Picnik is a new tool for me, and so this Thing is particularly exciting. I'm a Photoshop addict, and have spent quite a lot of time over the last few months learning the tools and tricks, and would now consider myself a pretty competent user, but equally I know how unintuitive I found it when starting out. I know there are a lot of tools around that aim to let you do the same kind of editing and manipulation but in a far more user-friendly way, but hadn't ever really explored any other than the functions on Picasa on my laptop at home. Picnik seems like a really good option for this kind of tweaking - the way it links directly with Flickr is great, and the editing options are helpfully labelled with actual words rather than the not-so-obvious images you find in the likes of Photoshop and GIMP. I played around with a couple of the photos I'd uploaded of the VHL, mostly just fixes like sharpening and adjusting colour/saturation/contrast, and also tried out some of the extras like the vignette, soften, Lomo and sepia tools. I'll have to have a play with some of the wackier options another time! For me though, much as I'm impressed with what Picnik offers, I don't think it'll tempt me away from my Photoshop.
