Late last week Google announced the closure of the fabulous photo editing Picnik site, in order to roll out some of it’s functions into Google+ photos.  But that also means from what I’ve read that all your photos edited on it are then also made public via your Google+ account – I could be wrong so don’t hold me to that!   But this move by Google (motto: ‘Don’t be Evil’) pretty much stuffs up loads of Bloggers and small Etsy business people who don’t have access to photo editing software and used Picnik on a daily basis.

So what can you replace it with?  Well frankly none of them out there are as good as Picnik was.  I tried lots of them over the weekend and I could weep for the lack of  decent competition.  So what is there?

Web

Photobucket – http://photobucket.com/ the adverts on it will drive you mad, flashing intrusive and bloody annoying BUT the photo editing on there is pretty good and you can store images on there. Lots of image editing available change colours, crop, add text and other shinies to it.

Big Huge Labs - http://www.bighugelabs.com/  I love this site, it’s not fancy but there are some great utilities and you can make collages really easily on there.

Avaiary - http://advanced.aviary.com/  this is ok, I found it a little clunky to use but I think this is a service that will rapidly get better now Picnik has gone.

and a few I’ve not tried http://fotoflexer.com/   http://www.phixr.com/  http://www.photoshop.com/  http://pixlr.com/express/

Software – If you want to invest some money have a look at Photoshop Elements. It’s a cut down version of Photoshop, it does a lot but is depending in where you buy it between £60 and £100 but you can get this for Mac or Windows

Also there is Gimp which is free for both Mac and Windows, I’ve personally not used it but I know a lot of people rave about it.

For the Mac 

There are now some cool apps you can by in the Mac App Store for editing photos.  I’ve not used any of these as I’m a Photoshop girl but my husband who hates Photoshop swears by this:

Pixelmator - http://www.pixelmator.com/ It’s £20.99

For Windows

I’ve not been on a Windows machine for years, but I’m assured by people in the know that the new version of Paint is ok and if you are lucky enough to have Office, have a look at Publisher and Powerpoint – you can edit photos on either of those.  Off the top of my head I can’t remember if you can add text to photos on Windows Photo Editor? But that comes with basic Windows, so have a look it’s possible you can.

I’m sure I’ve missed some, so if you know of any that are brilliant let us know all about it.

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