We are going to launch a new product soon. The SnackTools family is growing and we’re very excited about it… so excited that we can’t keep the good news only for ourselves anymore.

But we don’t want to spoil the surprise, so we’ll give you only one clue about our new product: it has something to do with audio files.

Stay tuned to find out first when the new tool will be live… ’till then we’ll be working hard to bring a great application.

PhotoSnack is now updated with cool new features that will make your life much much easier. Let me tell you shortly about them:

1. New logo

before                                            after

2. Better workflow

This means that you’ll be able to make photo slideshows in less time. We’ve heard opinions, from our members and bloggers who wrote about us, that PhotoSnack is easy to use and intuitive. But we thought we could make it easier and, encouraged by our users, we found some simple solutions to do that.

Firstly you upload your photos, then choose a template and last, you publish the slideshow. Only 3 little steps.

3. New templates

Frame slide, Photo Glide, Vertical 3D Cube and Horizontal 3D Cube are the new good looking templates that could make your photos have greater impact. Hope you will like them.

4. Free and premium templates

We have now two categories of templates: free and premium. The first ones are simple and nice. We think they’ll match every blog, Facebook page or website. The premium templates have higher image quality and were made for professional photographers or web users that want to make a portfolio of their work.

5. Preview templates with your own photos

What you see is what you get , by this I mean that now you can see how your images will look in a specific template before choosing it. So you can try all the templates to find the one that matches your pictures.

We’d like to hear your feedback; feel free to write any question or thought on our feedback bar.

More than one year ago we released an application that anyone can use to make flash banners, without knowing Flash or having any programming skills. But not all users that need a banner want  to make it from scratch, all by themselves. And for various reasons – they’re experts in other fields, they don’t have the time, and so on.

For them we came with the idea of offering an additional service: custom banner design. In other words you can now hire our experienced designers to design and animate your banners.

The idea is very simple: you order a banner, with all the details we need (including messages and images featured in your banner) and after 2 business days we’ll get back to you with the finished banner ad.

You can choose from animated flash banners or interactive flash banners, starting at $149.

If this sounds interesting to you, go to Custom Flash Banner Design page and read more about the subject.

It’s a great honor for us that PhotoSnack was recommended by Mashable as a fantastic tool for exhibiting portfolios.

We are happy that PhotoSnack is seen as an easy to navigate and easy to use application. But I’d better let you see what’s their opinion about PhotoSnack:

Pros: The web interface is easy to navigate and use. Your photos live on PhotoSnack’s website, so there’s no need for web hosting or link pointing. Updating, changing, and reorganizing slideshows is a snap, and customizable embed codes ensure your presentation will fit snugly on your site.

Cons: While there are a few custom options, the presentation is fairly basic for free accounts, and the embeds contain links back to the main site. It is also worth noting that Flash is still not viewable on most mobile platforms and may leave a gaping hole for some users with outdated browser plug-ins.

Read the full article here.

Looking for a way to say Happy Valentine’s Day? We’ve made some banners that you can customize or take them as they are and post them on your blog, website or any other place like MySpace or Facebook.

This is how you can grab the Valentine’s day eCards and share your love:

1. Enter BannerSnack and log in
2. Go to Templates (next to My banners)
3. Choose the one you like and click Edit
4. Here you can edit your card (for example change text or add something interesting). Then click on the Publish button
5. Last step is to share your Valentine’s card. You can choose to post a link on social networks or copy the embed code and insert in your blog or website (like we did with these two banners).

Hope you’ll have the most romantic Valentine’s Day!

Online photo editing has its advantages: you don’t need to download any software, most of them are free (or have a free version), easy to use and intuitive.

There are a lot of tools out there that you can use to enhance your images. But I’d like to recommend you the best three of them: Pixlr, Picnik and Aviary. I’m sure you’ll find one that’s perfect for what you need.

Pixlr

I found it on Twitter; it’s recommended by many people. Pixlr’s interface is very similar to Adobe Photoshop’s, offering you a nice collection of filters, custom effects, contrast & brightness adjustments, hue & saturation etc. For advanced projects, you can even work with layers!

Pixlr, due to its complexity, is both a photo editor and a graphic design tool. So it’s a great solution if you want to design a banner or to draw something.

One word description: easy

Picnik

I played a lot with Picnik; it’s very easy to use, fast and fun. You can open your photos from several places: your computer, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, MySpace and others. Besides the basic options like resize, crop, adjust colors and contrast, you can add effects, frames, text, stickers in just a few seconds.

You can even make a nice collage or a scrapbook from your images. And in the end you can share your photos on different social networks.

I also like the fact that Picnik optimizes your images, reducing their file size. This is useful when you share your photos online and want your website, blog or album to load fast.

Flickr integrated Picnik in its platform and that is a great recommendation for this tool.

One word description: fun.

Aviary

Aviary offers multiple tools for web designers and graphic artists, including an image editor, color editor, vector editor, effects editor and even a screen capture tool. Aviary’s interface looks like Adobe Photoshop’s and has a lot of effects and filters, but I found it a bit more difficult to use than the previous two image editors. However if you are a beginner, their collection of  tutorials might help you. One feature that sets Aviary apart is the ability to start a project from a design made by other users.

I think that Aviary is best suited for people who already have some experience in image manipulation.

One word description: professional

Did you try any of these photo editors? Or do you use another one?

The Easy Peeezy Online Banner Maker from Snack Tools is a short review about one of our products. I found the title very funny, the post written in a nice friendly way. And I like the fact that BannerSnack is seen like that: an easy to use tool. Here is how the article begins:

So here is the deal, you need to make some slick ass banner so you can go and sell some hot new product, what you should of course is stop being lazy and take some time out and learn photoshop, making sure you learn how to use layers and the animation side of things but for those of you who don’t have a design degree or several days to play with then you should certainly check out BannerSnack. Its awesome!

Read the full article