By surprisingly popular request, you can now give anyone the gift of Picnik Premium! Just click one of our shiny new gift buttons from inside Picnik or, better yet, click this link to get started. You’ll be able to either email your lucky someone a special code, or print out a custom, super snazzy card for that extra touch. Last minute gifty-goodness awaits.

We’ve also snuck in some great new Premium effects: Orton-ish, Neon, and 1960’s. Orton-ish mimics the sleekly ethereal look of the Orton Technique. Neon makes even the most boring photo into a neon sign work of art. And 1960’s will have you thinking you’re digging through an old shoebox of forgotten photos.

And that’s not all! Here at Picnik World Headquarters, located in Seattle, the team sometimes gets a wee bit sick of the rain. Not to mention the howling wind. Yes, the legends are true. To combat this, some choose to scoot off to sunnier climes (you know who you are), while the rest come up with new effects! Thus, we’re happy to introduce Snow. Now anyone, even Seattleites, can have a perfect White Christmas.

Happy Holidays from Team Picnik!

As promised, Picnik.com is now available in eight languages. We’ve got 繁體中文, Deutsch, Español, Français, 한글, Italiano, Português, and as always, English.

To switch languages (or to admire all our hard work), click on the itty globe at the top of the Picnik window, pick the language you want, and voilà, it switches!

The Flickr/Picnik integration that everyone’s been eagerly waiting for is here! Now every Flickr member will see an button on their photo pages. Click that, and Picnik appears right inside Flickr!

Both Picnik and Flickr teams have been tirelessly toiling to make this the best integration ever. Now, all Flickr members get seamless access to the editing power of Picnik without ever leaving Flickr, and Picnik users can edit their photo, get creative with it, and share it with the entire Flickr community, all in one place.

And as an added bonus, we’re launching Picnik for international users! That’s right, citizens of the world, the Flickr version of Picnik has been translated into seven languages, which will spread to the rest of Picnik.com as fast as we can program it in: Traditional Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Korean, Italian, and Portuguese, just like Flickr!

All of us on Team Picnik want to thank everyone on Team Flickr - George, Simon, Jude, Heather and John - for the hard work, the coding, the camaraderie, the conversation, the hospitality, and the late-night IM-ing that made these past few weeks possible. It’s been crazy, it’s been fun, we’re all really proud of how it’s come together, and we’re so excited we’re downright giddy. And now we’re going to get some sleep.

Happy Flickniking!

Lexmark and Picnik have teamed up to make it even easier to edit photos before you print! A new “Picnik-ready” toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox is available at toolbar.lexmark.com.

Once you’ve downloaded the toolbar, a click on the Photos icon will bring up the pictures from the web site you’re currently on within Picnik so you can quickly make the edits you want.

We’ve had a lot of fun with the new Lexmark toolbar and hope you (and the millions of Lexmark users around the world) enjoy it too. Happy printing!

Yep, we’re a day early but we Santa just couldn’t wait. Check out the new (free!) Christmas goodies on Picnik. Now every photo can be a Christmas photo! Add Santa hats, artfully wrapped presents and sparkling ornaments to your favorite picture. There are a bunch of new holiday fonts too. Use them while you can, because once Santa heads back to the North Pole he’s taking the Christmas goodies with him.

HOORAY!! Today Picnik has been officially integrated with Box.net as their default photo-editing experience, as part of the launch of ‘OpenBox’. As you may already know, Box.net provides disk space in the “cloud” to more than one million users, allowing complete file access and sharing from anywhere with no additional software. Clearly many tens of millions of these files are photos, and Picnik has been integrated as an inline experience within the work flow of Box.net so that users can make their photos as awesome as possible. Now with a single click on Box.net, users can invoke Picnik, as well as a number of other best-of-breed apps sich as Echosign, Autodesk, Zoho, ThinkFree, Scribd, Zazzle, Mimeo, Twitter,mimeio and Myxer.

We think this integration is a great example of how leveraging the Picnik API can add massive value to a partner’s existing set of services. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself!

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.

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.