@cromwell I thought pickmonkey is for ace membership only... and Cromwell... I no longer see the word ace next to your name... so maybe there's a glich there!
@monkeykid -- I was never an ace member, but Pickmonkey was always a free service. I used it yesterday in fact with no problem. Today, I can't get past the Royale roadblock.
@cromwell Hehe... I have an ad for ace membership on my side bar... and it marks pickmonkey as one of the benefits... so maybe it's just been changed! Odd... normally one would get to hear of such changes beforehand though!
Picmonkey does allow for some free use but they took away everything that is good and left only the bare bones for free. I am so disappointed about this. Ipiccy is the site I will use more of - they do not charge (at least now they don't). http://ipiccy.com/
The problem is I went back and forth between Ipiccy and Picmonkey since they both had features I liked but didn't have others I like.
@monkeykid in 365 you get access to picmonkey through 365 (I think I'm not an ace member so this is my understanding) - the type of access you get depends on what you paid picmonkey - you won't get additional features on picmonkey because you are an ace member.
@cromwell - It's still free, but if you want to use the 'Royale' effects (with the crowns next to them) you have to pay $4.99 a month subscription fee. I edited a photo today without using the Royale effects and it worked OK. The price seems a little steep though! Would be $60 a year! I've heard a couple of people mention that Ribbet is good for photo editing. It's free, and pretty much the same as Picnik.
I've just used picmonkey and annoyingly some of the features which I loved have now got an upgrade with them and I can no longer use them. There are still some free features though. I wouldn't pay $4.99 a month for it though
@steviemichelle -- I just spent a hour editing photos at Ribbet. Same features as Pickmonkey only free! The best part? I actually found it worked faster there than Pickmonkey...and not one single glitch (unlike Pickmonkey). I guess I should send a Thank You note to the monkeys. If it weren't for their greed I wouldn't have found Ribbet.
I've found if I down load my picture onto 365 then click on pickmonkey then I can still use the options that I can't use if I just go straight onto pickmonkey. The problem with this is you have to choose which picture you want to use first, takes ages to save & you are only I think editing your 365 photo & not the original.
This is no different to Picnic that I used before PicMonkey - I use to pay $24 US a year to use (before it was closed). In fact I thought Picmonkey was the replacement to Picnic.
@joluise when Picnik closed there was a lot of banter about its replacement, Ross chose to replace it with PicMonkey here on 365 but if you have a look at Ribbet, it is almost a clone of Picnik. I don't have a problem with paying for advanced features, I was happy to pay $24 per year with Picnik but I will not be paying the $60 that PicMonkey is asking.
@cromwell@kjarn@joluise Yes, Ribbet is exactly the same as the old Picnik and you have to pay for 'premium' features. Less expensive than PicMonkey. But you can still use Picasa totally free and it does just about everything you need; its collage function is the best, as well, I think.
@girlie I've tried to use Picasa several times but unfortunately just don't get it. I've now switched to Ribbet which is still completely free once you've registered. I may have to take a Picasa tutorial once Ribbet start charging.
@allie912 just checked this out. Unfortunately it doesn't have collages but sure has a lot of choices of other stuff. I could get lost in there for hours.
Thanks for the advice on Ribbet - never heard of it. I also use Snapseed on my iPad which I really like - I think the app is around $5 (aus) but certainly less than $10. The other option is Pixlr which is completely free and has some different options from advance to fun. http://pixlr.com/
Noticed that last night too... shame as some of the options were quite good.. Now it's just the same as picassa really.... Although I might check out that Ribbet site
Well, Picmonkey certainly stirred up a kettle of worms didn't it. Thanks for all the suggestions of where else to do editing. Will look at them all. Sure is nice to have people on this sight that know what they are doing. I think 460 a year is too much but I would do $25 maybe if I don't like all these other suggestions. They could have warned us this was coming a little differently.
@kjarn Rats, I forgot about collages. Picasa is actually great for collages but lately it has been quirky about where it saves the uploaded images and I have trouble locating them. I may have to figure that out.
I can't get past it either. They were saying from the beginning it was 'free for now'. It doesn't have anything to do with membership on 365 though. I was going to pay for it, but I put my credit card away and kind of hid it from myself so until I find it...no picmonkey.(It's those damn three digits on the back I don't have)
I started using ipiccy and I think with experience I might like it better. I was getting a bit lazy with picmonkey. I found it first and never bothered to play with anything else...silver lining.
Thanks for the referral to Ribbet. I do see that they have "premium" features, which, for the time-being, are free, but that seems to imply that they will start charging too. I agree with @sailingmusic that $5 a month is way too high. Picnik was $25 for the whole year. I hope Ribbet doesn't start charging that much. Honestly, I wish one of these companies would offer software at a price that we can just install on our computers.
I just checked out Ribbet and noticed that it is "free" at the moment. Considering it looks identical to the old Picnik, I wouldn't be surprised it will have a charge soon too.
$5 bucks a month for something you use almost daily is not a bad price- most of us spend that much on a latte that we down in 15 minutes... Just some perspective.
I have been using four "free" on line photo processors- Picmonkey, Ribbet (formerly Picnik), iPiccy and BeFunky. Each one had plusses and minuses. And since Picmonkey was begun by folks formerly of Picnik, it had some similar features and was just as easy to use. When Picnik resurfaced as Ribbet, I was glad to have some of my old "favorites" back and if push came to shove, I'd probably pay for that over Picmonkey even though Picmonkey has some nicer collage layouts. Ribbet however, beats out Picmonkey when it comes to uploading. In Picmonkey the only time you can upload more than one shot is when you're doing a collage. In Ribbet, you can upload multiple pictures at any time. Of all the collage layouts though, iPiccy has some of the nicest ones- some quite different and unique. You can also upload multiple pictures to iPiccy at any given time. But iPiccy is not always easy to get into for some reason. I find that I must refresh the upload once or twice before everything finally comes up on the screen. It's worth the annoyance though for some of the features they offer. I've seen a few other programs that have some nice layouts too- but with four to choose from already there was no need to check them out. It's true that BeFunky has no collage features, but they have quite a few variations in their regular effects to choose from even within the free format and their "Artsy" effects are so much fun to work with. And since Ribbet and iPiccy do have collage layouts, it's no big deal. All in all it boils down to what you use your processing for. Picmonkey might not offer you as much bang for your buck as Ribbet or some of the others where you pay for the premium features. Ribbet will probably follow Picmonkey's lead and charge at some point, but I'd probably pay for that over Picmonkey which at $60 a year is too pricey for me. If they're smart at Ribbet, they'll charge something similar to what Picnik's Premium used to cost. I didn't think it was overpriced before and wouldn't have a problem paying that now. It was a smooth marketing ploy to offer Picmonkey and Ribbet free for awhile. Companies hope that you will get hooked on using their product so that you won't be able to live without it and will pay for it when it's no longer free. The problem these companies face though is that discerning processors know where to find the "free" stuff- so if they're going to charge, they've got to offer an an amazing package that makes it really worth it to the photographer to pay for the service. I don't think Picmonkey lives up to that criteria. So that's my take on the situation- sorry for the long ramble, but maybe it will be of some use to someone!
@ellen Picasa is a free application that you can download and do just about everything with. It is great for collages and has a range of special effects.
@girlie - is there any way to use it without it trying to pull all your photos into it? I've tried it a couple of times, and I could never figure that out, so I always end up uninstalling. I do love collages on picasa, and back when I had a netbook with no photos on it, I used to use it for collages.
@ellen Are you talking about the collage feature? What I do is: click on Create collage; then if it comes up with a bunch of your photos, click on Select All ; then click on Remove and they'll disappear, leaving you with a blank screen to collate another collage. You can choose several photos at a time to move over into the collage by holding down the Command key as you select your shots. Have I answered your query?
@girlie no, I'm referring to how as soon as you install picasa, it wants to pull your whole collection of photos. Every photo it can find on your computer. I don't want a new way to organize my photos, and I can't figure out how to disable that feature.
@ellen Oh, sorry, misunderstood what you were asking. No, I don't worry about that feature of Picasa because all mine are stored in iPhoto and I just ignore what Picasa wants to do with them. Perhaps you can go to Picasa Help on the menu bar and look for an answer there. Or there may be a forum on the Net if you Google the question. Hope this helps.
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The problem is I went back and forth between Ipiccy and Picmonkey since they both had features I liked but didn't have others I like.
@monkeykid in 365 you get access to picmonkey through 365 (I think I'm not an ace member so this is my understanding) - the type of access you get depends on what you paid picmonkey - you won't get additional features on picmonkey because you are an ace member.
http://pixlr.com/
http://pixlr.com/
I started using ipiccy and I think with experience I might like it better. I was getting a bit lazy with picmonkey. I found it first and never bothered to play with anything else...silver lining.