Online Photo Editing

PICNIK

These photos of a Cicada are demonstrating the difference between the original photo and the same photo enhanced using Picnik. The upper photo is enhanced while the lower photo is the original. The results in this case is subtle, the original photo being quite good to start with - maybe I am biased because I took it? I felt to manipulate this photo any more would detract from it. The main three enhancements used were colour saturation increase (algorithm that multiplies the chroma values by a constant), brightness increase (algorithm that adds a constant to the luminance values) and sharpening (algorithm that multiplies the derivative of the luminance values by a constant). Picnik does not have any image gamma adjustment capability which can be surprisingly useful in many photos. The advantages of Picnik is that it is free and available on the web making it realistic for students to use - a very important consideration. Personally, I have and use Adobe Photoshop CS4. Comparing Picnik's capabilities to Photoshop is never going to be flattering, but when it comes to availability, Picnik is great.