Flickr's new online photo editing tool is pretty handy

Since we don't really have a place on Ars for posts like this (ones that don't fit into one of our many other journal categories), I figured I'd post a quickie here about Flickr's new photo editing feature introduced today. In addition to all the other stuff you can do with your photos through Flickr, you now have the ability to perform basic edits on uploaded photographs without the use of any third-party software. Just click the newly-added "Edit Photo" button, and you're off.

The feature comes courtesy of Flickr's partnership with Picnik, a very Web 2.0 company that provides all sorts of online photo editing tools. Flickr says that Picnik's tools work on top of the Flickr API (like many other third-party tools, such as one of my favorites, Flickr Export for iPhoto). This means you'll have to grant permission to Picnik before using the tools, but after that, things are smooth sailing.

What can you do with the tools? The following screenshot shows all of the buttons for things you can edit about a photo, but if you can't read them so well, the options include Autofix, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen, and Red-Eye.

When you click on something like Exposure, you are presented with sliders that can adjust elements like exposure and contrast. If you click the "Advanced" button, you also get options for things like highlights, shadows, brightness, and you can even see a histogram for the photo. These are pretty decently-sophisticated tools for an otherwise simplistic web photo editor. When you decide to save the photo, Flickr even gives you the option of saving over the old one or creating a new photo in your timeline (handy if you want to keep the original around for archival purposes).

Overall, I'm quite impressed with the new addition, as should be many of our less tech-savvy family members who don't like using too many extra pieces of software to get the job done. For Mom or Dad, who just want to crop your nasty ex-girlfriend out of a photo without having to "borrow" a full-blown copy of Photoshop from you, this can certainly be a welcome feature. Oh, and it's free, which is always nice.