Monday, January 30, 2012

Review: FotoFlexer

Web address:   http://fotoflexer.com/

Price:   free

How they describe themselves:  Creating dazzling photo effects for free in your browser. FotoFlexer is the world's most advanced online digital photo editor. It performs advanced effects previously only available to professionals using expensive software.

Rating:  It did the job and I’m happy with the end result. Referring to themselves as ‘the world’s most advance photo editor’ is a stretch of the imagination. Not being able to control the sharpen effect renders this basic not advanced. For personal photographs this is great.

Before
See the The Mission for control details

After using fotoflexer

Feature 
Feature Available
Comments
Rotate image
Yes
Easy
Crop image
Yes
Bit fiddly
Auto Fix
Yes
Not that impressed, thought the white would be whiter.  The end result was okay though.
Add frame /boarder
Yes
Only a few borders available. Would welcome more options.
Add text
Yes
Limited fonts. Glitter text available also.
Collage
No
I searched for this and couldn’t find it.
Photo Effects
Yes
At first glance these appear lame. Use the side arrows to find more effects. Discovered a few good ones, I like Pop Art & Ink Stamp. This would be idea for personal images.
Stickers
Yes
Butterflies, talk bubbles etc. Cute option. It may just be my personal taste, but I found the animated stars/hearts and stickers to be tacky.
Sharpen
Yes
No control over sharpen, it is automated for you. This option was hidden under the Beautify tab, I didn’t think it was available at first.
Found options for; Hue, Saturation, Lightness, or Contrast & Brightness
Resize
yes
By pixels, percentages or handy options like avatar, thumbnail, message board etc.  


My choice of editor is Photohop Elements. Before starting a review I needed to use Piknic for the first time. I can see what all the fuss is about! (It will be a shame to see Piknic go).

FotoFlexer wasn’t as pretty or friendly as Picnik but has all the basic features (minus the option to create collages). Fixing blemishes, smoothing wrinkles, rounding corners, applying vignette and borders were all available.

Working with FotoFlexer I wasn’t that impressed. It wasn’t until I opened my saved image that I realised it was actually a good photo and was usable. It did make a decent amount of improvement to the before image.

I am very PC savvy, however I ran into some trouble with saving my image. There are numerous options for saving and sharing. This gives the impression that is user friendly. I beg to differ.

1 ) Sharing options: receive photo via email, url/link or TinyPic.
2) Saving options:  Save to My computer, FotoFlexer, Photobucket, FB, Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug, or Myspace.

I tried ‘save to my computer’. The first time I renamed the photo which resulted in a file with no extension. I was unable to open the photo. Resaving attempts took a while, FotoFlexer ‘encodes frames’ which takes 1 to 2 minutes. Using the option to emailing the photo to myself failed (I’m not sure why). As a regular photoshop user this was now giving me the *bleep*. It seems to save the image, you best not change the suggest file name. Files are automatically saved as a gif file (there was no option to select jpg).

I had to know what the ‘poster’ option looked like and went back for another play. Hey I like this feature a lot! I can imagine people turning their photographs into something shareable via pinterest, facebook or twitter. Using the layers I was able to add a gif image of Christine’s logo for added interest and increased branding. The poster is a winner!



I was able to edit my photos without setting up an account. I was able to set up an account without loosing the photo I had been editing.  Both of those are a plus to me.

Before leaving I clicked on the big ‘download’ button at the top of the screen. I assumed I would be able to download FotoFlexer. It took me to another web page that had something to do with videos. I had just 20 seconds to abort the download. I assume that was an ad made to look like part of FotoFlexer.  Don’t fall for that (I did).

Relates to: The Picniks Over and The Mission


Jeanie lives in Geelong with her husband. She spends her week days as a Receptionist and her spare time exploring creative interests. Jeanie is a blogger, maker of jewellery, and a newbie photographer. 


Visit Jeanie at her blog inspiredwish.com or follow her on Facebook.





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