You've probably heard by now that Picnik has been taken over by the ants! On April 19th it will be gone and that was going to cause a major issue for this blogger. We relied on Picnik for all of our editing and for creating collages for our posts. Boo!
We’d heard that many of Picnik’s tools would be moving over to Google+, and while that at least kept me from hyperventilating, it still didn’t leave me too happy. (Tip Junkie has a good post on using Google + to edit pics) Then I heard a rumor about some new program that was in the works that was going to be completely awesome and nicely fill the void in my heart that Picnik had left. I waited anxiously, and finally got the email that it was ready!
Let me tell you, it took me all of about 5 seconds to start my little “PicMonkey is awesome and saved the day dance!” The creators are actually some of the original Picnik crew that knew that there were lost souls wondering how they would ever photo edit again.
PicMonkey replaces Picnik
The functionality is really similar and so far I haven’t seen anything I didn’t love. Let me give you a little tour. A few things right off the bat… "Collage and more” are coming soon, so that’s one thing I’m still waiting on, but I’m already sure it’s going to meet my needs just fine. Another cool thing to know is that for a limited time the premium features are being offered for free- sweet! Okay, so I loaded up a picture of our Nate Show dresser turned buffet and got to work comparing the two sites. Basic Edits- You have the exact same basic edits, even in the same order, just with some funky-fun images on the sidebar. They were super simple to use and that made me happy!
Effects- One of my favorite things about Picnik was the fun, easy to use effects. Have no fear… PicMonkey is here! All my favorites and a few more were there for the takin’! Applying effects is done exactly the same way, but no Mr. Frog staring you down anymore.
My favorite effect is Cross-Process, so of course I gave it a try on both sites and was over the moon to see it worked perfectly!
PicMonkey also had an effect that caught my eye… Cinerama. I love it! Look how cool our buffet looks now!
Text- The text feature works perfectly, and although there isn’t as large of a font selection on PicMonkey yet, I’d bet money that there are more fab fonts coming soon!
Stickers- Not like little kid reward stickers, but I do think those are fun too… We use stickers for all kinds of graphic design work. Layer them up and it’s amazing what you can create. Similarly to the text options, the stickers are limited at this point, but I imagine we have big things in store for us!
One thing I’m hoping for is a huge selection of tags and fun shapes. In Picnik I used to use the Christmas tags whenever I wanted a fun header. So far I didn’t see anything comparable in PicMonkey, but perhaps I’ll leave a request on their Facebook page.
Frames- Last but not least, I wanted to make sure all my frames were intact! And by now, you’re probably seeing a trend… they had them all (okay, almost all, they didn’t have camo, flowers, or Christmas lights etc., but honestly I’m pretty happy about that.) They did have Polaroid, which I don’t use much, but I do love!
You might be wondering about some other features, but I’m not going to give you the play-by-play for every single tool, so head on over and give PicMonkey a whirl. I have a feeling you’ll be pretty happy. My hubs was slightly weirded out by the fact that I was dancing around our kitchen, making up songs about how PicMonkey saved the day!
Let us know what you think of the new site… did it produce any kitchen dances for ya?
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