They say that ‘the family that plays together stays together.’ With that spirit in mind our friend Jake at www.communityguy.com has called upon the first ever Picnik Contest! What’s the fabulous prize? A mint sky blue Picnik T-shirt, PERFECT for going to the gym, layering under armani, or wiping up dog drool

Just go to www.communityguy.com over the weekend, download the sanctioned pics, and picnik away to show off your own mad skillz. And btw, what BETTER opportunity is there to use Picnik’s new Halloween features!!? (see post below). Good luck!

Update:
The winner has been announced! Congratulations to Jennifer Van Grove for her super awesome Halloween-themed Picniked photo.

I’m afraid I have to report some strange happenings over at Picnik World Headquarters. Mike, for instance, keeps mumbling to himself about “Braaaaains!” and, frankly, looks a bit..off. Take a look below and judge for yourselves. Jonathan has, for some reason, covered the windows with black velvet and keeps staring at Darrin’s neck. Speaking of whom, Darrin seems quite a bit furrier than usual, though he claims it’s because of his new kittens. A likely story.

But enough about that. Picnik’s gone spooky!

Halloween Fonts! For a limited time only, we’ve got eight of the spookiest, creepiest fonts around. Now you, too, can spell your name in skeletons.

Halloween Shapes! Add everything from jack-o-lanterns to ghosts to witches, or even disguise yourself with our twenty limited edition Halloween shapes.

Halloween Effects! Feeling a bit animated? Get reanimated with Zombify, then add a little color to that ghoulish face with Blood Stains. Find these under the Touch-Up category.

And no trickery here: the above zombification was created entirely using Picnik’s free tools.

From everyone here at Picnik World Headquarters, Happy Halloween and happy Picniking!

The Picnik Premium Preview is at an end. Starting today, Premium features will only be available to Premium subscribers, for the low, low price of $24.95 per year. As always, the basic Picnik experience, complete with the best photo editor you can find anywhere, is absolutely free for everyone.

Fonts! Our new Font tool has been a smash hit, but one thing we’ve been hearing in spades is, “More fonts!” We had 6 fonts, so we added one or two here and there and now we have 70. Just a handful, really. The original six are still available for free for everyone.

Shapes! We also bulked up our collection of 23 shapes with a nicely weighty 154 Premium shapes. Everything from cute little baby bunnies to punk rock splats. And of course a tasty selection of basic shapes has been set aside for everyone to use.

Effects! An update wouldn’t be complete without new effects. Posterize, which we’re really quite proud of, and Film Grain, which is a dead simple way to add some nice texture to any photo.

New photo service! Webshots has joined the ranks of Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Photobucket to which you can connect via Picnik.

We receive many requests asking how to produce this or that effect with Picnik. Today a guest user asked how to change a subject’s eye color. They didn’t leave an email address so I’ll post the reply here and maybe they’ll read it. In any case I’m sure this technique is new to many of you.

Before…

After!

(more…)

Yup, it’s true. Picnik has teamed up with Flickr to bring photo editing awesomeness to all Flickr users.

Both companies are working very hard to make this the tightest, smoothest integration possible. Whether you’re a Flickrite, Picniker, or both, you’ll feel right at home. We’re absolutely thrilled. And we think Flickr users will be, too.

We’ll post more as our collaboration with the Flickr team moves forward.

Picnik Premium is so close you can feel the tremble in the ground.  Hmm, actually I think that’s the windstorm blowing through Seattle now shaking our ‘historic’ building.  We’ve got a select group of critical reviewers looking at our very latest changes at this very moment, giving us notes… they’re very c00l.  For all our other fabulous users, Premium is only days away, truly!  In addition to all the Premium things you’ve previewed over the last couple weeks, we’ll sneak in some new fonts, unbelievable shapes and great effects.  OK, I better post this before the electricity goes out.

I am constantly amazed by all the fun things you get to do when you grow a startup. A really fun thing I got to do recently was to work with my wife on a Picnik video which could instantly show the power and ease of Picnik. Nothing beats the video medium and as Alfred Hitchcock once said; “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” We have thus kept this pretty short : )

You can see the video here;

And speaking of the power of the visual medium, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Picnik will be featured on NBC’s “TechNow!’ TV show this coming Saturday the 19th. Times vary depending on your market but it is usually late afternoon between 5pm and 6pm in most markets.

Incidently, Picnik has already been on a number of TV shows in the past including ABC News’ ‘Ahead of the Curve’, but I tend to not talk about the ones where I had a bad hair day. : )

cheers and enjoy the video!
Jonathan

All of us are very heads-down this week on a wide variety of new things for Picnik.  For example (and in no particular order) Steve’s working on a couple very cool new effects that he demo’d for us the other day.  Plus he continues to improve and streamline the experience of editing photos from one of our many cool partners like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photoworks.  Some new partners coming soon!

Mike is deep in the banking part of the e-commerce industry this week.  He is building the back end support for the subscription system… making it a solid experience so our Premium users can continue Picniking without a hitch.

Brian is working on very related stuff building and integrating the front-end aspects of the subscription system.  But also (spoiler alerts!) he is adding new fonts and shapes!  What I’ve seen over his shoulder is WAY cool… carrying some momentum from early design work Peter had laid out.

Jonathan and Monica have been connecting us with tons of reviews and write-ups… even a little TV action!  I’ll get a list together in the next few days for you to check out.

I won’t run down everyone today, you can see what I’m up to… especially if you’ve sent feedback lately.

BTW – did you know you can add Picnik as a Facebook application?  Do a search for “Picnik” on facebook, or just click this link.

Shouts to our Flickr and Facebook user groups!

- Picnik de Fotos… Hola!
- *picnik addicts * BFF!

Since our v1.0 release we’ve seen a lot of new traffic on the site. People are really getting into the new text, shapes and effects. But yesterday was especially cool, we had a record amount of traffic! And get this — we had more users from Canada yesterday then from the US!  I’d like to believe the record traffic is because of our resident Canadian (Steve) and his influence over his native country and vast family connections but the 3-day Canadian Thanksgiving weekend might have had something to do with it. 

Happy Day-After Thanksgiving, Canada! 

I’d also like to introduce the newest member of the Picnik Team: Charlie Whiton.  With all of the new features and constant stream of feedback email, we’re really happy to have Charlie on board.  Charlie comes to Picnik with lots of experience working with large online applications (like Expedia), online games and other consumer applications. There are some of the big features coming soon and we’re delighted to have someone focused on quality.  Charlie is also on top of feedback and forums, so you’ll probably be reading something from Charlie soon. Welcome Charlie!

-mike

 P.S. We’re running a little behind here at Picnik. The week-long Picnik Premium preview has been extended another week.  Enjoy!