Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
Picnik: Web based image manipulation gets better
Category: Flash
, Screencast, Showcase, Utility
Picnik is another web-based image manipulation tool that uses Flash to do the heavy lifting.
The UI is simple, and it does a lot of the little things that you want to do.
Coupled with the desktop widget Image Shackle I really can do the simple things with simple tools.
Here is a screencast of Picnik in action.
4 rating from 24 votes
Not to bad, except for the flash…
“Except for the flash”?
Are you kidding? How else are you supposed to apply all these effects, rotations, and other gobbledygook! Constant requests to the server? I don’t think so.
Flash is a fantastic medium for this, and it’s fully justifiable.
Using flash shouldnt be seen as a bad thing as long at it all works correctly on all browsers. I’ve seen loads of flash sites that fail to work in anything but IE and FF. Really bad programming.
“I’ve seen loads of flash sites that fail to work in anything but IE and FF.”
Hmm, the Adobe Flash Player itself should work the same across browsers… it’s usually browser interactions where any differences are seen (compositing HTML DIVs atop SWF menus or JavaScript communication, for instance).
Matter of fact, all Mac browsers use the exact same download regardless of browser, and all Windows browsers (except Microsoft’s) use the exact same download regardless of browser. It’s the same code, working within a variety of browsers on that system.
If you saw some difference that *wasn’t* a browser dependency then I’d like to learn more, thanks.
jd/adobe
“How else are you supposed to apply all these effects…”
I have seen several very powerful image editors online that are Java applets. In fact, they’ve been around for ages, have filters like in Photoshop, and are rarely if ever given any mention.
This tool is impressive, fast and accurate. It’s UI is perfect for beginners and for 90% of amateur photographers over a complex toolset like ACDsee, Thumbs (and of course photoshop.)
I’ve used several java applets for similar web-based manipulation; this is better.