Week 4 Part 2

Picnik collage
Originally uploaded by Teh Jess

I had briefly used Picnik before, and found it to be rather limited - mainly because of the prevalence of "Premium" functions - but handy for quick fixes (rotating, resizing, cropping, etc.) when not at my own computer. When it came to editing some images at work however - in particular blurring out particular sections, and some cloning - I must admit that I resorted to using Paint instead! For shame! I think this inital unease with Picnik was due to prior experience with very different, computer (as opposed to web) based programs. At home I will do minor edits (red-eye, cropping, colour adjustments) with iPhoto - and use Photoshop for anything more in-depth. I can certainly see the benefit of web-based image editing - applications such as Photoshop or Aperture are expensive, and not always backward compatible, causing endless issues between versions. All of this can make editing when not at your own machine quite bothersome. Something like Picnik makes that functionality available as and when you need it, wherever you are. I vaguely remember there being an Adobe-licensed online version of Photoshop at one point - however, its name and whether or not it is still available unfortunately eludes me!
On giving it a second chance however, I found two things about Picnik to be brilliant:

• The ability to link with other websites - not having to upload something twice is always useful, as if being able to save images directly back to where you found them
• The "lomography" effects - being a bit of a lomo / toy camera enthusiast, I really enjoyed the functions which replicated these analogue effects. There was even a pre-set Holga function - complete with grain and vignettes! It's not quite as fun as film, but it was fun to play about with.

I think I'll definitely give Picnik another chance as opposed to falling back on Paint next time I'm away from home and need to do some image-based work - I can't see it replacing my version of iPhoto anytime soon though!