Web Photo Editors (General)

Web Photo Editors (General)

Online Image Editing Review (online-image-editing-review.toptenreviews.com) is a solid source for objective articles, reviews, tutorials, and tips for using hosted photo-editing services. Addition ally, the site features a quality comparison table of some of the top services. Most of these services provide post-processing functions similar to those offered by the mid-level photo editors described earlier in the chapter, and their interfaces are geared to the experience level of the average Internet user. Following are several examples.

• Citrify (www.citrify.com)—The Citrify online photo editor offers free access to very basic photo-editing tools, cosmetic functions to improve facial features, and special-effects features. It’s an entry-level post-processing tool well-suited for beginner experimentation.
  
  
• FotoFlexer (www.fotoflexer.com)—FotoFlexer is a solid, power-packed free hosted photo editing service offering a wide array of post-processing tools. It offers a mix of basic and advanced retouching functions, application of special-effects, and addition of text and shapes and outside images, as well as the ability to work using layers—currently rare among the hosted services. FotoFlexer provides easy uploading of your stored disk images and also allows you to grab images from other locations online. It seamlessly imports and edits images from Picasa, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Phanfare, and SmugMug. It offers a few demos of special features, but not much else in the way of tutorials or help features. It’s a great service if you don’t mind a bit of experimental learning.
  
  
• Google+ (https://photos.google.com/)—Google+ Photos provides simple photo-editing functions closely integrated with the Picasa Web Album platform. Google+ incorporates the same kind of folder and album organizational tools as Picasa and integrates photo sharing with designated users or public access. With the “Lightbox View” you can use basic photo-editing functions, add names or titles, use sharing features, and so forth. Google+ Photos is another easy and flexible route to beginner-level photo post processing. While it’s free, you’ll need to download and use the Google Chrome browser and create a free Google+ account to take advantage of this service.
  
  
• PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com)—PicMonkey is an advertising-supported, free remote photo-editing service that provides basic and advanced post-processing tools, templates, themes, framing effects, apps and browser extensions, and more. The Facebook app lets you access all your Facebook photos and edit them from within the social network. When you’re done, the photos automatically pop into your PicMonkey Facebook album. You can upgrade to the enhanced, ad-free Royale Premium version for $4.99/month or $33/annually; a free 30-day trial let’s you take Royale for a test drive.
  
  
• Thumba (www.thumba.net)—Thumba is a free hosted photo-editing service providing access to a wide and powerful spectrum of post-processing functions. It offers simple menu-driven access to photo manipulation tools, usually with slider bar control over the strength of the desired effects, which allows for more precise work. Thumba offers good networked image retrieval capability, including easy uploading of webcam images. As is true of many similar services, Thumba offers little in the way of help functions or online tutorials: Users are left mostly to their own devices when attempting to master the fine points of this powerful photo-editing tool. There’s no obvious Undo/Redo button or function, though that’s not to say it’s not there—you’ll just need to learn on your own which functions appear under the Edit com mand bar menu, or that Thumba responds to the standard Windows keystroke commands of Ctrl+Z for undo and Ctrl+Y for redo.
  
  As is true of many similar services, Thumba offers little in the way of help functions or online tutorials: Users are left mostly to their own devices when attempting to master the fine points of this powerful photo-editing tool. There’s no obvious Undo/Redo button or function, though that’s not to say it’s not there—you’ll just need to learn on your own which functions appear under the Edit com mand bar menu, or that Thumba responds to the standard Windows keystroke commands of Ctrl+Z for undo and Ctrl+Y for redo.