Earlier today, in writing about Google buying the photo-editing service Picnik, we noted that the most interesting thing about the buy may be that Picnik is currently Flickr’s default photo editor. Upon hearing the news, we reached out to both Google and Yahoo (which owns Flickr) to see what it means for the future of the partnership. The responses were interesting.
Google, for its part, says that it will allow third-party sites (including Flickr) to continue to integrate with it. Here’s the statement they sent us: → Read More
Google has acquired online photo editing site Picnik, according to a blog post made by the photo editing startup today. Google also announced the acquisition on its blog. The entirety of Picnik’s blog post is embedded below.Terms of the deal were not disclosed in either posts.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the post. Picnik is one of the fastest growing photo sites on the web. Picnik is a powerful, cloud-based photo editor that is integrated directly into Flickr, SmugMug and other photo repositories. Interestingly, Picnik is Flickr’s default photo editor. I’m assuming that will discontinue with the acquisition. It would make sense that Google would fold Picnik’s technology into its photo sharing product and Flickr competitor Picasa, which has some basic editing offerings but doesn’t compare to Picnik’s vast editing technologies. → Read More
Taking place tonight in Seattle is The Naked Truth 2009, a Redfin-hosted conference to give entrepreneurs advice. Michael is there participating as an expert to discuss industry trends. This year’s topic is revenue models for consumer Internet startups. The four presenting startups, Redfin, UrbanSpoon, Picnik and Animoto have some interesting information to share via their slides, which we’re posting below, pointing out a few of the highlights.
For those who want to follow along live, you can find the video of the event here. → Read More
Yahoo is introducing a slew of new applications that aim to complement its free webmail service today. Since December last year, Yahoo features a number of third-party applications inside Yahoo Mail, such as Xoopit, Flickr and Flixster, all in a good effort to reduce the amount of websites you need to visit as well as time you need to spend to perform certain task related to communicating with your friends, relatives or co-workers.
Starting today, that list includes other tools like online payment platform PayPal, basic photo editor Picnik, Xoopit service MyPhotos and file sharing application Zumo Drive. → Read More
When I was looking at traffic numbers for the top photo sites this weekend, another stat caught my eye. Online photo editing site Picnik is also quickly climbing the ranks of photo sites from seemingly nowhere.
In January, according to comScore, the site attracted 6.6 million unique visitors worldwide, a tenfold increase from the year before. On comScore’s list of the largest photo sites, Picnik ranks No. 14, above Shutterfly and AOL Pictures, and just below Snapfish. Unlike those services, however, Picnik is not really a place people store their photos. Rather, it is a place where they touch them up and manipulate them before they post them on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, or somewhere else.
Picnik is a powerful, cloud-based photo editor that is integrated directly into Flickr, SmugMug and other photo repositories. Competing online photo editors such as Fotoflexer and Photoshop.com (formerly and Photoshop Express) attract only a fraction as many users (1.4 million uniques for Fotoflexer and 760,000 for Photoshop.com. → Read More
As I alluded to in an earlier post, online photo-editing applications keep getting better as the competition heats up between startups like Picnik and FotoFlexer. Today, a very large competitor, Adobe, is entering the market by releasing a Web-based version of Photoshop for editing pictures called Photoshop Express. It is in public beta and anyone can sign up. Photoshop Express is by no means just Photoshop ported onto the web. It would even be a stretch to say it’s a stripped down version of the desktop software, since it’s intended for mainstream consumers, not professionals. This distinction shows in both what it lacks and what it offers. There are only 17 editing features in Photoshop Express: a tiny fraction of those available with the $650 desktop software. And all of these 17 features are filters intended for tuning and effects – you won’t find any tools for drawing lines, adding text, or creating shapes. What you can do is easily take out red eye, touch up undesirable areas, change saturation, pop color, and crop (among other things). One of the most innovative features in Photoshop Express is the ability to revert any filter you apply to a photograph. You can do this to a particular filter regardless of whether you’ve made other changes to the photo since applying it. All you have to do is uncheck the particular filter and it will be subtracted from your changes, which are represented in a historical filmstrip with all versions of the photo you have gone through. This undo functionality for particular changes partly makes up for the unfortunate absence of layers, which are so vitally important in the desktop version of Photoshop. Photoshop Express also differs from its desktop cousin by serving as an online storage and photo sharing service. You can upload up to 2GB of photos to the web app (or pull them in directly from Facebook, Photobucket, or Picassa). They are arranged in a collection that can be made available to others or kept private. Embedding and slideshow functionality is also available. Adobe has other motivations behind this launch: Doug Mack, the vice president in charge of Photoshop Express, says: It is a showcase of what is the best that can be done with Flex and Flash. Hopefully, it will inspire other developers. We are also setting up a hosted services platform that we can expand to other products. → Read More
As consumer applications continue to migrate from the desktop to the Webtop, one of the most advanced areas where this trend is taking hold is in photo-editing software. Desktop editing apps like iPhoto, Picassa and even Photoshop are giving way to Web-based apps like FotoFlexer and Picnik (and many more). And the Webtop photo editors just keep getting better. Today, FotoFlexer released a completely revamped user interface, making it simpler and more intuitive. FotoFlexer also added a bunch of effects, such as the ability to type directly onto a photo, add animations, and choose from more frames. Once you finish tweaking your photos, they can be posted all over the Web (Photobucket, Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, etc.) I made the image above in about 30 seconds. (You can play with it here). The tabbed UI is really easy to use, and there seems to be a lot of effects and layers that you can add. I am not so crazy about the animations, but I think those are supposed to appeal more to young girls. All in all, though, the functionality that is available for a Webtop app is pretty impressive and the new features and functionality should make it much more competitive with Picnik. Which one you use now is really just a matter of personal preference. (FotoFlexer is more tightly integrated with Photobucket, Picnik is baked into Flickr). I like Picnik. Mike prefers FotoFlexer. But as the traffic graph below shows, more people agree with me. The fact is that FotoFlexer is getting trounced by Picnik. According to comScore, FotoFlexer only had 396,000 unique visitors worldwide in February, compared to 966,000 for Picnik. This new UI could help it turn things around. And just in time too, because a big new entrant to the Webtop photo-editing game is debuting tomorrow (more on that later). CrunchBase Information FotoFlexer Picnik Pixenate Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Online image editing startup Picnik has announced that users will now have full access to all of Picniks editing features for free. Tools now available to all users include advanced edit tools, special effects, additional fonts and shapes. The service will be ad supported, but those wanting an ad free experience can sign up for Picnik Premium for $24.95 a year. Why the change? This is how Picnik spins it: We want to make everyone feel like a photo editing superstar. Picnik is already the world’s leading online photo editor, but there are still a lot of people living tragic, gloomy lives believing that powerful photo editing tools cost hundreds of dollars, come in unopenable boxes, and are impossible to use. By offering an ad-supported version of Picnik, we can make much richer, deeper, and ultimately better photo-editing functionality available to more people around the globe: Photo editing awesomeness for everyone. The more likely reason: they can afford to do so due to the money they’re getting from Yahoo for the Flickr deal, and in the face of increased competition (both existing and future) Picnik needed to offer more. Still, Picnik was a good package before this announcement, and now it’s better again. See our February 2007 review of online Photo editing sites here. CrunchBase Information Picnik Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Hate opening Photoshop, that resource hog, just to resize an image? Me, too! That’s why I use Picnik, an online photo editor that uses the magic of Web 2.0 to—get this—edit photos. It can grab photos from your Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Photobucket and Webshots account, or edit photos you have on your computer. There’s a premium version, too, that, for $25 a year, gets you access to a bunch more photo filters and effects. I personally don’t use the premium, but that’s only because I rarely do anything beyond cropping, resizing, etc. Better still, the Picnik team seems to be a fun bunch. The site is peppered with little witticisms and whatnot that make you realize the people behind the curtain aren’t total jerks. I appreciate that. Picnik → Read More
Fotoflexer may be my personal favorite among the many online photo editing tools, but Flickr has chosen Seattle-based Picnik to handle the long requested photo editing feature for Flickr users. Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools (see our review here). The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months, Flickr told me yesterday. Users will be presented with an edit option on the photo page. Clicking it takes the user to a new Flickr photo edit page, with the Picnik tools integrated via an iframe. After editing, users can add the edited photo to their Flickr account or, if they are a Flickr pro user, overwrite the original. Business terms around the deal are not being disclosed at this time. Picnik is self funded to date. → Read More
Online photo editors keep getting better and better. For hardcore image manipulation, desktop software like Photoshop or Gimp will always have its place, but online editors are free, easy to use and a lot of fun. We covered most of the online editors back in February (Fauxto, Picnik, Picture2Life, Preloadr, PXN8 and Snipshot). But a relative newcomer on the scene, Berkeley-based FotoFlexer, is worth a look. The site first launched in July with basic functionality and integration with Facebook. This last week they relaunched a new site with more tools, direct access to your desktop/laptop webcam, and they also now integrate with Flickr, Picasa and MySpace. Upload a photo, or grab one from a supported service, and edit it by changing colors, adding effects, bulging or pinching areas (to make body parts look larger or smaller), etc. You can also turn any image into a sketch or cartoon. I spent about 10 minutes creating the different versions of the picture to the right (original is top left). The most fun is changing hair color, although the image third down on the left is my personal favorite. Fotoflexer says they incorporate their own artificial intelligence algorithm to figure out the right way to alter images. And whatever it is they’re doing, it works. You simply point out a few areas of the site you want to remove or alter and it figures out the rest of the pixels pretty quickly. You can do all of this in Photoshop, but it takes a lot longer. And unlike most (but not all) of the online photo editing tools we’ve previously covered, FotoFlexer also supports layering for more complicated image editing. FotoFlexer also now integrates directly to your webcam and to take a quick snapshot and edit it. Many of the effects are similar to the Photo Booth application that comes installed on all Macs. The integration with third party services is a great feature as well. Pull down photos from Facebook or another service, alter them and re-upload in a few minutes. The service runs in Flash and was built on the Flex platform with mostly custom tools. The company has not raised any capital and has 15 employees, all in the Silicon Valley/Bay area. About 50,000 people use their Facebook application and/or the website directly. I expect that number to grow as social networkers discover the joy of turning their pictures into → Read More
Online photo editing continues to be a hot market. From Flektor, Slide and others with a MySpace focus, to Adobe’s development of an online version of Photoshop later this year, there’s a lot on offer or soon coming to a browser near you. Seattle based Picnik has grown an audience without gaining much attention. We previously covered the site in February as part of an overall market review. Facebook’s F8, the Facebook as a Platform service is going to change market awareness of Picnik, Picnik being an early content provider to Facebook’s millions of users. Picnik is a user friendly service. It’s avoids the cutting edge, youth market focus of sites such as Flektor, instead delivering what can best be described as a web based version of Picasa aimed directly at the mature end of the market. Moms and Dads, to Generation X users who are tired of the trendy graffiti style “hip” focus of other services will love Picnik. Picnik is quick, clean, easy to use and comes complete with built in support for Flickr, Picassa Albums and Facebook albums. Registration isn’t required to use Picnik. It simply works, and works well. Since F8′s launch last week, Picnik has added an additional 50,000 users and according to co-founder Mike Harrington is now the third most popular service in this space behind Flektor and iLike. The site remains in independent ownership but with this level of functionality is bound to be an acquisition target in the future. Give Picnik a try then imagine Picnik’s photo editing functions natively in Flickr; I’d like to see that! (image via Blake Burris) → Read More
The launch of Picnik a couple of days ago brought us yet another online photo editing tool. Like Fauxto, Picnik uses Flash, whereas most of the earlier editing tools all use Ajax for in-browser editing. Since all computers come with basic software that rotates, resizes and crops photos, there needs to be a compelling reason to use an online service. Uploading a photo to such a service, editing it and then downloading it back to your hard drive too high of a cost. To compensate for this, most services allow you to transfer the edited photos directly to Flickr, Webshots or other online photo services, saving users the trouble of making round trips uploading and downloading. Most of these online services also offer editing tools that go beyond simple rotation, resizing and cropping and start to creep into Photoshop territory. Here’s a few of the better ones, along with our most recent testing notes: Fauxto Fauxto is a Flash-based Photoshop look-alike. It is the only layer-based online tool that we know of, and is by far the best of the bunch. But if all you are looking for is photo editing, and you aren’t familiar with Photoshop, Fauxto will frustrate you with its complexity. And if you are already familiar with Photoshop, chances are you have a copy already. Fauxto is lovely to look at and it is a really nice example of Flash in action, but I’m not sure who their target market is. Picnik Picnik is the new kid on the block, and they’re the best so far. It is also Flash based, it is the fastest of the bunch and the user interface is the most intuitive. Once you are done editing, you can transfer your photos directly to Flickr. Picnik has replaced Ajax-based PXN8 as our favorite online photo editing tool. Picture2Life Picture2life is an Ajax based photo editor. It’s focused on grabbing and editing images that are already online. The tool selection is average, and the user interface is poor. There are some bugs on the site. Photos can be transferred to Flickr, 23 and Imageshack after editing. Preloadr Preloadr is a Flickr-specific tool that uses the Flickr API, even for account sign-in. The service includes basic cropping, sharpening, color correction and other tools to enhance images. The fact that Preloadr is designed specifically to work with Flickr may not be an advantage – some → Read More
