There’s still plenty of online image editors, even though Aviary and Picnik have closed up shop. When you need a quick way to edit images, and don’t have Photoshop or other photo editors on your computer, web apps can sure come in handy, and it’s great there’s still a selection of them. If you are a regular reader of Web.AppStorm, you know we have covered tools like Pixlr and Photo Raster in past for simple online photo edits.
This week, though we’ve got a more advanced app to put through the paces: Picozu. After the break, we’ll see what makes it great and if it’s the photo editor you should try for your online edits.
Overview
Picozu is a very simple and easy to use online tool that can help users perform many different photo editing tasks online. Users can add multiple filter effects: blur images, generate patterns, and much more. After editing your photos, you can easily save them online or upload to different cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Skydrive, and more. Best of all, you don’t even have to have Flash or any other plugins installed to use Picozu.
Picozu also allows users to login with their Facebook account and import photos from there. You can then apply different filters and share them with your Facebook friends. If you are a Twitter addict, this service even allows you to read your Twitter timeline and post tweets from the same window as well. To help you use the service properly, you can even watch the sample tutorial video which shows up when you launch Picozu for the first time.
Getting Started
To get started with Picozu, open any image you want to add effects to. It can either be from your computer or any online service like Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa and many more. Or, you can even create a new image and create your own drawings if you’d like. But odds are, you’ll use it to edit your photos, so let’s look at that.
To import any image from photo sharing websites, say Facebook, just select Facebook from the list of options and it will ask you to authenticate Picozu. After the authentication is complete, it will show you a drop down menu with the list of all your uploaded albums. Just select the album and open the image you want to add effects to. The process is generally the same, no matter what online storage you use for your photos. You can just authenticate Picozu with them, then grab the photo you want to edit.
Adding Effects and Filters
Let’s take a look at some of the filters and effects that you can add to your photos in Picozu. Just click on the filter option and it will display all the effects that you can add to your photos. You can add textures, retro effects, colorize your photos, remove red eye, add noise and frames, pop art and much. Unlike in Photoshop, you do not have to worry about advanced settings. It’s automatic: just select the effect and it will apply them to your image instantly. That might not please the more advanced users, but it’s plenty for most uses.
After you are done with the editing, you can easily download the image to your computer or upload it on multiple cloud storage services like Dropbox, Facebook or Windows Live. To save it on any online service, you must authorize Picozu to access that service. Say you want to send your edited picture to Dropbox. After authenticating, it will show you a small notification after the image is uploaded. The service will create a new folder in your Dropbox account in Apps folder named Picozu and will save the image there.
Interface and Functionality
When it comes to interface of the app, its interface is simple and easy to use. There are different windows for different options like brushes, layers, fonts, image info, and more. You can view all the windows at the bottom of the screen and display them in the main editor window if you want to.
Then, if you’re worried whether it’ll be up to the tasks you need, you’ll be glad to hear that in our testing, the app works as it should. I didn’t come across any problems at all. I opened images from my computer, imported them from Facebook, added affects and filters, and saved the images to cloud storage services, and all worked perfect. Seamless, even.
The thing which I didn’t find in any photo sharing app is the Twitter integration meaning that after authorizing Twitter, you can read and post your tweets without leaving Picozu window. It adds a small window in the photo editor page which displays recent tweets from your timeline. You can even post tweets from the same window. That’s an odd little addition to a photo editor, but one you might find handy if you want to keep up with the social network everywhere.
Conclusion
Picozu is a very useful and easy to use photo editor. Obviously you cannot compare it with tools like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom but it can come in handy in many situations. Before Picozu, I was a regular user of Picnik but after its demise last year, I started searching for a good alternative which is easy to use and doesn’t require installing any third party application on my computer. Personally, I try not to work with Adobe Photoshop as it can be really heavy on system resources — and the budget.
Then, as I am a regular Twitter user, I don’t have switch windows after every few minutes to read the latest tweets from my timeline or even post one. All I have to do is just click on the reload button and it displays all the latest tweets in the same editing window.
Which online photo editor do you use? If you tried Picozu, we’d love to hear about your views in the comments below!