Picnik

I love how the Internet provides all sorts of free toys for people to play with.  Sure there are lots of sites on which one can play free games and jazz like that, but when I think of toys I tend to be thinking more of things that let me play around with writing and visual design and stuff like that.  A great example of what I consider a fun free online toy is this blog itself.  So far I am not paying for the blogging and am just using the free features to have fun and write some shit as I think about it (I do have the option to pay and get some more advanced features which I may do in the future, but currently the basic package is pretty good).

A fun free online toy/tool that I found the other day is Picnik a free online photo editing site.  This site is awesome for people who want to do some quick editing to their digital media.  Picnik allows you to upload images or access your photos from sites like Flickr or Picasa (two other free fun toy/tools online) and then do the editing right online, there isn’t any program download as far as I’ve experienced.  Sure Picnik might not be Adobe PhotoShop but considering you don’t have to pay a dime to use the site it really isn’t all that bad for somebody who is looking to just play around or quickly fix a few things on the pictures taken over last weeks vacation (when you went to Venice and the kids just couldn’t appreciate the history or the art or the food so you’ve decided they no longer belong in the photos).  Like many of the other fun online toys Picnik gives you the option to pay for advanced features ($24.95 get’s you a years pass) but, again, if you are looking for just a simple fix or a bit of experimenting, the basic free deal seems quite quality.  I’d definitely recommend checking out Picnik, it has entertained me a lot over the last few days.  

~ by Nathaniel on January 23, 2008.