The more we progress through this digital age, the more important image editing becomes. Before, only people who worked in photography or printing needed good image manipulation, but now everyone needs it. It’s so much easier to save photos digitally than in physical snapshots, and manipulating them has never been easier.

However, the cheaper programs that exist really aren’t the best for manipulating those photos. They do the job of cropping, brightening, enlarging, reducing, exporting, etc. But something is lost in translation. Mac supplies the application Preview with its OS X, but while it can reduce file size and crop, you lose a little bit of the image in the process. This is especially true if your’e working with screenshots that have text, as I’m often doing with images here at Make Tech Easier.

Experienced graphic designers and photographers use Adobe Photoshop, but it can be a very costly program. Windows users use GIMP, but it doesn’t work the best on Macs. After much research, trial, and error, I finally found a program that does for Macs what GIMP does for Windows. Pixelmator is the poor man’s Photoshop, but there isn’t anything I need it to do that it can’t.

Let’s start with this image I snapped of the Pixelmator website. When I first open the image in Pixelmator, I get a chance to see all the great tools, many of which I’ll never even need. They’re actually very similar to Photoshop, with selecting tools, painting tools, and retouching tools. Anyone who has used Photoshop will be familiar with these. It also works in layers, just as Photoshop does.

What I need to do is edit photos to make them small enough for the web, yet still retain the sharpness so that I still have the quality once it’s added to the website, Pixelmator gives me all the tools I need to do that and more. I just need to crop the image, and use the Sharpen tool on anything that looks like I might be in danger of losing it. I then just need to adjust the size and Export to the Web. In the resulting dialog box, I can choose the image quality.

The best part about Pixelmator is that it’s a native Mac application. Instead of fighting through Windows options, everything here is meant specifically for the Mac, Snow Leopard and later to be exact, and it also works with Photoshop files, as well as iPhoto, Aperture, and Automator. You can download a free trial at the website www.pixelmator.com, and that’s good for thirty days. The price of the application, either through the website or the App Store, is costly at $29.99, but it’s still hundreds of dollars cheaper than Photoshop. Additionally, they’re coming out with a big update soon and are promising that anyone who buys the current version will get the update for free.

There are many software, like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, that can accomplish this task, but they may slow down your computer. These days, majority of people prefer to use online tools to perform these simple task rather then installing different softwares to edit images.

To solve this problem, we came across an excellent online tool called iPiccy.

Introduction

iPiccy is an excellent online photo editor which can be used to edit images online without installing any software. With iPiccy, you can easily edit your photos, add variety of photo effects, add text or even paint it using different brushes available in iPiccy. Unlike other web services, iPiccy is free and can be used by anyone without filling long registration forms. Just open iPiccy, upload your photo and start editing.

Usage

Using iPiccy is really simple and easy. Even a novice computer user can use and edit image online. Open iPiccy and click on Start Editing button on the home page.

It will ask you from where you want to upload the photo. You can either upload the picture directly from your computer, from web, take picture from your web camera or start with a blank sheet and paint.

After the image is uploaded, it will take you to the image editor with different tabs and effects. You can rotate the image, stabilize it, make color adjustments and much more.

You can even add different effects to your images by clicking on the effects tab on the top. You can add different artistic effects, textures and much more to your images online.

Using iPiccy you can also add text in different fonts and apply different blending options to your text.

Using iPiccy you can also apply different brush strokes and other basic adjustments like pencils, boxes etc to your images.

Once you are done with the editing, just click on Save and Share button on the top right corner and and select the format you want to save your image to.

Conclusion

iPiccy is an excellent, easy to use online photo editing suite which can be used to edit photos without installing any software or any registration. If you are looking for a simple tool to do basic adjustments and add effects to your images, iPiccy is definitely one of the best tools for you. There are many other tools available but they don’t have that many options and effects which can be applied to images.

If you know about any other tool which contain these options, please share with us.

iPiccy website

Touch Retouch is a simple, yet powerful image editing app for Android (and iOS), and yes, it does seems like a mini Photoshop to me. It has only a few features, but I can assure you that they are sufficient and good enough for your daily needs. This app is not about adding funny effects to your photos. It is about cleaning them up and make them look better, even if you have a lousy photo taking skill.

This is what it is capable of doing, removing unwanted objects from the photos.

The following screenshot is a photo that I took in a plane. The one on the left is the original photo. Notice the tip of the plane’s wing on the left corner of the pic? Now take a look at the retouched photo on the right. What did you notice? The plane’s wing is gone. And it is done in less than a minute! Amazing, isn’t it?

Let’s go through the app. When you first start the app, it will prompt you to load a photo, either from your gallery or take new photo using the camera.

When you have loaded your photo, you can start playing with the features. There are only 5 features available for the time being: lasso, paintbrush, move, eraser and clone stamp.

To remove objects from the photo, select the paintbrush. Use your finger to tap (and drag) the part where you want to erase.

Once done, tap the Go button (third from the right). This will apply the changes and remove the unwanted object from the photo.

Easy, isn’t it? You can also play with the clone stamp effect (I admit, it was badly done).

And lastly, don’t forget to save the changes (the last icon). You can save it to your photo library, or share it with your friends.

One thing to note: I am using the review version for this article and there are still some bugs, like force closing, effects not applied, photos not loading etc. The actual app was released to the Android market few days ago and I have not have the chance to play with the actual version yet. Hopefully, it is only this review version that has the bugs.

Other than the bugs, this app is awesome. With it, you can do wonder to your photos and become a pro, even though in reality, you are not.

Free Giveaway

We are glad to have 10 licence keys to give away. Here is what you need to do:

This giveaway begins now and ends Saturday, 11th June 2011 at 2359hrs Pacific Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

Update: Touch Retouch is now free in Android market. Download it here.

Touch Retouch is available in the Android market for US$0.99.

MakeTechEasier would like to thank adva-soft.com for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interested in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us.

1. Picture2Life

Nice tool to create awesome collages. With an inventory of almost 300 pre-defined collage templates, it actually makes the job practically effortless. All you have to do is select the images and select a template to order the images in a collage. The best part is that the service also offers a Picture2life Mozilla Firefox Addon. Here are some of the collages I created using Picture2life.

Score : 4.5/5

2. PhotoVisi

Photovisi is a tool to create collages online. Presently you have 18 collage templates to choose from. You can select custom background and also rearrange images in the collage. You can read our detailed review on Photovisi. Below is a demo collage that I created from the online service. You can also try Photovisi on Facebook by using Photovisi Facebook app.

Score : 3.5/5

3. Shape Collage

This is a shape based collage tool that accumulates a collection of images(or image URLs) into different shapes. You have to use image URls in the online free version of the tool. Shape collage desktop tools are also available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Java platforms. The offline version is free and can create collages directly from images i.e you won’t need to use image URLs for this. Shape Collage has also got its own Facebook app. The screenshot below is a shape collage created using Shape Collage.

Score : 3.5/5

4. Picasa

Picasa is a much known Google product that can organize images with a Picasa Web Albums server sync feature and also offers a free server space of 1Gb. But this is not the reason it’s enlisted here. Picasa also lets you create nice looking collages using the desktop tool. The tool is one my most favorite while creating collages (after Picture2life) and thats because of the awesome templates and controls that it offers and you do not have to be online to get all these. Check out a nice tutorial by Google on how to create collages using Picasa. Check out two nice collages created using Picasa.

Score : 4/5

5. Fotonea

The collage creation is not simple here, but its a great tool as you can customize the arrangement of images in the final collage. To get started, just select and upload images(only six allowed), choose a background and size for the collage. You can then rearrange the images as you prefer. You get to customize the size, alignment of all the images. But as I had told at start, not everyone has got skills to innovate, this becomes the last option to opt while creating a collage and hence this is last but not the least option.

Score : 3/5

Its obvious, that not every list contains all that is available and I know there are still many other tools out there, but those are the tools that I preferred over the others as they did the job pretty easily and simply. If there are any other tool that helped you creating collages please share them via comments.

digiKam can perform the following batch tasks:

Border: create a border around your photos.

Color: changes the colors of your photos using effects, including normalize, fuzzy, and monochrome.

Convert: converts photos into several formats, including JPEG, PNG, and TIFF.

Filter: sharpen, despeckle, blur, and many other filtering options.

Rename: more than just simple file renaming, this includes date format flags and sequential numbering.

Recompression: get higher quality, better compressed JPEG, PNG, TIFF, or TGA files.

Resize: for those web photo sharing sites, resizing multiple images will come in handy.

RAW converter: converting raw photos directly from a camera.

In addition, standard editing features can be applied to multiple images. These include: converting images to black and white, rotate, flip, EXIF data, and others.

The procedure for batch editing is essentially the same for all operations:

1. Select the images in the album you want to edit. To do this, hold Ctrl and highlight the appropriate images, or if they are not all in a row, click the “plus” icon in the top left that appears when hovering over the thumbnail. To select all photos, press Ctrl-A.

2. Click “Tools” (or “Images” depending on the task) and then select one of the batch options in the bottom segment of the menu.

3. A window will appear, and at the top, there should be a drop-down menu. Select the effect you want to apply.

4. Choose any options available.

5. At this point, you can also add or remove more images with with buttons on the right.

6. Select the destination folder.

7. Choose the overwrite mode. The default is “rename”. Use the others with caution.

8. Click “Start”

To edit multiple sets of files, you can use the Batch Queue Manager found in the second section of the “Tools” menu.

1. In “Queue Settings”, select the the target folder you want to use. You can also change behavior and file renaming settings.

2. In the main digiKam window, select the photos you want to use and drag them over to the queue manager window.

3. In the “Batch Tools Available” section, select the tools you want to execute. Right click on each one you want and click “Assign Tool”. You may assign more than one.

4. Click on each tool in the “Assigned Tools” section. To the right, you will see “Tool Settings”. Edit settings for the tools as you see fit.

5. Click “Run” to start the processes. During that time, you can return to the normal Digikam window until the batches are done.

digiKam can be very useful for editing photos, especially if you have a large number of images to deal with at once. The renaming functions and folder selection allow you to experiment without damaging the original copies. digiKam is free and open source software released under the GNU GPL. It is part of the KDE project and is available for Linux and Mac OS X. Most Linux distributions carry digiKam and the Kipi plugins package in their repositories.

Xaralx, now known as Xara Xtreme for Linux, is a free and open source image editing program for Linux. It is based on the commercial Xara imaging editing software for Windows, and is primarily used for vector image creation and editing. Over the next few weeks, I will provide some handy tips that you can use in Xara. The first is an easy way to slice an image into whatever shape you want. As with any vector image editing, the resulting shape will be an object that you can move, rotate, add to a larger image, and treat like a normal shape.

Install Xaralx

Xaralx is available through many Linux distribution repositories. For Ubuntu, simply install it through Synaptic or enter from the command line:

sudo apt-get install xaralx

You may also want to install extras:

sudo apt-get install xaralx-examples xaralx-svg

Import an Image

1. Start xaralx from the menu.

2. Click “File” and “Import“.

3. Find an image you want to use and click “Open“.

Feel free to resize the image or make other changes before your proceed.

Slice the Image

1. Click the rectangle tool, ellipse tool, or quickshape tool (for all other types of shapes — it requires some additional customization).

2. Click in the white space and drag to create your shape.

3. Click the select tool (the first one shaped like a mouse pointer).

4. Drag your shape over top of the image, positioning it however you want to slice it.

5. Click the transparency tool (the wine glass icon).

6. A new toolbar will appear.  On the right, drag the transparency bar about halfway so that the shape is translucent.  This way you can make sure you have it positioned over the image the way you want it.

7. With the shape still selected, hold Shift and click on the image underneath so that both are selected.

8. Right click on top of the shape, select “Combine Shapes” and click “Slice (cut) Shapes“.

The top shape should disappear leaving a cut-out of your image in that shape. Drag it away from the remaining shape and delete the leftover if you wish.

Export the Image

It is always a good idea to save the whole page for future use, but to save the image only, you need to export it.

1. Select the newly sliced image.

2. Click “File” and “Export…”

3. Select the file type. (If you want the area surround your image to be transparent, select “.png”. PNG is also useful if you intend to manipulate the image further in Gimp).

4. After you have selected the file format and destination folder, click “Save”.

Other Techniques

If you are interested in the reverse of what you just did, instead of clicking “Slice“, just click “Subtract Shapes“. Your shape will behave like a cookie cutter, removing that area from your image. If you click “Intersect Shapes“, it will automatically cut out the part that you want and discard the rest.

Once you have sliced your image, you can use any of the other features available in Xara or export the image to another program. In the coming weeks, I will introduce you to some of the features Xara has. Many of its features are similar to Inkscape (a very popular vector graphics editor), while some are unique and welcomed additions to Linux. Although the Linux version is somewhat different from the Windows one, many of the techniques are the same. Experiment and see what you can produce.

Motivated by a need, I tried to find a way to solve this problem and found Aviary.com. Here’s how it works:

1. Taking Screenshots:

No matter which browser you are using, simply go to the address bar and add aviary.com/ before the web page you are trying to capture. So if you want to take a screenshot of Yahoo.com you will type aviary.com/http://yahoo.com in your address bar.

If you find this hard to remember, you can also go to Aviary.com/launch/falcon and enter the URL of the web page that you want to capture.

Following either of these methods would take a screen capture of the web page and open it in an online image editor. If you want to capture only a certain part of a web page, you can crop the image once it has been captured.

2. Editing Screenshots:

Aviary is also an online image editor providing almost all standard features that you can find in a regular image editing tool. You can draw shapes and lines, add text and arrows and use brushes.

You can also use the editor to resize, crop, rotate or flip an image. While resizing, you can simple slide the width or the height bar to a desired specification. The aspect ratio of the image would remain locked during resizing so it does not go out of proportion. Similarly, you can flip the image vertically or horizontally, or rotate it at any desired angle from 0 to 360.

If you think you need more powerful editing tools, you can open the Advanced Image Editor. Features like adding effects to images and working with a color palette are also available within the image editor. You can also use the zoom tool to view an enlarged version of the image and add outlines and shadows to the image.

Saving Images:

Once you are done editing, just click on the “Save To Desktop” button to save the images on your local drive. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free account and host your images online free of cost.

Tip: If you simply want to share the image with somebody without downloading or uploading it anywhere, click on the “Save & Host Online” button, but when it prompts you to register for an account, click “Cancel”. After this, you will see a small “Share this creation” link which will provide you with a permanent URL of your image that you can share with others.

Aviary also offers a number of other on-the-fly image tools that you can use free of cost. These include an Image Editor, a Color Editor, an Effects Editor, a Vector Editor and an Image Markup tool. If you regularly use Firefox, you can also access the Aviary tools through their Firefox Add-on.

What other websites do you use to capture your screenshots?

With my wife being an amateur photographer, I’m often exposed to the trials and tribulations that come with digital photography.  Once such dilemma is the fact that pictures taken with today’s digital cameras are often incredibly large in size.

For example, I took a picture of my monitor the other day and the actual file was 2.81 MB with a resolution of 3008 x 2000 pixels.  The truth is, I’ve seen her produce much bigger pictures than that!  It needed to be about 500 pixels wide

When I took that picture, I also took about 100 more in the same session.  Imagine how quickly the post grew in size when I started writing an article using these images.  They had to be resized, but there were 100 of them and that would take forever.  Enter Bulk Image Resizer from MariusSoft for Windows.

Bulk Image Resizer is a little freeware application that does precisely what the name describes – it resizes batches of images quickly and effectively.  Offering support for JPEG, JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF, TIFF, and PNG, the Bulk Image Reizer will satisfy the average user need

Getting Started

To get started with this exceptional tool, download the zip file from the MariusSoft website.  Once the download completes, extract the installation file from the archive and install the app.  There are no special tricks, it uses a very straight-forward install wizard.

After the installation completes, launch the Bulk Image Resizer from your Windows Start menu.  Click the Add button to select the images that you want to add to the batch.  Since I had an entire directory of files to resize, I simply went to the folder and selected everything.

I left the Resize Mode set to width, since I only knew how wide the pictures could be.  The tool automatically keeps the aspect ratio, so that your pictures maintain the shape they started with.  Next I set the dimensions to 500 pixels wide.  After that, I selected an output directory and finally clicked the Convert button to get started.

It literally took only a few seconds and all 73 pictures were processed.  As you can see in the following comparison, the folder of resized pictures shrunk considerably in size compared to the originals.  Going from 174 MB down to 20.6 MB is fairly significant.

The images looked great and were a perfect fit for my article.  There was one downside though.  All of the pictures lost some of the metadata that was once associated with them.  If you compare the next set of pictures, you can see a lot of information about my Nikon digital SLR camera.  However, all of the camera specific data was lost after the conversion.

Final Thoughts

In all fairness, the information wasn’t relevant to the article, so losing it wasn’t the end of the world.  I also archived the originals.  If I ever need to get at that metadata, I have a copy stored away.

I would highly recommend this lightweight and easy to use photo processing tool to just about anyone who has a need for it.  The interface is very intuitive and easy to navigate.  Updating your pictures in a hurry has become easier than ever – thanks to the Bulk Image Resizer.

What other software do you use to resize your images?

Even though Adobe Photoshop is the standard for creating professional image, not everyone can afford or want to pay the high pay for it. If you are looking for a free online alternative to Photoshop, then SUMO Paint is the best that you can get.

Sumo Paint is a free online image editor that looks like a complete clone of Adobe Photoshop. It is built with Adobe Flex and run completely from your browser. For those who are worrying that this application will take up tons of memory, I have tested it and found that it is stable, loads fairly fast and only takes up a fraction of my memory usage.

The impression you get when you first load up SUMO Paint is its Photoshop lookalike interface. Seasoned Photoshop user will find the floating toolbar, palettes and color bars far too familiar.

Unlike other online editors that focused mostly on image editing, SUMO Paint provides you with the necessary tools to create a professional image. You can find the Ink, Pencil tools for you to do your drawing (no Pen tool), custom shapes for vector work and add multiple layers for various effects. There is also a variety of brushes and filters effects that you can use.

To load an image in SUMO Paint, you can either upload the image from your computer, or simply grab an online image with its URL. Alternatively, you can create a SUMO account and load your image from there. Once you have finished your editing, you can download it to your computer in jpg/png format or save to your SUMO account for future re-editing. There is no social sharing feature here, but you can set the image that you save in your SUMO account to be available for public viewing.

When compared to Photoshop, there are still many features clearly lacking in SUMO Paint, but if you are looking for a free editor that gives you a good set of editing tool with easy to use Photoshop-like interface, SUMO Paint is definitely the one to go for.