If you don’t want to spend a small fortune on photoshop, this is a great alternative: picnik.com. Believe it or not, I actually have photoshop and it seems very complicated to me. Picnik is the easiest, user friendly photo editor I have found. Not that I am a big photographer or film editor. If you are a simple gal like me, this is the place for you. Picnik is available free but I urge you to spend the $25 yearly fee and upgrade to all of the available features. Like wrinkle remover, insta-thin, teeth whitener, air brush, etc. You know, all the stuff we need to make us look like a more natural beauty.

As you know, I recently purchased a photo scanner and have scanned all my family photos. Another wonderful feature of picnik is that it has an “auto fix” feature, which instantly lightens all old, dark, dreary photos. And you can crop all your photos on picnik. I am so old that there are pictures of me before a zoom lens was created.  Lots of unused spaces in pictures.

Here is a great example of an old photo that I cropped and lightened:

Took less than one minute to do those two simple steps. Kind of like having your own little zoom button. This example just scratches the surface of what you can do with your old scanned photos or newer digital photos.  Now isn’t that worth $25 a year?

*On April 19, 2012, picnik.com will close.  Some of the same features can be found on google+.