Thoughts on Word Verification and the Demise of Picnik

There seems to be a revolution going on out here in blogland over Google's new verification phrases and the fact that half of the phrase seems to be illegible to most people, me included.  I must join this revolution and as of today I will no longer comment on blogs which use this verification process.  If you love getting comments as much as I do, I urge you to remove that step from your blog.  I removed mine several months ago and by following the instructions given by bloggie friend TexWisGirl I have not received any spam on either of my sites.  The following is a link to her post today where she again gives instructions on how to remove this pesky, time-consuming step and what to do to prevent spammers or hackers from posting on your site.  Believe me, it's easy!  Just click on her link above to get that info.

Now to more interesting things!

I was extremely dismayed a couple weeks ago to be informed that Google was discontinuing the Picnik photo editing website which it acquired some months back.  Once again, Google is causing headaches out there in photoland!  I had become very comfortable with Picnik and believed it made my photos much better.  I have Photoshop Elements but for some reason I have been unable or unwilling to learn how to adequately use it.  I had been turned on to a Topaz plug-in (which is compatible with Photoshop and other programs) called Adjust, but it's certainly not for every photo.

So after looking around on line at various recommendations I have finally settled on a site called iPiccy.com.  It's the closest thing I've found to Picnik thus far.  Some additions have been made since the announcement of Picnik's upcoming demise to make it even more like Picnik.  At the present time you don't even need to register to use it and it's free, but it is a beta site and after reading the terms of use where it talks about subscription costs I am surmising that once the beta testing period is over it will probably become a subscription service like Picnik.  The price mentioned for the premium package was the same as Picnik's (annual cost of around $25).  Here are some samples of before and after photos which I edited in iPiccy.

Before

After

iPiccy offers exposure correction, hue and saturation, sharpen, et cetera, and the features I particularly like are the local contrast and the shadow enhancement.  They have a text area although the font selections are minimal.  That's okay for me but I know others like adding text to their photos.  They offer a number of special effects and a collage tool.  As yet they do not have a mechanism for implementing curves or levels.

Before

After

I was disappointed in the black and white option offered by Photoshop and was prepared to spend $50 on a Topaz product to be able to continue to process my photos in black and white.  iPiccy's black and white tool is exactly like Picnik's, allowing you to add multiple color filters to the black and white program to make your black and whites pop.

A pretty sad before picture

but now it's a stunning black and white or ....

... a vibrant colorful photo!