The ever so popular photo editing online program Picnik (which you’ve probably heard of through Flickr) is closing as of April 19, 2012. For a lot of people, this means a sudden loss in a photo editing program. Not everyone can afford Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, so I’ve come up with a list of a few free photo editing programs that you may want to consider as an alternative to Picnik after it goes away for good. I’ve also listed a few pros and cons to each option to hopefully help you consider which program you’d like to try.

GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program)

Pros:

• Comparable to Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro
• Compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems
• Great for both light and more advanced photo manipulation work

Cons:

• Contains a lot more features than most people would need (can be overwhelming)

Paint.NET

Pros:

• Comparable with Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and GIMP
• Super small file size for the program (fast loading)

Cons:

• Compatible with Windows only, not Mac operating systems
• Contains a lot more features than most people would need (can be overwhelming)

Picasa (Google)

Pros:

• Picasa can be used to edit and upload images onto the web
• Linked to Picasa albums (via your Google account), Google+
• Contains most regularly used features for light manipulation

Cons:

• Newest version available is for Windows only, no Linux or Mac

PhotoScape

Pros:

• Has a lot of familiar features from Picnik (eg. frames, speech bubbles) that are easy to add
• Batch editing

Cons:

• Compatible with Windows only