Picnik is a free, online tool that makes photo-editing fun and easy.  Picnik began its life with one purpose: To bring photo editing awesomeness to everyone!

Picnik is the default editor on Flickr and also integrates seamlessly with a variety of websites including Facebook, MySpace, Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket, Webshots, Lexmark and Box.net. In December, 2007, Picnik won the Macworld Editors’ Choice Award in the Web category.

Picnik is very user friendly, quick & clean, and you don’t even need to register to use the free, basic editing tools.  They do offer a premium version of their editing tool that will give you more advanced features for around $25 a year and they are adding new features at a rate of about one/month.

To get started, you just have to click the “Get started” button, then you’re off to the races!

1. Go to Picnik.com & click “Get started”

2. Click on the Library Tab

3. Choose where you want to upload your photo from- the possibilities are virtually endless!  I am choosing Picasa for this demo.  Picnik will now access my Picasa account so I can view all of my Picasa pictures and before you can say “Picnik Rules!”, I’m able to edit any of the pictures I have stored on my Picasa account.  Here’s my Holiday card from last year:

and here’s a picture I made after my son’s 1st swim meet this past summer:

After you create you edited picture you can save it to your computer AND to the photo site of your choice.  So now, I have the original swimming picture AND the edited version on my Picasa account.  Disclaimer:  My son, Connor, didn’t want me to use the swimming picture because he said there’s no way he could ever be as good at swimming as Michael Phelps is..I twisted his arm to let me use it anyway

I cannot express how easy Picnik is to use.  If you try it once, I promise you’ll be hooked AND you’ll find one-thousand and one ways to use it with your students.

Digitizing your photos is not only a great way, it is really THE best way to protect them.  Digital Cameras gives us both quality and the option of whether or not to print. But, since we take more and more photos, it becomes very difficult for us to store. Most of us store our digital pictures on our computer, but if it crashes .. oops .. everything is lost! Thus online photo storage helps “secure” your photos.

Online photo storage also makes sharing your photos as easy as pie.  In fact, since I never really found making a pie really that easy, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it makes sharing your images even EASIER than making a pie.  What do you think of that?

 Here’s a list of some of the most common photo uploading/sharing websites:

1. Flickr
2. Photobucket
3. Picasa
4. Photoshop Express

Which one is best?  It’s really up to you- Each has its own features and benefits.  For example, I use Flickr to store/share my work photos because many of my colleagues also use it (Flickr is compatible with Yahoo email accounts), and I use Picasa to work with my personal photos.  Picasa is a Google application and requires a gmail account to operate.  Since my personal email is a gmail account, Picasa is the easiest and most sensible tool for me to use to manage my personal photos.

I have never personally used Photobucket, but many people speak highly of it due to its large storage capabilities.  Photoshop express is the new, sleek kid on the block.  It may become a personal favorite to many people because it is basically a streamlined version of the very costly ($300 & up) downloadable softeare package: Adobe Photoshop.

Ultimately, the site you choose to store/share your photos online may be determined by:

• what type of email account you already have
• what type of image softeare you might already be comfortable with, and
• how much and in what manner you wish to edit your photos

Flickr is probably the most widely used of the photo-storing sites I’ve mentioned, as it’s one of the “oldest” Web 2.0 applications that still exists.  I’ll go into more depth in a later post about the wonderful things you can do with Flickr in addition to just storing your pictures there, but you can click here to take a look at just one of the many educational uses of Flickr- the NOTES tool. 

“Teaching Art History with the “NOTES” feature of Flickr: Flickr is a great way to open up an online conversation about art, and the Notes function allows you to comment on a selected feature or section of your image. In this example, you can see the various comments about specific elements of the Merode Altarpiece as you mouse over the image. More general comments about the piece are contributed at the bottom. Notice that both the notes in the photo and the comments below are contributed from a variety of participants. You can add notes by clicking the “add note” icon above the image.” -The Carrot Revolution

If you have any questions/comments about online photo storage/sharing, please feel free to comment to this post.  And, when using sites like Flickr with your students, if you’re worried about them finding inappropriate pictures on the web, why not use that as a teachable moment and bring them into the conversation about it, as suggested in this post by Steve Dembo.

My next post will discuss basic online photo editing, which may help you decide which storage site you choose to use.  Stay tuned!

-HAS

Well, it’s over. Another Summer has come and gone in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, you were able to capture some of your favorite moments on video or in pictures so you can archive your memories and maybe even use them for inspiration this school year.

I thought it would be a nice way to get the school year started by talking about online tools to help you edit and share your photos. So, over the next few weeks I will be blogging about these free tools- how they work, their benefits and limitations, and some ideas about how you and your students can use them to enhance learning.

Maybe you already use some of the tools we’ll be discussing and have some tips/ideas about their use. Or, you might have a question about one of the applications…PLEASE share any and all of your thoughts by commenting on these posts so we can all learn even more

With the popularity of sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook, several websites have recently cropped up that offer online image editing services- and they’re FREE! These programs don’t require money or downloading software, however, they do have some limitations. In the next few posts, we’ll  take a look at some of these web-based photo editing tools, then we’ll explore sites that allow you to store/share those photos. Once we’ve gotten comfortable with these concepts, we’ll move on to some fun tools that will allow you and your students to share your photos in creative ways.

So, here’s a basic outline of what you can do with your photos online:

• store
• edit
• share (a.k.a. Digital Storytelling. This is where the real magic happens!)

I hope you find something in this first series of technology tips that you are inspired to use with your students. And, don’t forget to share your own ideas with us too!