Shutter Mike Photography

This is a follow up to my post the other day about 6 Free Photo Editing Programs.  The difference is that those were downloadable programs and these are free online photo editors.  So if you are concerned about hard drive space or have commitment issues with downloading a software program these could be a good alternative for you.  In no particular order, five worth giving a spin are:

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint is relatively new to the online photo editing game having been released about a year ago.  It also differentiates itself from some of the other options by being less of a photo editor and more of an art creation tool.  It has most of the tools you would expect that allow  you to turn your photos into a unique work of art.  Yet, what sets it apart from traditional photo editors are some of the extras it has that give you the ability to create art from scratch.

Some of the features and tools you will find in Sumo Paint Include:

• A whole lot of filters – liquid waves, spherical mapping, camouflage, glowing edges, twirl, and noise to name a few
• Layers
• Clone, lasso, blur, color picker and magic wand tools
• Text editor
• A large selection of brushes

A few of the cons you might encounter include requiring Flash be installed (but who doesn’t nowadays?), a bit more time consuming with larger files sizes, no direct integration with social media and photo sharing sites such as Flickr and of course you are working online so it is dependent on the availability and speed of your internet connection.

Flauntr

Flauntr is broken down into several different tools with names like editR, textR and styleR.  It has a lot of fancy gadgets designed to “pimp” out your photos such as adding frames, shapes and text.  It also is big on integration with social networks and your mobile phone.  The main drawback of Flauntr is its unusual interface.  The saying “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to apply well to this photo editor.  By that I mean most other photo editing programs follow a somewhat standard interface design.  It works and most don’t deviate too far from what is the “standard.”  Flauntr seems to take being different to the extreme.  So much so that it is a bit confusing to navigate.  However, it does have some cool features you will not find elsewhere.

• profilR – allows you to customize your photos to match the profile picture specifications of a long list of social networks
• picasR – offers a library of historic paintings to reference for colors – I never quite figured out how this works, but it seems like it should be a neat concept
• stylR- gives you frame overlays and magazine covers to get creative with your photos

Fotoflexer

FotoFlexer has many of the features and tools of both the free offline photo editing programs as well as some of the programs you can purchase.  It also includes many of the fun extra features from programs like Flauntr and integrates with the major social networks so you can edit and upload your photos.  Overall FotoFlexer is one of my favorite free online photo editors.  The interface is intuitive, the features are rich and it produces good results – all for free.   Even the ads which help pay for the site are rather non-intrusive.  Here are a few things you can expect from FotoFelxer:

• Basic editing features such as red eye correction, cropping, rotating, resizing, and contrast and brightness correction.
• Special effects for photos such as blur edges, greyscale, sepia, ink stamp and soften
• “Decorating” options such as a text editor, eraser, drawing, and things like adding “stickers,” borders and the like.
• Portrait tweaking tools such as blemish and wrinkle removal
• Layers!
• A very easy and useful undo button

Lunapic

Lunapic is differentiated from the first three by the fact that it is is html based, meaning if you don’t have flash installed you can still use the program.  It’s layout is also a bit different in that it looks less like a photo editor and more like any other web page.  i.e. the ads are very prominent and there are a header and standard footer – it looks like most any other web page.  The first three above are much less “website” like and more photo editor in appearance.  Appearance aside, here are some of the features you will find in the Lunapic photo editor:

• A good number of animation features such as slide shows, transitions, fire and lightning effects and a new “glitterizing” effect
• All the basic editing tools including crop, magic wand, rotate, resize, and scale.
• Drawing and text tools including color picker.
• Adjustment tools such as blur, tone, red eye reduction and contrast.
• A respectible list of effects or filters including one called “lego” that makes your picture look as though it is made out of Lego bricks.

Phixr

At first glance you are going to notice that the Phixr web interface is a bit rudamentary and dare I say “boring.”  It is certainly lacking the pizzazz that many of the other free online photo editors have.  It is also lacking some of the features and is not exactly straight forward in how the features it does have are presented.  Phixr focuses on integrating with the major social networking sites, Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and the like, and is scaled back on the enhanced editing options in order to make basic and quick edits to your photos.  If you are looking for a robust program to do some of the more advanced edits allowed by a program like FotoFlexer or Lunapic, Phixr is probably not for you.  If all you need is a quick and dirty fix or change to get the picture back up to Facebook this one has what you will need to get the job done.  Here is what you can expect to find in Phixr:

• The basic editing options of rotate, flip and the like
• A short, but effective list of effects such as swirl, pop art, black and white and sepia
• Ability to alter brightness, hue and saturation
• Red eye correction
• Text

Another great resource for specs on these and many more online photo editors is this article by cnet.com.