You may have not known this, but while Photoshop and GIMP are great graphic editors, there are many web apps that do similar or the same things. There are four apps that I am going to show that can be used for this.
These web apps are:
Pixlr
Phoenix by Aviary
Picnik
SumoPaint
I tested these applications with multiple categories. Let’s get into the review.
Image Autofix – I tested this with all four of the applications but had no luck on any of them. I tested this by testing it with a slightly blurred image and an image with colors that are off. Only Picnik had an auto-fix button and that button did not improve the quality for both of the images. All applications got a zero out of ten for this category.
Create Images From Scratch – This should be a no brainer for these various applications. All of these applications should have been able to do this, however Picnik was not able to create images from scratch. All of these other apps did this similarly to Photoshop and the GIMP.
Ease of Use – In this case, I rated all of the applications based on my feelings about the ease of use of these applications. Although Picnik was the easiest to use with a nine out of ten, it also had the least functionality. Pixlr was the second easiest to use with an eight out of ten for the ease of use category. Phoenix and SumoPaint were tied for third easiest to use with seven out of ten each. SumoPaint, however, was the one that looks the closest to Photoshop. It also had a great fullscreen mode which Pixlr also had.
Load Speed – To measure speed, I deducted 1 point from the score for every two seconds it took to load. In first place, Pixlr loaded in under two seconds giving it a score of ten out of ten. Phoenix came in with second place loading in six seconds and it came with seven out of ten. SumoPaint came in third place loading in eight seconds giving it a six out of ten. In last place was Picnik taking fourteen seconds to load giving it a three out of ten. This is ironic as Picnik had the least functionality to load.
These are the main categories for scoring. To see all of the categories, check out this PDF.
Overall – Coming in last place, Picnik had the least amount of point with forty-seven out of ninety points. In third place, Phoenix had fifty-three out of ninety points in the final scoring. In second place was Pixlr with sixty-two out of ninety points. Winning the battle is SumoPaint with sixty-seven out of ninety points.
Mister IQ, Leading editor of the cld4me blog
This post in licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.
