12 Free Photo Editing Sites, Picnik Alternatives

Update:  This list has been expanded and updated.  You'll find the latest list of 14 Free Photo Editing Sites that are great alternatives to Picnik HERE.   I'm hearing good things about iPiccy and PicMonkey.


Are you a long time user and fan of Picnik?  If so, I'm sure you've heard the news that it's going away.  Actually, the Picnik site says it's moving after April 19th to Google +.

I have used Picnik occasionally over the years and had just started playing around with it more recently for the purpose of watermarking photos.  I found another program I like better for watermarking a few weeks ago, though.  I'll explain more about that in an upcoming post I'm working on about how I edit photos before posting them here on BNOTP.

In the meantime, I took a look at some of the free programs available for editing photos and I found 12 free photo editing sites that appear to be pretty popular.  Here they are in no particular order:

Psst: Skip down to #10 and try Be Funky first.  I've heard it's similar to Picnik.

1. Fotoflexer:

You can do some fun, crazy things with Fotoflexer including retouching photos, adding special effects, fun fonts, layers, etc...  One neat thing...it will link to your photos wherever you have them stored.  You can edit photos from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket or upload them from your website or computer.


2. Picasa:

Picasa lets you share your pics directly with the folks in your circles in Google +.  There are also a lot of "effects" you can apply to photos. This is the program I currently use to create collages.


3. Pixlr:

I dove right into Pixlr and started playing around with their effects.  I found it easy to use.  Of course, you can do the usual stuff...sharpen, crop, adjust contrast and color.  There's even a "teeth white" feature. lol  Don't we wish life was that way. ;)


4. Phixr:

I've found Phixr also very easy to use.  You can adjust the usual things that photo editing software allows.  Some fun things: you can add speech bubbles to your pics of your pets, decorate with objects, like hearts...that could come in handy for Valentine's Day.

5. LunaPic:

LunaPic lets you to upload your pics from Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, and your computer.  Lots of effects available, including some animation.  The "reflecting" animation is pretty cool!

6. Gimp:

Gimp describes their program as a "versatile graphic manipulation package."  It looks pretty sophisticated.  You can use it to elminate various distortions from photographs, retouch your photos...it even has a clone tool, like Photoshop.  It may be a bit more complicated to use than some of the other programs mentioned in this post, but it definitely has some cool features.


7. Photobucket:

I have a love/hate relationship with Photobucket.  Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word. Let's call it a love/dislike relationship.  Photobucket has lots of fun editing tools for images, but after you've been using it for several months/years, one day you may find all the pictures or blog buttons you stored there have suddenly vanished from your blog.   Apparently, there's a magical storage number and once you exceed it, it's pay-up or all your images vanish.   I learned this the hard way and at that point, I took all my images off and moved them to Picasa.  I still use Photobucket occasionally, but once I finish the editing, I copy the pic and save it on my computer to use when needed.  I don't store pics or blog buttons or anything on Photobucket anymore.


8. Paint.net:

 Paint.net is a mini Photoshop.  It will do a lot of the same things you can do in Photoshop, like creating layers and special effects.  If you're familiar with Gimp or Microsoft Photo Editor, this program is sort of like those.


9.  Photoscape:

10. Be Funky

Be Funky is another great site that is said to be similar to Picnik.


11. Creative Kit:

You'll find directions/steps for locating Creative Kit on Google+ in THIS post.  It may be the program that Google is developing to replace Picnik.  It doesn't have as many features as Picnik at this point.


12. Photoshop Express Editor:

This program is a free program offered by Adobe Photoshop.  You can edit your photos to correct for the usual "problems" as well as add lots of special effects, conversation bubbles, cartoon characters, etc...  I figure it can't be too bad since it's offered by the makers of Photoshop.

Have you used any of the above programs?  Would you recommend any of them?  Please share what you've used and how you use it...would love to hear and it would help everyone who reads this post.