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One of my favorite types of Web apps are those that try to emulate the look and feel of software. Cutting edge UI can be useful, but sometimes you just want something that feels familiar. In the case of Pixlr, a new browser based photo editing tool, the target is clearly Adobe’s Photoshop.

Pixlr lets you grab photos from your hard drive and edit them in a software-like environment. Included are some advanced tools like customizable brushes and multiple layers. Most people won’t need these features, but they’re there–and free of charge. There’s also a small collection of filters and adjustments. The results are a little more polished than other Web photo editing tools offerings, but some are harder to tweak. I was able to create some truly brilliant looking effects on a bland photo without too much work. It helps if you’ve used Photoshop or something like Paint.net before, as some of the menu structure is the same.

After editing a shot the only way to get it off is to download it back to your hard drive as a JPEG or PNG file. There’s no uploading to other services, nor does it yet have the capability to pull down shots from photo hosts you’re already using–two things that have become a bit of a standard.

When stacked up to Fotoflexer, Picnik or Photoshop Express, Pixlr shows some of its early age. It’s a crowded market and these tools have been stacking on cool and useful features at a rapid clip. The inability to crop, add text, and redo anything you might have undone is a bit of a deal killer for me. Also missing is a history tool, something which after having worked with Photoshop for a few years I find to be an absolute necessity–especially when working with layers. Still, despite its shortcomings, I’ve got high hopes for this photo editing app. It’s very fast, free, and amazingly developed by just one person.

Pixlr looks a lot like a desktop application, but it runs right in your browser. All you need is Adobe Flash.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Continued here:
Pixlr brings desktop flavor to Web based photo editing

My favorite types of Web apps are those that try to emulate the look and feel of software. Cutting-edge UI can be useful, but sometimes you just want something that feels familiar. In the case of Pixlr, a new browser-based photo-editing tool, the target is clearly Adobe’s Photoshop.

Pixlr lets you grab photos from your hard drive and edit them in a software-like environment. Included are some advanced tools like customizable brushes and multiple layers. Most people won’t need these features, but they’re there–and free of charge. There’s also a small collection of filters and adjustments. The results are a little more polished than other Web photo-editing tool offerings, but some are harder to tweak. I was able to create some truly brilliant looking effects on a bland photo without too much work. It helps if you’ve used Photoshop or something like Paint.net before, as some of the menu structure is the same.

After editing a shot the only way to get it off is to download it back to your hard drive as a JPEG or PNG file. There’s no uploading to other services, nor does it yet have the capability to pull down shots from photo hosts you’re already using–two things that have become a bit of a standard.

When stacked up to Fotoflexer, Picnik, or Photoshop Express, Pixlr shows some of its early age. It’s a crowded market and these tools have been stacking on cool and useful features at a rapid clip. The inability to crop, add text, and redo anything you might have undone is a bit of a deal killer for me. Also missing is a history tool, something which, after having worked with Photoshop for a few years, I find to be an absolute necessity–especially when working with layers. Still, despite its shortcomings, I’ve got high hopes for this photo-editing app. It’s very fast, free, and amazingly developed by just one person.

Pixlr looks a lot like a desktop application, but it runs right in your browser. All you need is Adobe Flash.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Pixlr brings desktop flavor to Web-based photo editing

If you like Flickr’s explore section but want something with a little more personalization, you should check out Photoree. It’s a photo browser that lets you rate a photo up or down like what StumbleUpon does for Web sites. As you continue to rate photos, the engine will tune itself to your tastes–hopefully spewing out more shots you’d find pleasing.

The engine says it needs 100 ratings from you before it can start figuring out what you like and what you don’t. In that time you’ll probably see a huge chunk of landscape shots and some scantily clad women–at least I did. If you’re worried about something offensive popping up on screen there’s a no nudity filter that does its best to weed out the NSFW material, however, on or off, you’re unable to see what photo is coming next.

There are five different filters in all, but the personalized one is the site’s main draw. The others like “most debated” and “most popular” serve up only truly gorgeous shots that have been vetted by other users. Going through the recommendation process yields a potentially better mix of shots.

Rank photos up or down to get recommendations on ones you'd like. Like StumbleUpon, the more you rate the better its suggestions should be–in theory that is.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

My problem with this system is that all the photos I saw, even during the first 100 ratings, were drop dead gorgeous. You’re going to have to be quite picky with how you rate them for it to work its magic. More than anything I noticed the frequency of shots similar to what I had favorited going up after breaking the magical 100 mark. The tool would be far more interesting if it started you off in a general pool of users shots (even ugly ones) instead of taking you straight to the good stuff that’s already been given the thumbs up from both the Flickr and Photoree community.

The tool does have some really fun layers of interactivity to play with, like built-in bookmarking for the shots you like. You can simply click on any of these to be taken to the Flickr page where it’s hosted. It’ll also give you some neat statistics like which other Photoree users share your tastes and which Flickr photographers you like the best. After 105 ratings I had achieved about 50 percent compatibility with a good number of users, and after tipping 280 it bumped up close to 60. You can befriend these folks to get access to their up-rated photos, or see them openly if they’ve set their feed to be public.

Another service that’s somewhat similar is inSuggest’s image suggestion tool (coverage). This lets you drag three images you like from a pool of thumbnails and it will link you to a handful of shots it thinks are similar. The same company makes a tool that analyzes your bookmarks and taste in Web sites as well.

Source:
Explore photos by taste with Photoree

One of my favorite Facebook features is auto-tagging. It happened to me last night by accident and ended up being one of those very rare moments of using a product where I got a big grin on my face. The feature comes into play when the service recognizes that a photo or video upload happened around the same general time of an event you said you were planning to attend through Facebook’s party planning tools. If your photo or video upload occurs within these conditions you’ll be prompted to have it automatically tagged and dropped into the event’s photos and videos section.

The key to using this feature is that you don’t have to plan ahead. Auto-tagging was designed to help seed the photo and video sections of events with digital media without users having to remember to add it later. This simple one-click-to-add feature has likely increased the amount of photos that get added to events in the days that follow.

So how long is that window between where an event ends and when the photos are uploaded? From what I can tell, it’s not long. About 18 hours post-party I uploaded two separate images, both of which were taken on the same device and at the event. One was uploaded from my phone while the other from my computer. Oddly enough, neither was picked out for auto-tagging even two hours after being uploaded. In comparison, the one I took (and uploaded) during the hours of the party got flagged for tags almost instantly.

If your photos come from a certain time or place, Facebook will suggest tags for you if they correlate to an event you were attending.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

All of this might seem like a lot of fuss over a minor feature, but it could be the precursor for some very advanced tagging automation that’s on the horizon. For instance, the pictures I snapped came with geo-locational information as part of the EXIF data. I can see this information when I upload the same shots to Flickr, but Facebook doesn’t seem to do anything with it. Take into account that most parties include an address, and the same auto-tagging system could work to retroactively help tag your photos based on time and location alone.

Of course, more important than simply matching up photos to albums (something humans can easily do on their own) is using facial recognition to tag faces automatically. Facebook was one of the innovators in supplying a way for people to tag their friends in photos, which has even managed to carry over well on the iPhone application, but it’s time-consuming and doesn’t work well with people you don’t remember the next day. Having a system that would automatically go through uploaded photos and offer up suggestions of who it thinks the people are based on one part actual analysis and another off the known guest list (provided by the Facebook RSVPs) Facebook could have a very powerful offering indeed.

Original post:
Facebook’s auto-tagging feature could be tip of tagging iceberg

AOL is scrapping some online destinations but will push others harder in an attempt to improve its finances, according to media reports.

Kevin Conroy

(Credit: AOL)

Among those to be shuttered are Bluestring, a site to share videos, music, and photos; Xdrive, a general-purpose online storage service; and AOL Pictures, where users could store and share photos, according to a July 14 memo from Kevin Conroy, AOL’s executive vice president of products and marketing published at TechCrunch.

“These consumer storage products haven’t gained sufficient traction in the marketplace or the monetization levels necessary to offset the high cost of their operation,” he said in the memo. Also to be closed is MyMobile which repackages various AOL services for use on mobile devices.

AOL also is paring back some of the blogs it hosts, according to PaidContent.org. The DIYLife blog is being shut down, according to that report, and bloggers there and at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and DownloadSquad, who are paid by the post, have been told to stop posting until July 31 to cut costs.

It’s not unusual for companies to cut products to improve finances, but AOL has a particular incentive: corporate owners Time Warner is trying to prepare the once-powerful subsidiary for sale or other strategic alternatives.

AOL will push several other products harder in an attempt to revenue growth, too. Those products include AOL’s browser toolbar, its desktop software, its e-mail service, and its Truveo video search site, according to the memo.

AOL didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Excerpt from:
Reports: AOL cuts XDrive, Pictures, some blogs