Review : Www.fotoflexer.com

Everybody has the need to edit a picture at one point or other, but who wants to fork down a few hundred dollars for a full version of Photoshop? Unless you're a professional, you won't use half of the options these Pro packages offer and it takes some learning time before you'll come up with some satisfying result. Luckily for us, there are still some idealists who come up with great on-line alternatives.

One of the best I've seen so far is Fotoflexer. This on-line editing site has plenty of options (some I haven't even seen in expensive retail packages), has an easy-to-use, good looking interface, and, perhaps most importantly, is absolutely free.

Before you start, you have to choose the picture you want to edit. This can either be a picture you have saved in your Fotoflexer album, a picture from your desktop or you can import it from your albums on sites like Facebook or Flickr. As an extra, it even offers the possibility to use pictures from friends' albums on Facebook as well, but this being said, I've tried this option and couldn't get it to work yet.

Once you've chosen your picture, you can start playing with it. Just choose one of the tabs, and it will unfold the options. Most of them are pretty obvious, but should you still have doubts, there are some tutorials available for new users as well. Most option are common, like changing colors, give your picture a retro look or the Andy Warhol treatment, correct red eyes or add frames. Fotoflexer goes further though.

2 of the most amazing features are Smart resizing and Smart cutting. With smart resizing, you simply highlight the part you definitely need and the part you can get rid of, and the software calculates the new picture. If you've got a picture from you and a friend where there's a hand showing of an unknown individual between the 2 of you, Fotoflexer will take this out automatically. With smart cutting, you outline the part of the picture you want to keep, and looking at the colors, Fotoflexer finds out what pixels are part of your design. It then comes up with a suggested outline, which you can then fine-trace.

There are many more options, but the best thing to do is simply log on to their web-site and play with it for a while. The makers regularly update their site with new options, like adding objects to your picture (wings, glasses, text balloons) or new borders and frames. Ideal if you need to do the occasional make-over or are new to editing and want to try things out first.