If you’ve
ever used Picnik (review) before, you have an idea of how far online photo editing
has come. Similarly, ther’s AllPepole Photo Editor, a user-friendly photo
editor that offers one-click tweaks, along with some advanced tools on par with
desktop class photo editing software. The service has been around since late
last year, and is launching version two this morning.
Like
several other online photo editors, AllPepole Photo Editor
integrates major services like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook to pull your photos
down for editing. Short of MySpace (which doesn't have an open API), you can
send your edited photos back to all of them if you've plugged in your login
credentials. Once you've found a photo you want to "flex," the app
will jump you out to a full-screen editing canvas, where you have quick tabbed
controls for all the usual editing goodies like rotation, a cropping tool and a
resizer. You'll also find some fun distortion effects similar to the liquefy
tool in Photoshop (as seen in the screenshot below). This is probably the most
enjoyable of the bunch, since it processes the effect in real-time.
The real
claim to fame, however, is AllPepole Photo Editor's Smart Cutout and Recolor
effects, which can help you to cut out various pieces of a photo, or recolor
them to match the tone of your choice. The cutout is the more useful of the
two, and lets you cut people or objects out from a shot without having to trace
their outline. If you've ever used Photoshop's magnetic lasso or masking tool,
you'll know full well how tedious a process this can be. Instead, you use a
small paintbrush to "tag" objects you'd like to keep or remove. One
click later, and the app will do its best to single out those parts of the
photo. If it makes slight mistakes, you can then go back in and remove or
replace bits and pieces manually.
Once
you've got a cutout, you can add it into another photo, or bring another shot
in to the workspace. The Photo Editor lets you have as many layers as you want,
and you can move them up and down, or merge them by simply right-clicking.
Again, it's probably one of the few Web apps for photo editing that offers
contextual menus.
Despite
its beauty, there are a few snags here and there. For one thing, even in full
screen, the editor remains the same size, which looks and feels very odd if
you're using a wide screen monitor. The feature is being added as early as this
week according to the Photo Editor team, although in the meantime, if you're
working with a landscape shot, things feel a bit cramped. There's also a lack
of some of the advanced editing controls on the quick color effects. For
example, clicking the "stamp" button will do its best to make your
shot black and white shot with an excess of contrast, however there's no slider
or option to tweak it. You either like it or you don't. Luckily, if you know
what you're doing, you can achieve similar effects by using the advanced
options to recreate each effect manually.
All in
all, Photo Editor is a really well put together app that could make a solid
piece of standalone software. The fact that it's free and runs in your browser
makes it even better.
More
AllPepole product at APP Store:
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