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

I made a list of 10 creative people that want to make the Internet prettier. They have 3 things in common: they write great tutorials, they offer free amazing stuff (like brushes, icons, patterns, textures) and they post a lot of examples for your inspiration.

If you’re in one of the following situations, our Twitter LIST was made for you:

• you want to improve your web designer skills;
• you need inspiration for websites, headers, ads, twitter backgrounds;
• or you just want to learn how to make 3 simple things to improve your blog design.

Make sure you visit their blogs too!

New year, new plans and new tasks – that’s a lot to bear in mind! So I need something to help me manage them. Browsing through the web I found a lot of “to do list” applications, but the following three got my interest. Also I read a lot of great reviews about them on different blogs.

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Six Revisions is an amazing website for designers and web developers, full of ideas, tutorials, tips and other resources. And we thought they would be perfect for a great giveaway, to start the year.

If you’ll visit their website you can win 1000 SnackTools points, to spend on both our products. All you have to do is answer this simple question “If you won 1000 SnackTools points, how would you use it?”.

The giveaway ends on Thursday, January 14, 2010, you’d better hurry up!

Good luck!