Technology is getting more and more complex, but at the same time, amazing technological benefits are available to us average Joes without too much fiddling around. That is what this column will be covering. Every Monday, right here at BloggingStocks.com, I'll feature an easy-to-use hack, gadget or service that really can make your life better. Geeks, technophiles and early adopters have plenty of other places to look for hot new technologies to try. Here you'll find technology for the rest of us.Not all that long ago I used to help run a small computer lab at a university. One of the decisions we had to make was which image editing software to use. With hundreds of computers around campus the other factor to worry about was cost.
Our biggest frustration was that we just wanted a very simple application that would cover a handful of basics. Cropping images, resizing them, saving them as JPG formatted images, and maybe some red-eye reduction was 90% to 95% of what everyone did with a picture. But because image editing programs always came with tons of features, we always felt like we paid for all sorts of things we never used.
Fast forward to today, where web applications are finally getting easy enough to use that they can do some nifty things just like slimmed down desktop programs. And online image editors are coming of age for the rest of us. 95% of what I do is crop, resize, and save as JPG, and there are number of neat on-line applications that will do it for you. You don't have to shell out $30 to $100 for a simple image editor.
Here are four well-featured on-line image editors that could work for you.
Pixenate
The first of this series of programs is called Pixenate. It features a slightly non-standard interface than what you would expect if you're used to desktop image editors. There are a number of large buttons on the left that control what you do (selecting, zooming, rotating, cropping, resizing, red-eye reduction, etc) and underneath those, the ability to save a picture to your disk, upload it to Flickr (which is an on-line photo album with sharing abilities).To upload your photo there is a link in the upper left-hand corner, almost easy to miss, that says 'choose your image to edit.' Clicking that drops down the ability to click 'browse' and upload a photo, or you can create a 'bookmarklet' by dragging a small boxed link to your bookmarks area of your web browser.
This is where most web image editors shine. Once you have a bookmarklet in your browser's toolbar, clicking it when you come across an image you need to edit in your browser will import that image (as well as others on the web page) to the web image editing service. Just click the one you want to edit and get to work.
One unique thing about Pixenate is that it features undo and redo capabilities, which not all of the web image editors let you do, and which is why I thought it worthy of beginning with.
Picnik
Picnik (which makes me twitch because I keep writing Picnic every time I try to pass the URL on to someone) is a new image editor that uses the top of the screen for its controls. It does use tabs to separate out its various kinds of functions, but that isn't a new user interface element by any means. This maps more to user expectations for how an image editor should work. Large buttons and simple commands make it easy to use, just remember that the large OK button on the right has to be pressed to commit the change you just made.In the 'Save & Share' tab you can download your pictures, or put them on Flickr. Under the 'Photos' tab you can upload your own photo. Picnik currently doesn't have a bookmarklet, but I imagine that's only a matter of time.
Pixer.us
Pixer and Picnik strike me as very similar. Pixer uses web toolbar buttons at the top of the screen, as well as a simple browse button to let you upload pictures. Pixer doesn't resort to tabs, so the workflow involves less clicking around, and Pixer also features the magical undo button!
Snipshot (formerly Pixoh)
The gold standard of web image editing is fast seeing Snipshot become the leader. Snipshot's home page offers you the ability to open a picture off your hard drive, or via a web address. Like the others Snipshot also offers a bookmarklet you can drag to your bookmarks folder to use to import images from a website you're on. But you can also get a Firefox extension that will let you click on any picture you want and bring it right into Snipshot, which saves you a step when compared to the bookmarklet.Snipshot also offers undo and redo, and what's even cooler is that Snipshot features keyboard shortcuts (for those of us used to hitting Ctrl+Z to undo a mistake we just did). Snipshot seems to also handle much larger image files more gracefully, as well as a wider variety of images.
All of these are useful additions to your toolbar and worth checking into. You can use them on just about any computer with a modern web browser, and you can access basic image editing tools without having to install a program.
Due to the convenience of the Firefox extension, I end up using Snipshot. Anything that saves me clicks is worth it.
Tobias Buckell is an author, freelance writer and professional blogger.
Previous Technology for the Rest of Us columns:
Closing Bell: Stock bulls and dollar death (DDRX,GMCR, PEET, SBUX, EBAY, CI, TECD)
So long peak oil, here comes peak uranium
Black Friday expected to be strong, no promises for Christmas
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-19-2007 @ 6:47PM
Icheb said...
Or just use GIMP. :p