Picnik: A free yet powerful online image editor

Did you ever had a photo uploaded to Flickr that needed a bit of highlights? Or you wanted to apply some cool effects to a photo of you which your friend uploaded on Facebook? Well everyone knows that Photoshop is the answer to all your editing needs; Not quite!

If your photos are already on the web and you want a good free way to tweak them, then I suggest you try out Picnik. This latest RIA takes advantage of the Adobe Flex and Flash technology and it can edit photos directly from Facebook, MySpace, Picassa, Photobucket, Flickr and many more. You can also upload your own photo or copy from the web.

It provides some basic image manipulation as well advanced imaging effects seen mostly in sophisticated image processing systems. You can also add text and other graphic art to your images and share them back to your family and friends on all supported web services.

For a small fee, you can also take advantage of some of the advanced premium features like color curve or image levels manipulation. Its built in uploader is fast and can upload up to a 100 images at once. I leave the rest of the features for you to try yourself and share your experiences below.

Note: All the screen shots are taken in the newly released Google Chrome browser.

Picnik loading in Google Chrome

After you log in, you are greeted with this

My Facebook photos on Picnik

Editing a photo on Picnik from Flickr

Some creative features of Picnik

Its really simple to Share Photos you edit on Picnik