Editing photos is one of the most popular things people like to do with their PCs. Getting good results takes a little practice but it’s immensely satisfying once you have got the hang of it.

You used to need a photo-editing application installed on your PC but, just as word processors have made their way online, so have photo editors. This means it’s possible to make your photos look great without downloading anything or spending any money.

An online editor requires less computing power and hard disk space, so you can edit photos on an older PC or a mini-laptop. You can also share photos online, or edit pictures if they are already on a photo-sharing site, rather than keep them on your PC.

There are plenty of online image editors to choose from, so read on to find out which is best for you.
First let’s explain what an online application is. We are used to software supplied on a disc or offered as a file to download from the internet, which is then installed on the PC’s hard disk.

Online applications don’t live on your PC; you create a free account that enables you to use a copy of the software stored on an internet server, which you interact with using a web browser such as Internet Explorer.

There are lots of benefits to using an online editor. First, much of the processing (the complicated maths that needs to be done to edit a picture) ­ is done on the web server. That is good news if your PC has struggled to process image editing before or if you own one of the new small but less powerful mini-laptops.

Best of all, these services are easy to use. That does not mean they are not powerful. They are just designed for people who want good results quickly rather than spending hours learning new tricks.

Your online toolkit
All the tools you would expect to find are there. Images can be resized to make them easier to send to people, you can remove unwanted elements using the cropping tool, remove the red-eye effect produced by camera flashes and convert images to black and white with a single click.

You can make colours in your pictures more punchy or add eye-catching effects and text captions. When the editing is complete, the photo can be added to an online gallery to be viewed by friends, downloaded to your computer or printed by a professional photographic lab and posted to you.

To run an online image editor you need some free software called Adobe Flash Player. This is an add-on for your browser, which you almost certainly already have. If you can watch videos at Youtube then you already have it.