Screw Photoshop! Hello, Picnik!

Flickr managed to seduce me from keeping my photos on my website, but Picnik takes me all the way. See, normally I upload my raw pictures to the PC, fire up Photoshop to do my crops, color balances, and edits, and then painstakingly save each photo, finally uploading the finished product to Flickr for the world to see. However, Photoshop is a HUGE program, and, as the last version I purchased is several years old, I am always loathe to get in there with the monstrous kludginess.

This year, after taking some photos in San Antonio and capturing the Blue Angels from Angel Island, I decided another approach was in order. I uploaded the raw images to Flickr, then fired up Picnik.com, a site that claims to be a free online Web 2.0 photo editor. In literally seconds, I was pulling in my Flickr images, and editing, faster and better than Photoshop ever let me do. Cropping? Definitely. Color and contract balancing? Count on it. Best of all, an "auto-fix" feature that corrects my horrific raw photos to sensational pieces.

For instance, here's a raw photo:

Now, check it out after Picnik does it's work:

Gotta say, I'm very impressed. Oh, yes, did I mention...FREE? :-)

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