picnik has some nice effects. Put a frame around your picture, soften the edges, give it a sepia tone, and more. We found the effects when we clicked the “create” tab. Click the “text” tab to add a speech bubble or caption.
— Photobucket has a number of special editing tools. There are separate tabs for basic editing, animations, layers, and posters, as well as things like “beautify,” “decorate,” “distort,” “geek” and “layers.”
— For editing photos off-line, we like to use Windows Live Photo Gallery, Google Picasa or some of the free programs at serif.com. Click “free downloads” at Serif for scrapbooking, panorama-making, print design and more.
Filed under: free stuff, graphics, photos