Google have announced on their blog that they are stopping Picnik the online image editing tool that they acquired in 2010. They state on Picnik that it will continue until April 19th 2012, and that (lucky us!) anyone can use Premium Picnik for free until then.
A lot of people are upset about this, as it’s a very popular site. In the early days it was referred to as the “free Photoshop”, although when I consider that I have been using Photoshop for nearly 20 years and still don’t know everything it can do, I doubt that’s quite true. It is a VERY comprehensive program with a considerable and justifiable pricetag. I think it’s probably more fair to say it’s the free, online “Photoshop Elements”.
They say “Picnik is moving its… photo editing tools to Google+”. It’s obvious they want to develop Google+, and won’t be happy until Google+ is as popular (or more popular) than Twitter and Facebook, the two current giants in Social Networking. And by making sought-after tools available only from within Google+ they will no doubt add more amo to their arsenal.
As I use Photoshop, I have only used Picnik a handful of times, so that I could recommend it to people without Photoshop. But fear not; there are other tools you can use.
The two main zero cost options:
There is Gimp to download for your desktop (which was also deemed the “free photoshop” in the beginning!) and that has a lot of the most used features too.
Or there is Aviary, which provides multiple tools including image editor and audio editor. And they currently have a demo on their home page for a cool (if basic) image editor for mobile devices.
Paid options:
Of course there is also Photoshop Elements, which costs only a fraction of the full program.
But, and I always tell people this, and they hardly ever bother to listen; most new digital cameras come with the manufacturer’s own image manipulation software on a CD. People just assume the CD is only for the drivers and that they’re better off getting the latest drivers online, or they don’t bother with the drivers at all!
All the free software I’ve got with cameras (and Scanners and All-in-one printers for that matter), have had the equivalent features in their image editing software that Photoshop Elephants does 
Actually, I’m not sure whether those come under free or paid options, as you paid for the camera initially. But if you find out you already have something you didn’t know you had, I guess that’s similar to being free, right?
