5 Online Image Editors to Spark Your Imagination

Picnik - is an editor full of features, including more than a few professional effects you can apply to your images, such as vignettes, cinematic scope, focal soften (and even doodles). The most notable tools include a very capable red-eye fix, and precision sharpening controls with Unsharp Mask. You can also open photos from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and more. The service also just launched their premium version, so they’re showcasing it free all week long. Try it out! :)

Fauxto - offers the ability to create, share and distribute your work anywhere. It has an appealing interface, and a range of editing tools. All the basics of course, like rotate, paint, brush, type - but several layer blends and the ability to arrange layers as well. One unfortunate drawback is the undo feature only supports 5 steps back. Also it forces a pop-up window (meh).

Flauntr - is probably my favorite of all the ones I tried out. With one click you can apply hundreds of special effects to your photos. Even better, you can pull your Flickr photos in and save, share, print, etc. It’s got a really slick interface too. :)

Pikifix - easily add creative effects, text or borders that pop to your photos. There are a surprising number of cool typefaces to choose from, and enhancements you can apply. You can also resize, crop and add your finished product to your site. The drawback - rendering time for each adjustment you make is slow - even at only 50% quality. That makes it hard to see whether the changes you make are what you really want.

Rsizr - a Flash-based app for resizing images right in your browser. Currently it supports JPG, PNG, and GIF). The highlight of this particular editor, is that aside from basic rescaling and cropping, you can resize images using the powerful new “content-aware” algorithm (called Seam Carving) which attempts to keep areas of richer detail within the photo intact.

Tags: creativity | tools | web-apps