Photo-Editing Sites Review

Taaz.com:

This site allows you to do a complete virtual makeover on a model, or even someone in a photo of your own. Taaz is fun if you want to play around with different colors and makeup tools to see how they'll look on you, without you actually having to buy them. It's relatively simple to use; the most difficult aspect is getting a good photo. It has to be a headshot style of pretty high quality in order for the selections you make to look accurate. This site works by having you select different parts of the face upon the site's direction so it knows where to apply a certain effect. This site exclusively deals with hair and makeup, so it's obviously not as complete as photoshop, but would be useful for touching-up makeup, a common use for photoshop. This site is mostly targeted towards girls roughly in their teens and twenties. Although it's uses are fairly limited, it does a good job of doing what it does.

Aviary.com: 

Aviary.com allows you to make basic changes to a photo; it's much less extensive than photoshop, but it's simplicity works to its advantage. Photoshop can be daunting, and it can take hours to watch all the tutorials you might need and even longer to figure out the tools on your own, but Aviary makes it easy. The basic changes that most people would use photoshop for like: getting rid of red eye, changing the lighting, covering a blemish, etc. are included and all you have to do it select a change, it will be displayed on the photo as a preview from which you can choose to alter the change or apply it. Aviary seems to be targeted at teens and preteens because its very user-friendly and bright.

I chose to play around with the demo which automatically gives you this default image:

And this was the result after I had made some changes:

Pixlr.com

Pixlr has several different levels of complexity when it comes to editing. The simplest is the Pixlr-O-Matic (which was what I chose to make my example below). This allows you to do basic cropping and add filters which change the light and give the image a cool vintage effect. Pixlr Express gives you a few more options and ability to tweak the presets from the Pixlr-O-Matic, this is a little more complicated than Aviary, but still very understandable. Finally, the Pixlr Editor is more like a mini version of photoshop. Pixlr so far has been my favorite because it offers these three different levels of difficulty than can be used by people who have both very little experience in digital editing and those that have lots more. This would be my choice to link on the webpage.

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Citrify.com:

Citrify is best described as a mini photoshop directed at teenagers. It's bright design is easy on the eyes and it explains what some of the adjustments do when you hover your mouse over the option. It doesn't give you a whole lot of explanation or hold your hand while guiding you through the editing process, but that allows for some freedom and creativity. Basically. Cirtrify could be the "training wheels" before Photoshop because it is set up in a very similar way, but is aimed to get beginners used to the names and tools that are available when it comes to digital editing and isn't as overwhelming as Photoshop.



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