Gallery: Edit and share photos with Picnik

To begin using Picnik, launch your web browser and type www.picnik.com into the address bar. We’ll consider whether it’s worth signing up for the service later in the Workshop. However, one of the nice things about Picnik is that it’s possible to get started straight away by simply clicking the ‘Get started now!’ button - so do that now.

It will take a moment or two for the web-based editing program to load, along with the inevitable advertising banners and ‘Upgrade’ promotional button, but it’s worth it nevertheless. Those who have chosen to register can sign in, while newcomers can just click on one of the demo photos on the right-hand side of the screen to get going straight away. Alternatively, have some fun with a real photo by clicking the ‘Upload Photo’ button and grabbing one from your PC’s hard disk.

Use Windows’ own file commands to navigate to the folder where your photos are stored, then find one that needs work. Here it’s a photo of an angler with a rather fine-looking fish, but it’s clearly been taken as the light was falling and the fisherman looks washed out. Before we attempt any changes, take a moment to look at Picnik’s interface - there’s a Zoom slider control at the bottom right, buttons for all the main image-editing commands along the top and tabs above them that open different parts of the program.

In many circumstances, clicking the ‘Auto-fix’ button at the top left above the picture will do the trick; it’s been designed to make good many common mistakes. However, in this example we weren’t happy with the results, so we clicked the ‘Exposure’ button then dragged the ‘Exposure and Contrast’ sliders at the top to the left and right to adjust the picture manually. Changes caused by moving these sliders happen in real time, so it’s easy to see if the photo is changing for the better.

In this instance, it still doesn’t look right, so we tried something else. Click the ‘Reset’ button at the top right to return the photo to its original state, then click the ‘Advanced’ button. This produces a histogram of the photo of the kind that serious photographers love to see, but it’s again possible to make adjustments to the image in real time by dragging the two sliders (Highlights and Shadows) back and forth until the image improves. The results are subtle and impressive.

Having improved the overall look of the photo, click the ‘OK’ button, then click the ‘Save & Share’ tab at the top right. This allows photos to be printed out, emailed to friends, saved back to the PC they came from or sent to photo-sharing services, such as Flickr and Facebook. Photos can be renamed, resized and saved in different formats - for example, as a BMP bitmap file, the kind that Windows uses for Desktop wallpaper. Here the photo has been renamed and is being saved back to the computer and into the My Pictures folder.

As well as visual fixes, Picnik’s good at sorting out other, more obvious problems. Here, for example, we’ve uploaded another photo from the PC - this time of a car full of fishing tackle. Originally photographed on a sloping drive, it looks wonky and could do with straightening up. Along with the usual settings for removing red eye, sharpening images and so on, Picnik also includes a useful straightening feature. Click the ‘Rotate’ button, then drag the slider left or right to level out the photo.

Let’s try something more creative. Click the Photos tab at the top, then click on the ‘Get Photo’ button and upload one as we did in Step 3. When the photo loads, click the ‘Crop’ button and Picnik will lay a grid over the photo. Use the mouse pointer to click and drag any of the corners or edges until the photo is cropped correctly. Alternatively, type the dimensions you want into the two boxes at the top and drag the box until it frames the correct part of the photo.

Click OK, then click the ‘Create’ tab at the top. Picnik displays a selection of ready-made effects down the left-hand side of the screen. Click on these to see the results they produce. With the effect applied, drag any sliders left or right to see the changes that they make. Some effects include colour controls, which can produce interesting results. In this example, we applied a vignette effect and changed its strength, size and colour. Click the ‘Apply’ button to continue or ‘Cancel’ to try a different effect.

Next, click the ‘Text’ tab at the top and type in some text. We intend to use this photo to advertise a fishing lake in France, so here we typed the name of the lake into the box at the top left. ‘The beautiful English lake’ needs a fancy typeface, so scroll down the list of font examples until a suitable one appears, click on it once to select it, then click the ‘Add’ button. Resize the text to fit the picture by clicking and dragging with the mouse, and change the colour if necessary.

Now click the Shapes tab at the top. After a moment, the left-hand column fills with a selection of colourful, themed clipart, shapes and other graphical paraphernalia. In this example, we scrolled down to the selection of black-and-white clipart and found an interesting fishy item to help illustrate our image. Just click on the item once and after a second, it will appear on the photograph. Resize the object if necessary, move it into position, then add a second, move it to the other end of the title and click the ‘Flip’ button.

Click the ‘Save & Share’ tab at the top and this time, choose one of the online options. We’re members of Flickr (www.flickr.com), an online photo-sharing service, so we chose that. Click the ‘Connect’ button, then sign into Flickr and click the ‘OK, I’ll Allow It’ button to let Picnik and Flickr ‘talk’ to each other. At the next screen, give the photo a name, add a description and tags and then click the ‘Save Photo’ button at the bottom of the screen. Open another browser window or tab, visit Flickr and there’s the edited photo.

Once Picnik and a service such as Flickr have made a connection, it’s possible to view photos from one using the other. Here, for example, is a selection of Flickr photos, each of which can be edited by clicking the arrow next to the little cog. This opens a dropdown menu from where we chose the Edit option. Integrating an online photo library with an online photo-editing program in this way means it’s possible to adjust, edit and share photos from any PC that’s connected to the internet.

So, are there any benefits to registering with Picnik? Not that we could see. However, for those who regularly need to edit images wherever they are, it may be worth considering the paid-for premium version which, for $25 (around £12.50) a year, includes more editing features and the ability to connect to more than one external service - for example, Myspace, Flickr or Facebook - at a time. Perhaps best of all, it will remove the rolling adverts that distract from an otherwise excellent interface.

So, are there any benefits to registering with Picnik? Not that we could see. However, for those who regularly need to edit images wherever they are, it may be worth considering the paid-for premium version which, for $25 (around £12.50) a year, includes more editing features and the ability to connect to more than one external service - for example, Myspace, Flickr or Facebook - at a time. Perhaps best of all, it will remove the rolling adverts that distract from an otherwise excellent interface.