Day 3: Picture Editing -- Picnik

The last time I wrote (Day 1), I said that photo editing was going to be a real problem for me. It still is. There's no really good solution to creating new pictures completely online. I still have to take the screenshot, save it to my desktop, upload the pic, and editi it online.

Picnik does, however, work with pictures I already have in Picasa, Flickr, and Facebook, so I can edit the screenshot online with no problem. If I had a web storage solution mounted locally, that would solve my problems, I guess, as long as the storage had a public API.

To use Picnik with your online photos, you'll need to go to the  Library tab and click "Edit photos." You don't need a Picnik account if you're just going to edit photos from your Flickr, MySpace, Picasa, or Facebook account. You will need to authorize Picnik to access that account.

After the Flash loads, choose and double-click on the photo you want to edit. The "Edit" tab has some nice one-touch fixes for photos, but most of what I need is in the "Create" tab. Go the the "Save and Share" tab to save, then choose to replace your old file or create a new one.

Not too bad, really.

I've removed some of my FF extensions because I didn't really need them and because I thought they may have been causing some instability. My current list of FF extensions for the test period is:

• Adblock Plus
• AddToPicasa
• Google Toolbar
• Greasemonkey with Google Docs Download.

I decided to listen to some music yesterday, and Jamendo.com took care of that. I'll need to put together some playlists for myself. I hate streaming audio, though -- the quality is low and it stutters every once in a while. Interestingly, the dive bar I went to last night didn't have jukebox software -- they just used YouTube. That didn't seem to be an optimal solution.

I've tried using the AddToPicasa plugin to put photos directly into my Picasa album for this blog, but they don't show up in the "Uploaded photos" dialog when I try to access them. I'll see if there's a setting I don't have right.

Overall, some tings are still difficult, and I have to try to stop myself from running my music/mive player, but most of my problems seem to be related to adjusting my workflow and not about being able to get work done. The work week starts tomorrow, though, so I'll see how I do on a real, full, week.