For a long time, even though the Picnik app was translated into 15 languages, Picnikers couldn’t write in characters other than Roman ones with the Text tool. This was because the amount of characters in all the world’s languages is so huge, that downloading that enormous amount of data would take forever, and you’d never get around to editing your photos!

But now, thanks to a bit of genius wizardry, Picnik’s crack team of engineers have come up with a clever way of accessing the international character set you already have downloaded on your computer with our new Global font. And that means that now you can write your greetings, LOLs, professions of undying friendship, song lyrics, and in many cases, even your own name, in all languages, no matter how it’s written!

Find Global at the top of the list of Basic Fonts in the Text Tool. It’s free for all our users, so enjoy!

Are there wedding bells in your future? Picnik has teamed up with several Google products to launch www.google.com/weddings where you will find a range of tools to make your wedding stylish and a cinch to plan.

Look picture perfect: Use Picnik’s range of photo-editing tools and quick fixes to look your best. Engagement photos for the local paper, portraits for the invitations, and all the pictures for your website can look as beautiful as the event.

Collage templates for every wedding: There are custom designed Fancy Collage templates for save the date cards, wedding invitations, and even table numbers, and perfect for your photos.

Share your joy: Make sure all your family and friends know your good news with a wedding website. With Google Sites, it’s simple. There’s an easily customizable template to match all the invitation styles on Picnik.

Stay organized: Keep your expenses straight, your vendors in line, and your warring aunts on opposite ends of the ballroom with Google Docs. There’s a template for organizing every aspect of your wedding.

Keep hold of your memories: Use Picasa Web Albums before your wedding to organize inspirational photos of cakes, dresses, or venues. Since they’ll always be online, they can be viewed by anyone, anywhere. And after the wedding, Picasa Web Albums can keep those photos safe from floods, fires, or stray moving boxes, while keeping them on hand for instant bragging.

And the best part is, all of this lives online. So whether you’re at home, at the office, or on the go at the tuxedo rental, you’ll have all your wedding plans at your fingertips. So you can get down the aisle with a picture perfect smile on your face.

And to make your smile even broader, we’re hosting a wedding sweepstakes to celebrate the launch of www.google.com/weddings! Couples can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own.

To get started, go to www.google.com/Weddings. For more ideas and help, try our Getting Started guide. Congratulations and happy planning!

Picnik is excited to announce that now one of the world’s largest social networks can edit their photos with Picnik!

Orkut’s multi-millions of users now will have unfettered access to photo-editing awesomeness without ever having to leave the popular social network. On the photo page of any photo in any orkut album there will be an edit with Picnik (or editar com o Picnik, as the case may be) button which will instantly launch Picnik inside the orkut window!

Take a look at the orkut blog for more info on their newest feature (in English and Portuguese).

Orkut is huge in India and Brazil. So we think it’s great that this integration is happening not only in time for the Holidays but also during the southern hemisphere’s summer vacation! Hopefully there will be lots of pictures and memories to share during the season.

Happy Picniking!

Everyday at Picnik we’re blown away by the amazing photos that Picnikers share in our forum challenges, add to our Flickr group, and post on our Facebook page.

Picnikers all have their own unique way of making these masterpieces, so what better way to share your tips and tricks than in person at one of our Picnik & Tell Meetups, which will be happening in cities around the world on November 3rd.

All attendees* will receive a complimentary 1 month Picnik Premium account trial after completing a short feedback survey. Plus, Picnik team members in Seattle, San Francisco, and even New Zealand will be on hand to say hello!

Everything you need to participate is on our Picnik & Tell Meetup site. To find a Meetup near you, click here or do a quick search on the map. To join a scheduled event, click on the I’m Interested button on the Meetup details page, or if you don’t see one listed, click on Schedule a Meetup to create one.

When you start or join a Meetup, consider volunteering to be the Meetup organizer. That gives you the ability to set the venue and time of the party. Anyone can do it, plus you may get the opportunity to be featured here on the Picnik blog (and all the fame and glory that comes along with it).

Also, don’t forget to comment on your city’s party details page—you can use it to chat and plan with your fellow attendees prior to the Meetup.

So grab a few friends and your favorite Picniked photos (brownie points if you use our new Halloween Effects) and we hope to hear all about it on November 3rd.

Happy Picniking!

*Void where prohibited

It’s that time of year again… Picnik has gone spooky! Our favorite time of the year is Halloween, and we always get a little giddy when it’s time to braaaaaainstorm the holiday’s feature suite. Halloween was our first holiday after we launched three years ago, and we always have the most fun making the tools to turn your photos into a grisly ghoulish fright fest.

All of the past three years of freaky effects are back with loads of new gruesomeness.

Halloween Fonts! Write your name in ghosts, or skeletons, or lettering that any Transylvanian count would be proud of with our eight spooky fonts.

New Halloween Stickers! Added to our collection of spiders, bats, black cats and jack-o’-lanterns (to name but a few) we’ve added lots of photo-realistic shapes to use as Halloween props in your photos. Plus new candy stickers for the Trick-or-Treaters.

New Halloween Effects! Last year’s favorites are here, the Vampire Eyes, the Blood Stains, the Zombify 2.0. But this year we’ve added Blood Splatters, Funhouse Mirror, plus nine more single click effects for instant Scary Movie posters.

New Halloween Costumes! Face Paint is back, and so is OgreVision, and with them come new Masks, Eyeballs, and paint-on Fake Beard!

Plus: New Halloween Frames (Eyeballs, in a frame!), tons of custom new Fancy Collages, and a whole collection of Textures just for Halloween.

We hope you all have a hair-raising holiday and wish you Happy Halloweening from Team Picnik!

The days of pencil sharpening, hand raising, and homework are about to begin, so Picnik has put together a whole bunch of ways to help you teachers out there get to know and celebrate your new batch of students.

Snap your students’ photos on the first day of school and use the new set of Back to School Fancy Collages to create class photo frames, desk nametags, blog headers, and more.

Thanks to suggestions from teachers around the world, we’ve also put together a list of suggested Picnik activities to use with your students.

Have your own spin on using Picnik in your classroom? We’d love to hear about it! Share your ideas in the educator section of our Feedback Forum!

Big news! After three years of bringing photo-editing awesomeness to Picnikers around the world, we have at last brought together all our help resources (and a few more besides) into one easy, accessible, searchable place!

First, let us introduce you to our brand new Picnik Help Center! Not only is there an answer to just about any question we’ve ever been asked but also a Getting Starting Guide, which cannily walks newcomers through finding their photos, saving them, and everything that can be done to them in between. Even more thrillingly, and this is something we’ve been wanting to do for ages, a whole section of Picnik Tips and Tricks, leading people in their Picnik Mastery from Seed stage to Big Shady Tree. That’s right folks, we have tutorials!

Second, we’ve completely remodeled our Forums. Ask a question, browse previous discussions, or pull up a seat at the Picnik Table to share your Picniked Masterpieces or find out what other Picnikers are up to.

Finally, we’ve added a quick way to look up your username or password if you’ve forgotten either, and for Premium Members, priority support from our Community Therapists who are happy to help you with anything else you need help with!

And a big congratulations to our crack team of Community Therapists who have been working so hard to get all this up and running!

When Picnik was acquired by Google a few months back, we were so excited by the possibilities. How many ways could we use this big worldwide platform to tell even more people about the awesomeness that is Picnik? One giant step we are taking today is the integration of Picnik into Picasa Web Albums. When you select “edit” inside of Picasa Web Albums, you now have the option of using Picnik to edit your photo. So from today, all Picasa Web Albums users have seamless access to the editing power of Picnik without ever leaving their account. When you save your edited photo back to your PWA album, you can either replace the old image or save a new copy. For our Picnik Premium members, you can access your premium account features from right inside of your Picasa Web Album account. And of course, you can always still pull your images into Picnik from your PWA account without ever leaving Picnik!

We’re thrilled to be able to announce this step in our integration with Google, and we hope you are too. Happy Picasaniking!

Late June. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the vuvuzelas can be heard around the globe.

All you soccer fans whose teams have made it through to the second stage: Redouble your efforts to cheer your country further and further into the tournament! Make sure the world sees your support by tagging your fan photos with picnikfanphoto to get them onto the Picasa Web Album fan gallery below! Flickr Picnikers can use the same tag to show off their team spirit in this Flickr slideshow.

Have fun, good luck, and happy Picniking!

Whether you play soccer or football, whether you support Australia or South Africa or Italy or Brazil or any of the qualified teams, Picnik has everything you need to drape your allegiance around your neck, paint your face with pride, and surround yourself with the colors of your national squad.

The most popular game in the world, fuessball has long been called “the beautiful game.” It’s gone from its origins as the game of a few English university students to an international organization with 208 national fútbol teams playing for its championship title played every four years. That’s 16 more countries playing calcio than are represented in the United Nations! Of those, just 32 knattspyrna teams will advance to the finals in South Africa this week.

So when the サッカー starts up this week, come to Picnik for everything 축구: scarves, face paint, flags and anything you need for soccer in whatever language.

Happy Picniking from Team Picnik!

Update June 17th

Team Picnik’s own Annie Laurie made this easy tutorial explaining all the new footie features: