Picnik

Anyone can snap a photo. The hard part is editing a crappy digital image and turning it into art. Until now, that's been too complicated for mere mortals. Good thing you don't need any special skills to use the free photo-editing tools at Picnik. Aimed at novices, it lets you crop borders, zap red-eye and add a range of special effects — like blurring, tinting and heat-mapping — to any picture you upload. While FotoFlexer, Photobucket and Photoshop Express all have similar features, only Picnik presents them with such elegant simplicity.

—Anita Hamilton