Picnik is, at heart, a very robust Adobe Flash-based web application that supports hundreds of Photoshop-style filters, effects, and adjustments. Getting started is free and registration is optional, but many of the advanced tools are only available after upgrading to a pro account ($24.95/year). Even though the tool can be used directly from Picnik's site, one of its strengths is the sheer number of embedded partnerships it has forged with other social networks like MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook. This allows Picnik to be invoked directly and returns your retouched photo to the site you are on.

Twitgoo is a new competitor from Photobucket aiming to unseat the crown of the current Twitter photo-sharing site, TwitPic. It is a fairly unique service, trying very hard in a chameleon-like way to look very much like Twitter once you log in (using your Twitter username and password, or Twitter OAuth in the case of the Picnik partnership). The powers you grant Twitgoo go farther than just sending a tweet about a new photo. As we stated above, it can (if instructed) also update your Twitter background and user icon directly.

Finally, photos that are modified in Picnic and pushed to Twitter appear to come from Picnic on 'from' line below the tweet. This is a smart move on Picnik's part, they are all about trying to become the de facto standard for web-based photo retouching, and this will raise their profile more. Having used Picnik with Flickr for close to a year now, we can assure you that it is a very easy and fun editor to use, and the results it generates are spectacular. Give it a try, and tweet your results!