In the picture … online photo editing
ByMaking your snaps crackle and pop
It’s amazing how quickly things change in the online world.
When I started making websites 6 years ago, you had to buy a bit of software like Photoshop at great expense and there wasn’t really a lot else available unless you really knew where to look.
Great downloads like Irfanview and Gimp were already on the scene, but ‘non-geeks’ wouldn’t have been aware of them at the time, and would have had to shell out some cash or stick to cursing Paint … as I seem to recall I was doing.
Nowadays that’s all changed, photos are a major currency on the net, mainly because we all operate at broadband speeds these days, they don’t take forever to upload and they’re much more enjoyable than wading through loads of text.
It’s funny to think that in 2004 I was still cursing a dial-up connection (I lived in a very rural village!) and Flickr had just been born.
To celebrate the great proliferation in photo sites, I’ve gathered a few of the most useful, in my opinion, and as ever invite you to add your own personal favourites and discoveries via the comments section below.
Masters of the (photo) universe
Flickr is currently my preferred site for creating galleries on my websites.
Create a ’public’ picture gallery, work out what your Flickr ID is, read this article about creating embedded galleries and before you know it you have a fully customisable gallery on your page … like this 80spoplover.co.uk gallery and this weirdbits.co.uk gallery.
Picassa is my preferred personal photo manager of choice as it allows you to do all the usual stuff that you’d expect to do, but I have a strong preference for the way you can customise each folder to make it private or public, and then embed it in a page or email it to friends and family.
I’ve even used a couple of Picassa embedded galleries on my sites, usually where something simple will do the job as in this example.
Irfanview is particularly good for batch processing large numbers of images … you can rename, resize, add borders and so on very simply using this software.
I don’t really make use of it otherwise, but it’s a good one to have handy.
Online photo editors
http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ … this is a great, simple, straightforward site which I recommend to customers who are new to manipulating photos.
Whenever I make Mambo websites for customers, I provide them with training and FAQ guides, so that they can run and update their own websites.
I recommend shrinkpictures.com for resizing images prior to uploading to Mambo.
Most of the people I’m working with have basic knowledge of computers and cope very easily with this website.
They’ve just introduced online batch processing as well, which is a great tool … and did I mention the magic word free?
http://www.picnik.com/ … this is the richer, cooler, better-dressed relation of shrinkpictures.com, with very much a Web 2.0 feel to it, and easily bolting on to Flickr, Picassa, photobucket, Facebook and so on.
It’s more advanced than shrinkpictures.com, offering not only resizing options, but loads of effects, fonts and shapes into the bargain.
It’s more complicated that would be required for the simple jobs involved in operating Mambo sites, but it’s a really useful site for the keen amateur.
Once again it’s free, but you can upgrade and pay for lots of extras if required.
Snap happy
There are many, many more photo-related websites available.
I’ve listed some keys ones below, but if you’ve discovered any other sites which are particularly good for specific jobs, please post a comment using the form at the bottom of the page.
https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
Ideas anyone?
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