Taking photos or making beautiful digital artwork is activities most people enjoy doing. Most people have heard of, and might be familiar with, Adobe Photoshop. It’s arguably the most popular image manipulation app around, especially for professionals. However, most people’s image editing needs would be met by apps available right in their browser.

While you won’t have the extensive capabilities Photoshop has, this list of the top eight image editing web apps will likely offer more features than necessary for most people in most instances.

1. Photoshop.com

Photoshop.com is the lightweight version of the behemoth desktop app, Photoshop. It’s more of a small collection of photo touchup tools with image storage and sharing integration than a real image editor. None the less, it’s a great option for those of you who might be looking for quick photo touchup capablities and and the Adobe reliability factor.

• Requirements: Flash 10+
• Developer: Adobe

2. Splashup

Splashup is quite similar to Photoshop in respect to its interface, while offering a strong selection of tools and a few more than basic image editing capabilities. It’s capable of multiple image editing, layers, filters, etc. You can also pull images from Flicker, Picasa and Facebook.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Faux Labs

3. Aviary

Aviary offers everything from image editing to vector and audio editing. It’s a suite of web apps with some really great capabilities that let its users produce the quality of work you might expect from a desktop app. The app uses a simplified interface in comparison to Photoshop and similar web apps. It’s capable of layers, grouping, filters and quite a few more advanced features should you need them.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Aviary

4. picnik

Picnik is another editing app focused mostly on the photography aspect of editing but, is capable of a little more. It’s a great app for photo touchups, basic edits and applying some pretty neat filters but isn’t capable of features like layers. You can connect to Flickr, Facebook, PIcasa, Myspace and other photo sharing and online communities.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Picnik

5. flauntR

If you’re looking for a massive collection of pre-defined photo effects that take only a second to apply, this is the place. It’s not great for more advanced editing but definitely has enough tools to take care of most peoples needs and has integration with just about every major online community or image sharing site.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: FotoDesk

6. FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is another editor focused on photos, without the capabilities necessary for editing anything else. It’s purpose, is fast and easy photo touchups and basic editing. As with most of the other apps here, it has integration with the major photo sharing and online community sites. It does have a great selection of photo effects, decorations, etc.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Arbor Labs

7. Pixlr

Pixlr is quite similar to Splashup, but doesn’t quite offer the capabilities or performance. The interface is another Photoshop imitation, so it’ll be easy to jump right into for those of you familiar with the desktop app. Pixlr does have slightly more refined features when it comes to individual tool control though so there are some advantages. Pixlr also includes the magic wand tool, which isn’t a feature in Splashup.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Pixlr

8. Sumo Paint 2.0

Sumo Paint is another Photoshop-like editing app, although with an impressive collection of tools (including the magic wand). It supports layers, grouping and many more advanced features. It’s interface appears to be well refined but I haven’t had an opportunity to use it as much as Splashup or Pixlr. They also offer a downloadable version, which adds to the capabilities you can get from their software — desktop or web app.

• Requirements: Flash
• Developer: Sumo

Conclusion

There are many more free online image editing web apps available, but they just don’t stack up to the ones listed here. Some include advanced capabilities that will allow you to do much more than photo editing, while others have a more limited set of tools for those who might only be interested in some quick photo touchups.

The great thing about these editors is that you only need a browser and Flash; so you’ll be able to access quite capable image editing software anywhere in the world for free. Some are more system resource intensive than others, but that’s to be expected; after all, they are image editing apps!

If you use or know about a free online image editor that belongs in this list, share it with us in the comments below or shoot us a quick tweet @webappstorm. Thanks!

Last year we posted on Abduzeedo a very cool post about typographic portraits, the 45 Amazing Type Faces - Typographic Portraits became one of the most popular posts on Abduzeedo, and a lot of people asked me how to create that effect in Photoshop.

We have also posted a little tutorial showing how to do that using, Flash Photoshop Quick Tips #5 - Typographic Portrait, however I decided to create a nice typographic effect using just Photoshop.

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a really cool and super easy typographic portrait in Photoshop. We will use the Displace filter and some Blend Modes to achieve the effect. The whole process is quite simple but it might take you some time to add the texts and elements, but once you do that the rest is very straight forward.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I used 2560x1440 pixels for the size. Then import a photo of yours, I'm using a portrait taken by a John Arlington, a great photographer friend of mine. The photo I have is with white background, so extract the background.

Step 2

Duplicate the layer and go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate. You will have a black and white photo. Add a white background. After that save the file, it has to be PSD otherwise it won't work with the Displace filter.

Step 3

With the Horizontal Type Tool (T) create text boxes and start adding texts. The idea is to play with the texts, they don't have to be readable, or at least with normal legibility, so play with the line-heights, reduce that so the lines overlay one another.

Also make some keywords much bigger and bold, like in my case I highlight some words like Photoshop Tutorials, Illustrator, Inspiration... Also, play with italic, regular texts as well as alignments and text sizes. Tip: I used Garamond for the font, I think serif fonts look much better for this effect.

Step 4

For each layer, go to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow. Use Multiply for the Blend Mode, black for the color, 90º for the Angle and 5 pixels for Distance, Spread and Size.

Also, group all the layers and the duplicate the group. Go to Layer>Merge Group and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. This blurry layer will have to stay behind the regular one. The idea is to add some depth to your text, that's why the shadow.

You can duplicate the orginal text again and move it a little bit to the top and left as well to add even more depth.

Step 5

Select all the text layers and merge them into one layer only, then go to Filter>Distort>Displace. A dialog box will appear asking you to choose a file. Select the PSD file we created on the Step 2. After that for the Displace settings use 15 for the Horizontal and Vertical Scale; use Tile for Displacement Map and Repeat Edge Pixels for the Undefined Areas.

The displacement map will distort the layer based on the greyscale photo we used, the dark tones go down while the lights go up.

Step 6

Put the photo layer on top of the white text layer, then change the Blend Mode of the photo layer to Light Burn.

Step 7

The photo has too many details, so go to Filter>Noise>Dust & Scratches. Use 7 pixels for the Radius and 0 levels for the Threshold.

Step 8

Mask the text layer so you will have just the texts over the photo.

Conclusion

You can reduce a little bit the saturation and as I mentioned before, you can add more text layers and even try different symbols and shapes.

There are many ways to create this effect, this perhaps is the easiest one, but you have to be very careful to make everything very subtle, otherwise the effect won't look as cool as we expect.

Click on the image for full preview

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

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