Online photo editors to my mind is one of the most interesting fields of web2.0. I have reviewed about 5 of them in my russian blog already and here is the first one review in English. The service is called Picture2Life (by the way here is russian version of this review).

Uploading a photo

Picture2Life (P2L) offers many ways of uploading: import from Flickr and 23, IE and FF plug-ins, java-script applet that allows uploading photos simply by moving them to its area and standard file/URL uploading. By all these features the authors obviously tried to enlarge the number of their potential clients. Free users are limited to 10MB per month.

Photo edit.

There is a wide range of editing functions, but I couldn’t find the essential one - resizing (changing picture size). At the same time there is a rotate function which allows you to turn a pic about any value of degrees, make it horizontal or vertical. There is another function - crop” which is described in the tips. I also consider it to be important but I couldn’t find it on the main effects” bar. While editing, the picture can be zoomed. Canvas function given here is very unusual for online photo editors. You can resize the file of your picture either vertically or horizontal and put the image into any of its part. There are hips of effects, just have a look at this screenshot: Here you can see both their titles and results. There are also Pixelate, Oil Paint (painting imitation), possibility to add some text (the Russian language is available, but you can’t set the font size) and some more. The functionality of the editor is good enough.

Collages.

P2L allows not only to edit pictures but also create collages. In my opinion it’s the most interesting function. Press Create Collage” and select necessary pictures by clicking them. You can click red or black pictures to make a creative collage. Then you have to select your layout (16 available). After that you can adjust collage size, color and customize its border. Every time you hit the preview” button here, you’ll get an absolutely new collage (photos will change their location). Click Save to add the created collage to your photos.

Save and export.

You are able to use your edited photos in different ways. You can export them to Flickr and ImagesShack; email them; post them to your site either as a thumbnail with a link or full-sized (however I’m not sure whether you’ll manage to do it with only 10 MB given) and save it to your PC. There is also Feed Pictures” function.

Business model.

Picture2Life contains ads on its pages from the very launching. They are planning to introduce paid accounts soon. As I’ve already said various ways of photo uploading are aimed at enlarging the number of clients at the expense of Flickr, 23, ImageShack users. However all these photo editors are very unstable from the business point of view. They will be forgotten as soon as one of the monsters like Flickr launches its own version of photo editor.

By all means the service is very interesting. I liked collages most of all. If you try to create a collage, I’d like to see the results. Post them to the comments and I’ll choose the most interesting ones.