The Toolkit: Free Online Photo Editors

 

From Flickr to Photobucket, online photo sharing is all the rage. If you or your relatives are sending out favorite pics via social media, you’ll want to know about a crop of free Web sites that let you tweak and enhance images on the fly.

 

These simple editors aren’t for intensive jobs such as retouching old photographs, but they do just fine for minor touchups of pictures you’ve posted online (no need to download first) or on your hard drive.

 

Service	Editing Features	Special Features	Sites Supported	Summary
FlauntR	• remove red eye • crop, rotate and resize • adjust hue, color and exposure	• add text, borders and special effects • make digital scrapbooks • create posters, fine art prints and greeting cards (print and electronic)	Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, Hi5, iGoogle, Live Journal, MySpace, Orkut, Picasa, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, Blogger	You can choose from many fonts, borders and frames; custom crop photos for your cell phone or a specific social network; and store unlimited photos for free. But there’s no auto fix, it’s hard to do a quick edit and FlauntR works only on Windows.
FotoFlexer	• auto fix • remove red eye • crop, rotate and flip • adjust hue, saturation, contrast and brightness	• add text, borders, layers, animation and special effects • create posters and holiday cards	Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Phanfare, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Yahoo!	Easy to use, FotoFlexer offers painting and pop-art effects and one-click photo-sharing. Editing in high-resolution mode runs slow. Auto-fix results are poor, but manual editing works well.
Photoshop Express	• auto fix • remove red eye • crop and rotate • adjust exposure, saturation and white balance • touch up, highlight, fill light, sharpen and soft focus	• add five special effects • create 3-D slide shows • order prints through Shutterfly • upload, view and share photos from your phone	Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa	Though it has only basic editing features, Photoshop Express’ auto-correct works well. You can store up to 2GB of files, organize your images, and create public and private albums.
Picnik	• auto fix n remove red eye • crop, rotate and resize • adjust exposure and color • sharpen	• add text, frames, borders, layers • select from numerous fonts, shapes and special effects • create a collage	Facebook, Flickr, Freewebs, MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa, Webshots	Easy to use, Picnik offers many extras, including holiday fonts and shapes. You can save files in several formats, not just JPG. The premium version, $24.95 a year, features advanced editing tools and no ads.
Splashup	• crop, rotate, flip and resize • adjust hue, color, contrast, brightness and saturation • convert to grayscale	• add text and layers • apply filters, brushes and more	Facebook, Flickr, Picasa	Mimicking the look of desktop photo software, Splashup has many editing tools and advanced options, but lacks auto fix. You can apply an effect to just part of an image.