Picnik Replacement! - iPiccy

My friend sent me a link to a blog that links to a photo editing site. This site is called iPiccy. Its in beta right now so it has some kinks to work out but for now its a great alternative to learning Photoshop. Whew! Its a lot like Picnik and appears pretty easy to use.
Thanks Google for stabbing us all in the heart when you announced that you would be closing Picnik! I know several of you are upset about that also so I thought I should share this with you all. Pass it on, blog about it, shout it from the rooftops!

One downside I see so far with iPiccy is that you can't save a bunch of pictures and then work on them later, or even stop in the middle of one and shut the web page down. I was trying to edit a picture and it crashed on me. Very frustrating, but forgivable since its beta.  Perhaps I will have to save the picture often if I am doing extensive editing. At least until they work out all of the kinks.

I thought I would share a little of what they have to offer over on iPiccy. Here is a picture of one of the cutest kids in the entire world. My nephew James. It's not really the best picture to show off his cuteness. We had just finished eating  a picnic lunch and he was walking around with his hands in his pockets and chocolate on his face. Not too bad, but lets see if some editing can improve it.

Original photo

Here I have done a little with the contrast and , my most favorite tool I like to use when editing, local contrast. Local contrast seems to (I cringe to say this because I hate the overuse of the word) make everything pop. I also took most of the chocolate off of his face with the clone tool and brightened up his eyes. He has amazing blue eyes like his mommy.

Better

That's nothing you couldn't do with Picnik, but there are some pretty neat functions in iPiccy that Picnik didn't have. Like these!

I think its best in B&W

Check it out. See what you think. Its pretty simple, user friendly and free. No registration required.

Cons:

-Seems a bit slower than Picnik.

-Not as many functions.I paid for premium on Picnik and it was way worth all the extra functions. This may not be a con for you if you just used the free functions though.

-You can't make collages, which is ok with me. I use Picasa and can do that there. 

- Some of the effect functions caused the program to crash on me. Frustrating if you have just done a bunch of tedious corrections.