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You are here: Home / Blog / Featured Articles / 3 Alternatives to Picnik Photo Editing Software

3 Alternatives to Picnik Photo Editing Software

Posted by on April 10, 2012 · 9 Comments 

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Photo Editing Can SuckWe’re huge fans of Picnik, our favorite in free photo editing software. Since Picnik announced in January that they were closing down on April 19, 2012, we’ve been on the lookout for photo editing alternatives.

We did some polling, both on Facebook and on LinkedIn, asking friends for their recommendations. We received a number of great suggestions, all of which we tested out to bring you this “best of” photo editing software list.

One of the things we liked most about Picnik is that it was super easy to use and you didn’t need to have a degree in Photoshop in order to easily re-size, crop and touch up photos. We’re usually editing photos in preparation for inclusion in a blog post and don’t want to spend hours laboring over photo editing. If you’re nodding your head in agreement, read on.

The Criteria We Used For Finding Suitable Alternatives to Picnik

  • Web-based. For the occasional photo job, we didn’t want to have to download something to our computer and have it be yet another battery drain, so it was important the tools we discovered were web-based.
  • Attractive and easy-to-use interface. Well, that’s sort of a no brainer, isn’t it?
  • No registration required. Not a deal breaker, but we like it when sites make it easy for us to use their services without registering.
  • Ease of use. We’re not designers, we’re bloggers. We want to be able to quickly grab, crop and edit or re-size a photo without having without it taking all day.

3 Alternatives to Picnik

  • PicMonkey. PicMonkey is nearly identical to Picnik, and a quick visit to their About page told us why. PicMonkey was created by former Picnik engineers, meaning you’ll enjoy a similar experience as what’s available on Picnick–this is especially helpful if you’re already familiar with Picnik’s features and interface.
  • iPiccy. iPiccy is still in beta, but it’s also very similar to Picnik. iPiccy offers an option to choose from photos you’ve posted on Facebook, which is something we like, too.
  • FotoFlexer. The FotoFlexer interface isn’t quite as pretty as iPiccy or PicMonkey, but sometimes that matters less than functionality. FotoFlexer provides the most options for pulling in photos you have on other networks such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, etc., which is what makes it stand out from the competition–and should be your top choice if you’ve put time and effort into building sizable photo libraries on other sites.
For those of you who really enjoyed Picnik and are casting about for a replacement, we hope you’ll find one of the options above a suitable replacement. What have we missed?  Are their other web-based, easy-to-use alternatives to Picnik you’ve discovered? If so, we’d love to hear about them.
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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1485469367 Dorien Morin-van Dam

    Thank you Michelle,

    I too love Picnik and have been looking for an alternative.  You’ve saved me hours of research :)  Before using Picnik, I was introduced to FotoFlexer, but I have to admit I didn’t love it.  As soon as I found Picnik, I stopped using FotoFlexer.  Therefore, I am going to check out iPiccy and PicMonkey, your suggestions.  April 19 is right around the corner, right?  Thank you for the helpful info!

  • Wendy Scherer

    So grateful that you all did the homework – now off to try them!

  • Anonymous

    Yay! Glad you like, Wendy. Michelle is always on it!

  • Anonymous

    It IS right around the corner, eek! Glad you enjoyed :)

  • http://www.thevirtualasst.com Michelle Mangen

    Wendy – you will certainly find one you like in the list. Promise. 

  • http://www.thevirtualasst.com Michelle Mangen

    Dorien – FotoFlexer is OK but certainly not as easy to use as the three on this list. 

  • http://soulati.com/blog Soulati

    I haven’t yet engaged in photo editing apps, yet as per the gist of this post, I’m wondering whether there are alternatives to Instagram…just in case! I, for one, am staying put squarely as I love this darling app; but, if/when Facebook begins to tangle with what’s not broken, I’m sure we’ll be leaving in droves, but to where? 

  • Anonymous

    I love Instagram, too, Jayme, and I’m in no hurry to dash off. I think all the craziness about Facebook making IG horrible is premature. Plus, as Jason Eng mentioned in another post, I typically share my IG pics on Facebook, so the two are already integrated, to a large degree. At least for me. But rest assured, when something comes along that we love, we’ll write about it. Oh, and Path is pretty awesome for picture sharing, too!

  • http://twitter.com/KatyWrites Katy Schamberger

    I’ve played with a number of photo apps – I have to say that Instagram is my most favorite, so I likely won’t be going anywhere else anytime soon. I started out with Hipstamatic, which is fun and gives you lots of camera/film options – it’s a bit slower than Instagram, though. PopBooth is fun if you, like me, are a fan of photo booths. And I wouldn’t rely on it as my primary photo app, but Diptic allows you to combine multiple images as one – it’s a nice supplementary tool in order to find different ways to display images from your library. Hope that helps – if I run across any others, I’ll be sure to let you know!

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