I reviewed two online image editors a while back, both of which are still actively developed and useful.

I tend to lean more towards Picnik for quick image-editing tasks. The interface seems more intuitive and well-crafted:

Notice the five simple tabs along the top, which organize various aspects of image-editing. It’s intuitive to jump from one tab to the next, as it represents the natural progression when editing images.

Compare that to Sumopaint (or Photoshop, for example):

Notice the traditional (“File,” “Edit,” etc) menu options, and technical-looking palette interface. This is how computer software has been designed since the early days. Isn’t it about time we take another approach?

Picnik is moving away from the “old school” interface approach, and it’s a breath of fresh air.

In your face

Picnik excels because it puts the main tasks right in front of you. You don’t have to sift through long menu lists of technical-sounding options.

Picnik’s approach is beautiful, clean, and connects instantly with users:

With traditional image-editing applications, it’s difficult to figure out how to do common tasks, like crop, resize, rotate, etc. Picnik makes this more than obvious:

Performance

Since Picnik is a browser-only application, it opens very fast, as long as you are on a decent internet connection (Flash can sometimes take a while to load). Regardless of any delays, it beats opening/closing Photoshop any day.

I’ve never breezed through an image-editing application quite like I do with Picnik. I get in, get my task done, and get out.

Extending Picnik

I’ve love to see a Picnik iPhone/iPad application – this would quickly become the easiest way to edit images across all web-enabled devices, in today’s post-Photoshop/desktop world.