The free online photo effect editor Psykopaint basically offers a very similar functionality. The biggest difference is that Psykopaint is an online tool that everyone with a modern web browser and Internet connection can use.

The majority of tools can be used right away, only the layer functionality becomes only available after registration. An account is however needed to save images, share them online or create a virtual greetings card.

You can upload a photo from your computer system. This process is available without registration. Even better, photos of all sizes are accepted by the service (I tested it with a 4000×3000 pixel photo which worked just fine).

A set of brushes are available in the lower left corner of the screen. These brushes define the art style that you want to apply. The selection is large, from old masters like Van Gogh and Degas over standard effects like Mosaic, Pencil or Pixels to outright crazy brushes that add hears, butterflies or a shredder like Ribbon effect to the photo.

Each brush is visualized on mouse over, which is excellent to get a better understanding of its functionality without having to test it first.

I have not found a way to apply a filter or brush to the full image. You can change the size and opacity of each brush with sliders in the main interface. It is furthermore possible to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or the slider in the lower right corner of the screen. a click on z can be used to go back a maximum of ten steps.

A click on Details underneath the brushes menu opens options to change a brush’s shape. A total of ten different customization options are available, most in slider form.

There is also a colors menu to change the color, brightness and contrast of the image.

Psykopaint can be fun to play with, even if you lack in talent when it comes to painting or using an image editor (like I do). It could be interesting to give kids something to play with as well.

Users with enough talent can create great pieces of art with the program. I suggest you check out the gallery for some examples of that. Or just visit the front page and start working on your images right away.

PixBuilder Studio which has recently been released in version 2 is a freeware alternative for Windows. The program on first glance seems to offer a similar functionality as Paint.Net.

You can associate image file extensions with the program during installation, which would speed things up if you do a lot of photo editing on your computer.

You find the usual assortment of tools lined up in the main interface of the program. One interesting option is the ability to move the tools panel around. You can for instance place it under the File toolbar instead of the left sidebar. There is unfortunately no option to make it a floating toolbar as Paint.Net does.

Toolbars in image editors seem to use more or less the same standard when it comes to which tools are provided there. Pixbuilder Studio is not different in this regard. You find the most popular tools there. The right side displays all other panels. This includes the zoom panel, an undo panel, custom tools panel to customize the selected tool or a list of channels.

Many options are only available under the main File toolbar at the top of the program window. This includes a huge list of color tools and effects. The program supports all my requirements (including blur) and then a lot more for users who want to dive deeper into image editing.

The program supports only a handful of formats, which can be a issue, especially for photographers who want to edit Raw images. Support are jpeg, gif, png, psd and a handful of lesser used formats.

I suggest you take a look at the developer website which lists the core program features and offers download links. PixBuilder Studio is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system.

The program can be a viable alternative for users who do not want to install Paint.Net because of its dependence on the Microsoft .Net Framework.

Easy Image Modifier is a free portable image processing software for the Windows operating system. The software offers basic image processing options, including resizing, watermarking, editing of file properties, conversion and renaming.

The program launches in file list mode. Here it is possible to load select images or images inside a folder for processing. Both options trigger the standard Windows file browser where single or multiple files or a folder can be selected for processing.

All images supported by the program are then displayed in the interface. The program lists their names, file paths and extensions. It furthermore displays information about the total number of images and their size. Options to remove some or all images from the listing are available as well.

All processing options are listed on the left sidebar. You get basic image modifications under Editing for instance, where you can rotate, flip, resize or watermark the selected images.

All processing options need to be enabled by the user first before they become available. Resizing allows you to select a maximum resolution in pixels, to change the dimensions by a given percentage and to keep the aspect ratio of the images.

The application has a few options that sets it apart from comparable applications. It comes with a filtering option to exclude images from being processed. Size, name, path and extension filters are available.

Another interesting feature is the sorting option, which sorts images before they are processed. That’s handy to bring images in a specific order before they are processed (to get the renaming right for instance).

Easy Image Modifier can remove meta information and file date information from all images.

Once you are satisfied with the selection you can optionally configure format conversions and the renaming of images. A click on the process button at the top processes the images based on the selected parameters.

Easy Image Modifier is a convenient program to edit images. The program comes with multiple interface languages. Supported are all recent 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Downloads are provided at the developer web page.

Those users, and everyone else who is looking for a lightweight image editor, might want to take a closer look at Hornil StylePix. The free program is available as a portable version and installer. And with a setup size of less than two Megabytes it is a lightweight application by all means.

The features it offers appear to be very similar to those of comparable image editors like Paint.net. I have to admit that I have not used image editors for anything but basic tasks like resizing images, batch processing or filters, which makes me an amateur dabbler at best when it comes to image editing programs.

Experienced users who need more than that find a large assortment of tools, from histograms and layers to objects.

Hornil StylePix supports JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIF, TGA, BMP and TSP image formats. PSD is unfortunately not supported.

Hornil StylePix Features:

• Tabbed image browsing – You can open multiple images in tabs in the interface and switch between them at anytime. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Tab can be used to switch between open images as well. It displays thumbnail previews of all open images.
• Slideshow – You can watch picture slideshows
• Histogram and waveform
• Multi-layer & grouping support
• Selection tools – Everything is supported, from automatic range selection to square, circle, polygon and lasso selections.
• Image filters – More than 50 image filters to work with.
• Drawing tools – The usual assortment of drawing tools are supported, brushes, lines, fills, shapes or gradients for instance.
• Text tool – You can add text to images. The tool supports font, size, width, color and other selections.
• Transform images – Change orientation or alignment, among other options.
• Enhance and restore tools
• Crop tool
• Batch Processing – Supports sizing, rotation, renaming, formats and filters.

I suggest you look at the overview page at the developer website for a detailed feature list.

You can also watch this video introduction which showcases some of the image editor’s features (unfortunately without sound).

The program has been translated into 53 different languages. It will run on all versions of Windows from Windows XP on.

Windows users can download Hornil StylePix from the developer homepage.

Brushes in The GIMP allow the user to extend The GIMP’s flexibility by creating different ways to draw with effect or style. Brushes can be any number of styles from either standard drawing tool brushes to more artistic brushes.  Regardless of the type of brush you want to add (you can even create your own), you have to know how to add them, before you can use them. In this Ghacks article I will show you how to add new brushes to The GIMP in Linux.

Where to find brushes

Obviously you have to have brushes in order to add them. If you are not creating your own brushes, you will need to find them online. There is a wealth of resources for The GIMP on line. Here are some great sites to find brushes to add to The GIMP.

TechZillo: One fine collection of artistic brushes. This site includes blood splatter brushes, grass blade brushes, scratch brushes, grunge brushes, and more.

deviantArt: A small collection but includes spiderwebs and firework brushes.

Free Brushes: A site dedicated to free brushes for not only The GIMP but also Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

1000 Free Brushes: That’s right, 1,000 free brushes for The GIMP.

Installing brushes

When you download a brush (or set of brushes) you are going to find either a single .gbr file or an archive of collected .gbr files. Once you have downloaded the file(s) (we’ll assume they have been downloaded to ~/Downloads) open up a terminal window and unpack the file (if needed). Now, from the terminal window follow these steps:

1. Make sure The GIMP is closed.
2. If you are using a distribution that requires you to su to the root user, do so first.
3. Issue the command ls *gbr to make sure you are in the correct directory and the files are there.
4. Issue the command sudo mv *gbr /usr/share/gimp/2.x/brushes Where x is the release of The GIMP you are using. NOTE: If you are using a distribution that does not require sudo leave that portion out of the command.

That’s it. You can now fire up The GIMP and begin using the new brushes. Let’s see how this is done.

Usage

Figure 1

I have downloaded a fun set of brushes called Doodle 2. After installing the brushes, I open up The GIMP and when I click the Brushes button, I can see all of the new Doodle 2 brushes in the tool (see Figure 1). As you can see, near the bottom of brushes window, the Doodle 2 brushes are there. All you need to do is click a tool that can use brushes, like the paintbrush, and then select the brush you wan to use.

Final thoughts

That’s it. Adding new brushes really is a great way to make The GIMP easier and far more useful. And don’t forget, you can also create your own brushes for The GIMP.

The first and last option display a selection menu to download the screenshot to the local computer, copy it to the clipboard, share it with the image hosting service imm.io or send it to an online editor for immediate image editing.

Sometimes it is necessary to create a screenshot of a custom screen area, that’s where the second command is for. This option on selection displays a rectangle on the screen that can be modified in size and moved around on the screen.

The processing options remain the same once the correct position and size have been found.

firefox screenshot

The process is really simple and does not take more than a few seconds to complete. This means it is possible to create screenshots of the whole Firefox screen, or only part of the screen in no time.

The image editor requires Adobe Flash, and provides everything one would expect from an online image editor. It is accessible without the Firefox extension as well.

Some of its features are support of multiple images, layers, image manipulation, filters, image adjustments, resizing, rotating and a lot more. Very handy if no good image editor is available on the system, especially since it can be used without registration.

pixlr image editor online

Next to those options, Pixlr Grabber supports sending images on a web page right to the image editor for editing. This can be done by right-clicking on images with the extension enabled in Firefox.

Finally, it is possible to remove or reduce the options in the right-click context menu and the status bar.

Pixlr makes it dead easy to create screenshots in the browser. This coupled with the free to use editor are a solid combination for users who need to take screenshots and edit images in the browser regularly.

The portable software program hijacks the Windows Print screen and adds functionality to it at the same time. Pressing print on the keyboard will give the user the option to draw a rectangle on the screen to capture a part of it. Adding the Ctrl key to the procedure will take a screenshot of the whole screen while Ctrl-Shift-Print will capture a scrolling window.

The default action after pressing the keys can be configured in the program’s settings. It is for instance possible to open the internal image editor afterwards to edit the image or to open the screenshot history instead. The history lists a number of recently taken screenshots, by default 20.

Other automatic options include copying the captured image or the path of the captured image to the clipboard.

The image editor offers access to six drawing tools that can be used to add arrows, numbers, text and rectangles to the image as well as blur part of it. The crop, resize and border tools complete the image editing options that the program provides.

Screenpresso is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that should provide computer users with all the tools needed to capture screens and edit the resulting images. The image editor could use additional options like specifying the blur level or the compression level when saving images.

Windows users who want to try out Screenpresso can download the screen capture software from the developer’s website.

The new version fixes several performance issues that include a memory leak which adds to the program’s stability.

• All font face variants (e.g., Arial vs. Arial Narrow) are now available with the Text tool in Win7/Vista with DirectWrite.
• Bitmap font types (e.g. Courier, Terminal, Fixedsys) are now available with the Text tool in Win7/Vista.
• Fixed some bad text kerning with the Text tool at small font sizes when antialiasing was turned off.
• For the Image->Resize function, the quality, correctness, and performance of Bilinear and Bicubic sampling modes have been improved. Super Sampling also has some performance improvement.
• Improved the rendering quality for the Hue/Saturation adjustment. Also made a new icon for it.
• Fixed many subtle rendering issues with the Move Selected Pixels tool. These were apparent when flipping or rotating a selected area.
• Fixed: The Line/Curve tool was applying pixel snapping to the curve nodes, which caused lines to “bend” when using the Shift key to constrain the angle.
• Fixed some extraneous CPU usage related to unnecessary or redundant thumbnail updates.
• Fixed a few dialogs that looked wrong with Aero glass with Remote Desktop or Virtual PC.
• Fixed a nasty memory leak with Flatten followed by Undo.
• Fixed some issues related to effects that took awhile to cancel. As it turns out, drag-and-drop was enabled at this time, which easily lead to crashes or hangs.
• Some Win7 systems could not detect that .NET 3.5 SP1 was installed, even though it was. A fallback detection function has been added.
• For plugin authors, the Effect class now has a pollable IsCancelRequested property. This can be used to improve responsiveness for expensive OnSetRenderInfo() implementations which are otherwise non-interruptible.
• For plugin authors, the Surface.FitSurface() method is now optimized to use multiple threads, which improves performance.

The Paint.net 3.5.2 update can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The software itself should pick up the update through its automatic update option as well if the feature is activated.

Is it comparable to Gimp or Adobe Photoshop? I honestly cannot say so and do not care the least. It allows me to do the image editing things that I need to do which are basic image manipulations, e.g. resizing, copying, pasting, and basic editing.

Paint.net 3.5 final was released today. Users who are interested in the changes in this release can take a look at the post over at the official blog to find out more about them. Those that do not care about that can download the latest version of the image editor from the developer’s website where it is available for all supported operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7) and languages. Paint.net, as the name suggests, requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 SP1.

The Paint.Net developers have now announced the first beta of the upcoming Paint.Net 3.5. Users who are using a previous version of Paint.Net like the last official release Paint.Net 3.36 can update to the new beta from within the program. All that is needed is to click on the Check for Updates button under (Help). Paint.Net will by default only search for official release versions (which the beta is obviously not). A click on the options button in the window makes it possible to turn that feature off so that all versions of Paint.Net are considered for upgrades.

The changelog lists a few important changes and addition. Paint.Net 3.5 requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 which should be beneficial to the program’s overall performance. This could become obvious when opening images on single cpu systems. Computer memory usage has been optimized when multiple images are loaded into the image editor. Startup performance and effect dialog responsiveness has been optimzed as well.

The full changelog:

* Now uses and requires .NET 3.5 SP1, which has many built-in performance improvements.
* New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
* Effect dialog responsiveness has been greatly improved.
* Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
* Selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of “dancing ants”, an antialiased and stippled “XOR” outline is drawn.
* Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
* Memory usage has been greatly reduced when more than one image is open.
* The font system for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, and problems with missing fonts and crashes should be a thing of the past.
* On Windows XP and Vista, the Text tool has improved text rendering quality (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
* On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives even better performance and quality.
* The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
* The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
* When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
* Installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET Framework and Windows Installer.
* Updates can now be downloaded in the background, and installed automatically once you exit the application.
* General rendering quality has been improved when zoomed in.
* Added a “Utilities” menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved here.
* Added a “Manage Fonts” command to the Utilities menu.
* Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
* Improved the Unfocus effect.
* The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
* A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
* Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
* Fixed a crash with the “Units” selector in the toolbar.
* When zoomed in, it is now much easier to resize a very small selection.
* Now includes a Russian translation.

Paint.Net 3.5 can be downloaded from the official Get Paint website.

Enter Fotografix, a lightweight portable image editor, that might be suited for the needs of webmasters and bloggers who want a simple image editor that supports all the features that they need. While Fotografix does not come with the functionality of Adobe Photoshop or GIMP it does offer access to all those features that most webmasters and bloggers require, and then some.

The image editor opens images as fast, if not a tad faster, than the popular Paint .net image editor. Webmasters have fast access to the image edition features that they require the most and it usually takes only a few seconds to edit an image so that it can be posted on a website. The only feature that seems to be missing is the ability to quickly draw a rectangle or circle around a part of the image to highlight that part.

Fotografix is an impressive (for that size) image editor that fits perfectly in every tools collection. It is compatible with computer systems running Windows XP and above.

Paint.net is not compatible with Adobe Photoshop psd files by default which can be quite troublesome if you need to work with psd files occasionally. The psd plugin for paint.net adds support for Adobe Photoshop psd files to paint.net. It does not implement all features of the psd file though, only those that are needed to convert the image in the image editor and those that have a paint.net counterpart. Below is the list of support features:

• Layers
• Masks (only loading see To do list)
• RAW or RLE compressed files
• The following color modes are supported for loading an image: Gray scale, Indexed, 32 Bit-RGBA, CMYK (lossy conversation), Multichannel CMY (lossy conversation), Duotone (as gray scale), Lab (lossy conversation)
• For saving an image only 32-Bit RGBA is supported

The psd plugin comes as a single dll file that has to be placed into the filetypes folder of the Paint.net installation. The association of psd files with paint.net has to be created manually. This can be done by right-clicking a psd file on the computer system and selecting Open With > Choose Program from the context menu. Paint.net has to be selected as the program to open psd files and the checkbox “always use the selected program to open this kind of file” has to be ticked.

So instead, I gave Paint.net another go, an application which I have tried before, but gave up because I heard GIMP was so awesome. Paint.net is a graphical application just like Photoshop, but without many of its fancy tools. If you just need some cropping, resizing and positioning action for images in your blog, Paint.net will be great. At around 6Mb in size, it doesn’t take a toll on your system either.

For me it works quite well for basic web design too, simple gradients, some web 2.0 style reflections, nothing too complex. The two things which I miss most about Photoshop though is the text capabilities and vector graphics. Text capabilities in both GIMP and Pain.net are shabby compared to PS, and Paint.net doesn’t really have great pen tools either. If you need way more power than the simple Windows Paint, but way less than Photoshop, Paint.net is a solid, well built, lightweight image editor for you.

piZap is an online photo editor that offers something more. To be more specific, piZap lets you have fun with images. The flash-based application is ideal for people who love to manipulate their pictures and make them goofy. You can upload a file from your computer or play with one of the demo images on the site.

How do you make pictures funny? piZap allows you to add text via thought bubbles, put in stickers like emoticons or different parts of a face from the available options. You can also add effects to the picture or just paint over whatever you want. The options are endless. Here’s a photo I played around with.

Okay, it’s not great but don’t let my lack of creativity stop you. If you’re happy with how your picture looks, click ‘save’. The site then allows you to download the file, embed it on a website, and lets you post the image directly to most of the social networking sites around like Facebook, Twitter and the like.

One additional advantage to piZap is that you can have your picture printed on products like mouse pads, mugs, posters, tee shirts, calendars, etc. and then purchase them off the site. Of course, if you’d rather have someone else print the photo for you, you’re welcome to do that.

I quite like the site. It offers something different and is totally free. No registration required as well. Plus the site is really easy to use. I’d say the site is definitely worth a visit. How do you like piZap?  Do you find it interesting? Let me know in the comments.

The program is very easy to use. The user needs to pick at least two images of the same object which are then processed automatically by the image editor. An error message will pop up if the software program was unable to compute the new panoramic image. If the process is successful the new image will be shown in the program’s interface.

Several post processing options are available to manipulate the newly created image further. The user can choose one of five camera motions, crop functionality like automatically cropping the image and image projection.

The image can be exported in various formats including jpeg, tiff, Adobe Photoshop psd and the HD Photo Image format. Microsoft Image Composite Editor is a nice tool that can combine multiple images of the same object into one larger image of the object. This is great for objects that are to large to fit in one picture taken with the digital camera but also for detailed images that should be combined.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor was tested on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system. It should run fine on other Microsoft operating systems and comes as a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

Several image editing technologies have been developed that analyze and process a set of pictures from the same object removing any unwanted noise in the resulting picture. The Snapmania Online Image editor offers a tourist remover algorithm which can be used to process the images online to receive one clear image of the object or person on a set of photos.

The tourist remover is just one of the features of the image editor. The user can store images, use some basic image editing functions like red eye removal, auto correction and some special effects or create panoramas.

A set of pictures can be uploaded and selected while holding the CTRL key. These pictures can then be dragged on the Tourist Remover function at the bottom of the online application.

The only other step after this is to order the photos from left to right starting with the best approximation and to select a artifact removal quality level. The job is then send to the server which will process the images. This can take some time though. During tests the lowest queue rank was 550. This is probably the biggest weakness of the service. It might take a while before the pictures arrive in your photo storage. Thankfully though they are processed in the background and it is not a problem to logout and come back later to see if the photos have been processed.

Another problem is the storage space of only 100 Megabytes. The basic commercial plan offers 2 Gigabytes of storage space and so called Service Points which can be used for all kinds of actions like sending an MMS. There is also an unlimited plan which provides unlimited storage. Plans can be upgraded all the time.

After loading an image into Image Analyzer the operations menu becomes available which is basically the central menu of the image processing software. It provides access to basic editing features like resizing, red eye removal or rotating the image.

Other features include:

• Automatic brightness, contrast, gamma and saturation adjustment
• Retouch tools
• Deconvolution for out-of-focus and motion blur compensation
• Morphological operations
• Color model conversion
• Distance, Fourier and discrete cosine transformation
• Retinex filter for reducing shadows and increasing local contrast

Image Analyzer is plugin driven and the software developer provides links to several plugins on their website that can be added by simply moving them into the ProcessingPlugins folder of the application. Image processing plugins like Combine for High Dynamic Range, 3D modeling, batch processing and Fractal interpolation are available and make up fine additions to image analyzer.

The image processing tool has build in camera, scanner and printer support and runs fine on most Microsoft operating systems. To be precise it runs fine on Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. The size of Image Analyzer is 800 Kilobytes packed.

Looking for an easy way to remove a background from one of your digital photos? Commercial photo editing programs like Photoshop have the tools necessary to erase complicated backgrounds from digital photos, but unless you are a professional, you probably don’t have this installed on your computer.

Luckily, there’s a way to remove backgrounds without needing Photoshop and actually without needing any software! There are many online photo editing services that you can use, one of which is FotoFlexer, a free online photo editor with many advanced features.

It is by the far the most advanced online editor in terms of the GUI interface, which is super fast, and in terms of the number of tools available, including morphing, recoloring, layering, effects, animations, and lots more.

To remove a background from an image, first upload a picture to FotoFlexer. You do not have to create an account if you already have photos on your computer. You can also grab pictures directly from Picasa, flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and Photobuck, but you’ll have to create a free account.

Now click on the Geek tab at the right and you’ll see a couple of buttons like Smart Cutout and Smart Scissors. The Smart Scissors tool is what we want to use here. It’s very similar to the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop.

Now you will want to begin drawing a boundary around the part of the image you want to cut out from the background. Click at the starting point and then continue clicking in small increments along the outer edges of the object. You’ll notice that on each click, the Smart Scissors will automatically snap the curved lines around the the object like shown below:

Continue clicking around the object until you get to the end. Then you’ll need to join the last dot with your first dot in order to create a closed selection. Only then will you see that the option “Create Cutout” become available. When you hover over the first dot you had created, you’ll see it turns green, click on it and the background will darken.

Your final image would look like something below. You’ll have to play around with the scissors tools, but basically if you want a better cut, you’ll have to create more points at smaller distances.

You can use this free service to remove a person from a large group or to merge two photographs together, i.e. take one part of one picture and join it with a different part of a second picture. Enjoy!

A click on an image loads an image viewer that resembles normal image viewers. Images can be dragged and dropped between folders and in a casket that can contain images from all folders. The casket is a virtual folder that can be used to create a custom slideshow for instance. Images can not only be imported from the local computer but also from Flickr. Images that are displayed can also be uploaded to Flickr.

The size of the thumbnails in the boards can be changed from tiny to a size that only displays one image at a time. Boards can be viewed separately as well. Twin Visions does not only offer image viewing functions but also image editing and sharing functions.

The image editor is not comparable to Photoshop or GIMP but it does offer a few quick fixes. It’s possible to remove noise, the red eye effect or fix the brightness with a mouse click. Effects can be added like blur or color effects. The current beta version will stop working on October 1st, 2008 and it is very likely that this could become a commercial software.

Here you find additional links to upload images to Aviary, invite friends and launch the online applications that are enabled for your account. In my case only the image editor and a link to apply for an invite for the other applications. More about those later.

It’s only possible to upload one image with a maximum size of 5 Megabytes at a time and add the usual information (tags, title, description, rights) to it. It takes some time before the image is available depending on your upload speed and the load of the service. Max told me that he experienced a slow down of the system while uploading which I did not.

The usual community functions are available. Users can comment on and rate images, download the images and participate in the forums.

Phoenix the Image Editor

The image editor loads rather slowly but offers a wide variety of functions. Users can load images from their profile or from their computer. I’m not that into image editing but the functions that I would be looking for are all there. I can resize images, add text, work with layers and add several effects to it.

Someone who is using Adobe Photoshop or GIMP could definitely compare it on a professional level. It’s fine for the average user, that much I can say.

Images you work with are automatically saved and opened again when you open the image editor again.

Other applications

The list of applications, or tools how Aviary calls them, is impressive. A total of 18 tools is listed on their website including a music generator, vector editor, video editor and a desktop publishing layout generator.

Users can signup to receive initiations  for those tools once the invitations become available.

Aviary Invites

I have five Aviary invites and want to share them with you. I prefer at least one user with experience in Photoshop or another image editor who would like to write a short comparison which would be surely interesting to read. I would publish that comparison here at Ghacks.

If you want an invite reply here in the comments. Please add if you have experience with another image editor and would like to write that short comparison. Thanks again Max for the invite, it was really nice to think of me.