I’m pretty sure “embetterment” isn’t a real word, but for a tag line “Fearless Photo Embetterment” is pretty good.
So what is today’s post about you ask? WHY, photo editing of course! Since the closure of Picnik on April 19th I have given Google+ a go as well as PicMonkey – both recommendations of Picnik. PicMonkey is a clear winner for me as it’s very similar to Picnik in terms of the tools it has available and the usability guides it provides. Therefore today’s post is all about PicMonkey; a free picture editor with no registration required.
The Story
A couple of former Picnik engineers, a rabbi and a monkey meet in a bar. The rabbi realises he’s not in the middle of a corny joke so he leaves. But the monkey. The monkey starts raving wildly. He’s slapping the Picnik engineers on the back, congratulating them for pioneering the online photo editing space 6 years ago, and for enabling a whole new class of photographers to create beautiful images and hang out together. And the monkey has more ideas about time travel, connecting people, light speed, and making Brussels sprouts taste better. The engineers, they’re listening, but they’re onto something new. They scribble furiously on the backs of napkins and the edges of sleeve cuffs.
Several months later, and here we are. A dynamic duo became a small dynamic team. And the world’s friendliest photo editor got a chance to start again. If you loved Picnik, PicMonkey is back in town and better than ever. It’s faster, more powerful, and easier to use. It’s the real deal you already know, plus 78% more monkey.
Review
Firstly, I was thrilled to discover that the PicMonkey interface is even easier to use than that of Picniks, which is saying something, and for anyone who needs a quick photo editor for tweaking web graphics or turning a photo into a banner or button, PicMonkey is a great new option. Feel free to refer back to my Picnik review for tips on how to make the most out of free editing tools “The easy way to edit photos, for free!“.
One of the most powerful features is the Overlay tool. It’s the equivalent of Photoshop layers and it gives you the capability to combine multiple images. You can add ready-to-go overlays such as stars, speech bubbles, arrows, labels, hearts and shapes, or you can import image files as overlays. Each overlay can be positioned behind or in front of other overlays, and you can erase parts of an overlay that you don’t want to include, such as white backgrounds.
The options are really simple. From basic editing like colour adjustments, exposure fixing, sharpening, and cropping, they also have touch up option such as airbrushing tools and blemish fixtures. They offer the ability to add text with a wide array of font styles. You can add symbols, emotions, arrows, and comic bubbles. To finish it off, they offer borders and frames for your photo as well.
Need to know
There are both free and premium tools on the site, premium features are available for a small cost of $4.99 a month (about £3.07) ‘Royale Membership‘ gets you ads-free editing and a hoard of primo effects, fonts, overlays and textures. As a regular user who is fluent with both the free and premium tools I would recommend that new users start with the free membership and see how often they desire the use of premium features, if this is more often then not then make the switch. The site also requires Adobe Flash to be installed on your computer or device, so iPhone users are out of luck. Finally, you can save only finished files. After all is said and done, if your photo-editing needs are modest, PicMonkey’s free features are hard to beat.
Thumbs up
Perhaps the coolest part of PicMonkey is that it offers a free Facebook app for adding effects to your Facebook gallery. On the PicMonkey home page, go to the bottom of the page and click on Goodies. That takes you to a page describing the three available apps–two for the Chrome browser and the Facebook app. You use the app just like the regular PicMonkey (same features and interface) but with the convenience of editing your images right there in Facebook.
Details
WEBSITE – www.picmonkey.com
FACEBOOK – https://www.facebook.com/pages/PicMonkey
TWITTER – @PicMonkeyApp
BLOG – www.blog.picmonkey.com
Just another London foodie 