Have you heard this exciting news yet?

PicMonkey.com, created by the old Picnik.com team, is now up and running!  (P.S. This is not a sponsored blog post.)

This is fantabulous news for those of us who love taking photos but aren’t Photoshop users.  Personally, I’ve relied on Picnik.com for photo editing ever since I started blogging.  For novices like me, Picnik was perfect. So friendly and easy to use.  I also fell hard for its refreshingly cheeky brand personality. (It must be the ad person in me ).

But late last year, Picnik announced it would be shutting down on April 19th, 2012 – apparently gobbled up by the Google beast.   Bloggers like me who relied on Picnik were in denial for awhile.  With no perfect substitute for Picnik on the market, it meant that I’d have to re-learn an entirely new – and more advanced – photo-editing program like Photoshop.

So, as April 19th approached, I’ve been like a chicken with its head cut off, scrambling to create a few more things for my blog before the final plug was pulled on Picnik. Tick tock, tick tock.

But then today, I noticed a little text on the Picnik home page that mentioned an unknown entity called PicMonkey.com as an option when Picnik closes.

Seeing that I’d never heard of it, I was curious enough to search it out.

When I landed in the homepage, it was as if the the proverbial skies opened up and the angels started singing.  OK, so I’m being overly-dramatic, but you get the point.

I immediately knew that the site had to be a creation of the old Picnik owners.  It had its same clean, simple, user-friendly appearance, and its same trademark humour.  For example, in its Terms of Use, normally filled with legal-speak, the first 3 items stated: (1) You must be 13 years or older to use this site, (2) You must be human and (3) You may be a monkey, as long as you’re 13 years or older. (Teeheehee!)

And the best part?  I think it’s going to be just as good, or better, than Picnik.

I noticed a bunch of new, fun features in the “Effects” section as well as some new Framing options like ‘Filmstrip’ and Photo Corners’. For any ‘collage’ fans out there like me, its not a feature there right now; but it says that its coming soon.  (Yippee!)

The only thing I was a little disappointed about was that there doesn’t appear to be a ‘Photo bucket’ like in Picnik – essentially a ‘grab box’ where you could easily pull other photos or clip art into a graphic you were working on.  Also, its worth noting that it seems like your creations are only saved to your own hard drive, and not stored in PicMonkey like they were in Picnik.  But I’m not sure that this is a disadvantage anyway.

I played around with a few of the new features.  Check it out!

Photo Corners

(and some other stuff)

The ‘before’ photo (for comparison)…

Film Strip

(and some other stuff)

The ‘before’ photo (for comparison)…

Exciting, yes?  I couldn’t wait to share the news!

Have a Happy Easter weekend!

Until next time,

Kerri

P.S., I’m sharing this with Beth at