Over the weekend, google sucker-punched blogging world.
Our beloved cheap and easy photo-editing site, Picnik will be no longer as of April 19, 2012.
At first I was in tears. Then, I put on my big girl panties and dealt with it.
I was alarmed because I used Picnik to add simple shapes, arrows, and the occasion kiss on authors I adore.
And the filters, all the cool filters. The borders. The frames. Sigh.
Although I primarily use Picasa {the installed software, not the website} to make all my blog headers, create party buttons, and add text to photos.
I’m not going to lie. I’m still deeply disturbed by the expiration of Picnik. That April 19th date is like knowing when you are going to die.
The Google monster is the new proverbial Goliath. We little David bloggers will solider on. Especially for those of us that haven’t yet jumped on the oblique Google+.
Promise to get that filter post up this week.
Now, put down the tissues, dear bloggers.
Picnik was our knight in photo-editing armor.
But we will survive.
Linking up all over the blogging world, to share the ingenuity.
thank you for these hints! i too love Picnik, so sad!! but i’m following your lead, big girl panties it is!
Well I feel like a dingbat and a wingding for not thinking of this. Thank goodness you put on your big girl panties…I am still looking for mine. Thanks for sharing!
this is fabulous I hope you’ll add it to my What We Wore and Made Party over at http://raegunwear.blogspot.com/search/label/WWWMW
Good job on finding a work-around! I even have google+ (not that I know how to use it) and I’m not excited about losing picnik.
Oooh, that font site (especially the dingbats) is exactly what I needed to find! Thank you so much!
Man I am really upset about picnik. I really am having a hard time dealing with it. I’m glad I’m not the only one!! I hate Google
Very good ideas! I use Picasa all the time for my “first pass” of photo sorting and editing, although I rarely think to add text or dingbats with it. As far as free photo editing software goes, though, Picnic is thankfully not the only thing out there. I’ve used Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) to do digital scrapbooking for a couple years now. I won’t lie: it’s got a learning curve. But it’s also nearly functionally equivalent to Photoshop Elements, and had a few major advantages over it to boot. (There are several free tutorials on d-scrapping with Gimp on my site, TarkheenaCrafts.blogspot.com)
There are also several other free “cloud”-based image editors such as Sumo Paint, but I don’t have much experience with them.
My friend e-mailed me this blogpost because she knows how in love I am with Picnik. She even sent me a text with a frowny-face the day the news came out. I’m so pissed off at Google I don’t even want to join their stupid freaking Google+ crap. ANYWAY, lol. It’s the filters and the little curved edge frames I’m going to miss. Those are like my signature (free) edits.
I’m really hoping on April 1st they’re like “April Fools, guys! Just kidding. Take a joke!”
Cause seriously, this sucks.
(Hi, Becky!)
Have you looked into the Aviary tools? http://advanced.aviary.com/tools
Great idea! I will have to go and check it out. Thanks for the info!
Thanks so much for the tips…I’m still feeling grumpy about the whole thing, but it’s good to know we can still carry on.
I’d love for you to share your great ideas here:
http://oneartmama.blogspot.com/2012/01/shine-on-fridays-12.html
I love gin and tonic and oh, thanks for the font idea
Debbie
Hi Nicolette,
Make do with less no longer! Check out PicMonkey, it’s a new photo project being built by a few former Picnikers so it’s sure to feel just like home. I’m part of the team and would be happy to answer any of your questions and would love to hear your feature requests! Sign up on http://www.PicMonkey.com to stay in the know about our launch date.
Cheers,
Jenn
Thank you for this! I am so, so sad about Picnik closing down. My whole blog depends on it at this point, so I was really glad to read about your alternative. I’m going to have to experiment this weekend!