My current obsession du jour is facebook.com and while trying to rid myself of boredom one day, I browsed the hundreds of apps offered by third parties, looking for nice ones to add to my profile. One particular app there is called Picnik which I immediately added because it says on its description that it can be used to edit photos without leaving facebook. I was today that I was able to really look at the particular application because I was looking for a way to post my autographed photo on another friend’s profile (It’s just for laughs but if you want one, just tell me and I will even write a dedication). When the application loaded, I was pleased with the design. I went directly to picnik.com to check it out and was really pleased with it.

As I’ve said earlier, Picnik lets users edit photos while online. It uses AJAX (I think) and it loads fast for broadband users. Editing photos using it is intuitive but for the real beginners, a balloon pops up explaining what each button does.

Users may upload images from their computer. Alternatively, they can access photos from their facebook, picassa, or flickr accounts.

The site is still in its beta stage but the basic image manipulations are fully functional as well as a few added bonus which I really love. There are a couple of effects to choose from. There are also frames available. My favorite effect is called the lomo-ish which, as the name implies, simulates the effect of a lomo camera.

Although photo manipulations using this web service are limited, I like the convenience and how time-saving it is. I don’t have to open Photoshop and wait for all its plug-ins to load just to rotate or crop a photo.

One final note. All the images used for this post were edited using Picnik.