Colorcinch is a great online photo editor and with tools as good as this that run in a web browser, it makes you wonder whether you actually need software installed on the computer. Try it!
Apparently, Colorcinch used to be called Cartoonize and it can be found at www.cartoonize.net but maybe it will get its own Colorcinch domain one day. It offers many features for free and there is no sign-up, no cost, and no information is required from you. You can simply upload a photo, edit it and download the result. Here is an example I crated with it:
Some features are only available to subscribers, but there are enough free features to have a lot of fun with your photos, so head over to the Colorcinch website and try it. It works in a browser, so it does not matter whether you have a Windows PC, Apple Mac or even Linux or Chromebook.
Basic photo editing tools
I don’t know the maximum size of photo that can be uploaded, but a 5000 x 3000 pixel image uploaded OK, so at least 16 megapixel images are fine. The photo appears in the main part of the browser window and a sidebar on the left provides access to all the functions you need.
There is Crop, Resize, Rotate, Exposure, Color, Vibrance, Tint, Details, Vignette and Round. All the photo enhancement functions use simple sliders. With Exposure for example, there are sliders for Brightness, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows.
With Color there are Hue, Saturation and Temperature sliders. Dragging a slider determines the amount of brightening, saturation or other enhancement that is applied.
The only thing I wish for is a selection tool to apply effects only to part of a photo instead of all of it. Apart from that, the tools are excellent and common faults like underexposure, color tints and crooked photos can be fixed. There is even an option to create layers.
Apply effects to photos
All the basic photo enhancement tools are free, but open Effects and you begin to encounter features that are limited to subscribers. There are four categories of effects: Cartoonizer, Digital Art, Sketcher and Painting.
Select any of these and there are many effects. Most of them are limited to subscribers, but a small number of them are provided for free. Four are free in the Cartoonizer effects for example, and a similar number in each of the other effects collections. Maybe a dozen or so are free.
Not all effects suit all photos and a lot depends on the subject. With some photos the effects are brilliant, but in some photos they do not work so well. However, it is easy to try effects and see what they look like and no changes are permanent unless you click the Apply button.
It takes several seconds to apply an effect and larger images take longer for the preview to appear, sometimes 20 seconds. A panel can be opened after the preview appears and it contains sliders that enable you to customize the effect by adjusting the strength of the parameters. It is easy to experiment and try different settings and apply them or abandon them.
Apply filters to photos
There are sixteen filter collections and some have more than a dozen filters. I didn’t count them, but there must be 100 to 150 different filters. Dozens of them are free, but you need to subscriber to access them all.
Clicking a filter shows a preview and clicking a button opens a panel with all the settings used to produce it as sliders that can be adjusted. With all the filters and all the adjustments available there are more possibilities than can be counted. There must be a million ways to customize these filters.
Apply overlays and masks
Overlays offer more categories of effects, like Texture, Sun Flare, Light Leaks, Bokeh and several more – 11 categories in all. As with effects and filters, some are free, others are for subscribers.
Masks provides collections of shapes, brushes, animals, patterns and more. If you want the photo to be heart-shaped, triangular, round or any one of dozens of other shapes, it can be done here.
Other editing tools
There are Text, Drawing, Graphics and Frames, whose functions are obvious from their names. All provide lots of choice, lots of customization, and are easy to use. There are simply too many to list here. The range of features is excellent.
Save your photo
Images can be saved as JPG or PNG files and the quality of the JPG can be set using a slider from 0 to 100. A small preview shows the quality you can expect. My 5000 x 3000 pixel photo downloaded as a 15 MB PNG, so it can cope with quite large images. I know some pro Photoshop users have 100 MB images, but most people don’t. There is probably a size limit, but this is higher than some online photo editors.
Conclusion
I like Colorcinch a lot. It has an excellent range of effects, filters enhancement tools and other functions, and it provides a lot of features. It is not a pro tool like Photoshop for example, but for people wanting to fix poorly taken photos or create fun images with from the phone snapshots, it is nearly perfect.
It offers a lot for free and even more if you subscribe. I recommend you at least try the free version of Colorcinch.
