Online Photo Storage Competition Heats Up

 

Google

The competition for free online photo storage got a little hotter Tuesday.
Google said it has started integrating Picnik, an online photo editing tool that the company purchased in early March, into the Google photo storage Web site, Picasa.
Picasa users will now see a small edit button in the top left corner of their images. When clicked, a version of the photo will pop up into a new window that shows a number of simple and advanced photo editing options.
The simple options allow people to change the shape of an image by rotating, cropping and resizing it. The site also offers tools to change a photos exposure and color.
Another layer of editing features can be found through a tab called “Create,” which offers a number of advanced edit options similar to those found in desktop photo editing applications, including Adobe Photoshop.

Before Picnik was purchased by Google, people wishing to use the advanced features were asked to pay $25 to utilize the higher level controls. The features are now free on the Picasa site.
The Picnik integration could place Google on equal footing with other image-based storage Web sites when it comes to online editing. But the photo site still still feels quiet when it comes to social activity, especially when it is compared to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo storage site, which is in the top 50 trafficked Web sites online.
Facebook is also a heady competitor in this space. The company announced earlier this month that at least 99 percent of the nearly 500 million people using the site have uploaded at least one photo and over 100 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day.