Digital Home Thoughts: cnet Takes A Snapshot Of Online Photo Editing

"Most of the services on this list take advantage of Adobe's ever-developing Flash platform, which in its latest iteration got a huge boost with support for the large images coming out of today's high-megapixel cameras. On the flip side of that, several of the non-Flash-based editors use AJAX to make the changes happen without reloading the page. The benefit here is that you can run these on machines without the latest versions of Flash installed."

For serious photogs, online photo editing may seem laughable, but there is a large group of people who use cameras in their point-and-click mode all the time. And for us mere mortals, Photoshop, GIMP and their kin are really daunting. That's why there's such a blossoming market for online photo editing. cnet has been kind enough to round up 15 of them and provide vital statistics on each one. Some use HTML, though most use Flash, so they work right in your browser. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, like live previews of effects you pick, or the ability to use layers, but the great thing is that most of them are free! Be aware though that many of these sites use their editors as a way of promoting other services, like prints, premium services or as a gateway to old school, install on your computer software. Still, for simple editing tasks, these editors fit the bill.