Image editing without Photoshop

Laura Blankenship February 18th, 2008

Most of us are not doing complex image editing projects.  We need to do some cropping or resizing, maybe some simple auto color correction.  We don’t need or have access to Photoshop.  Luckily, there are plenty of applications our there on the web.  I had been asked about these recently and knew about a couple of them, but after an inquiry to my friends on Twitter, I was bombarded with ideas (thanks everyone!).  Here are a few of them.

  •  Picnik–allows you to rotate, crop, autocorrect, sharpen, adjust colors and more.  You can add text, shapes, or create fun effects.
  • Splashup–this is a more full-blown image editing program with tools similar to those in Photoshop.
  • Snipshot–very similar to picnik, but basic editing is available without signing up for an account.
  • Pixenate–not as slick–looking as the ones above, but still offers similar features.  I didn’t find it as fun or easy to use

These tools are all online, but there are other tools that can be downloaded for free.

  • Irfanview–works on windows PCs
  • GIMP–works for windows, linux, and mac
  • iPhoto, of course, works well on the mac (comes with the operating system, but upgrades cost a small fee usually)
  • Picassa, a Google product, works on all platforms as well

So take some pictures and then go have some fun!