iPiccy...Picnik Replacement

For the most part, anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate art. Let me explain. I love art that is produced by other people. I've taken more than one art history course and loved it. I've taken anyone who will go with me to almost every museum available to me to see art. I have always admired the talent it takes to produce art...a talent that I am sadly lacking. Thus, I hate when I have to produce art. I'm at such a loss.

Being a technical writer means you have to produce art. I've become adept at using the tools to capture, crop, and clean up computer screen shots. It's a skill that I use to produce the art for this blog. I've hacked my way through photo editing software, which isn't the easiest software to use and can be mega expensive. In all cases, my employer was paying for the software so it wasn't a problem for me...well, except that I had to try to learn to use the stuff.

Genealogy opened up a whole new can a of worms for me because of photographs. It's easy enough to scan a photograph, but then there is the clean up. I've been using a free online photo editor called Picnik. In one click Picnik makes choices for you that cleans up a host of problems. Google came along and bought Picnik. Now they are going to move Picnik into a Creative Suite inside of Google +.

It's OK because I'm already a member of Google +. However, I always like options. I went poking around the net today, thinking I can't be the only one lamenting the loss of quick and easy access to Picnik and I wasn't. Even better, another searcher came up with what looks to be a more than adequate substitute: iPiccy.

In iPiccy you open a copy of your photo, click the Fix Image button and it does just that for you. You can apply the corrections, and then click the Save and Share button to save (and share if you like) the cleaned up photo. The bonus? If you poke around iPiccy, you'll find that you can do lots more than you could do in the basic Picnik. iPiccy is in beta right now. Who know what they will do with it in the future? But for today, there's an easy to use tool that gives you lots and lots of photo editing options.

With iPiccy, even I can create art...so go forth and be creative with iPiccy.

Before iPiccy

After iPiccy

After iPiccy