I’m always on the look out to make Diiver a bit sexier because pictures speak a thousand words. I can always use a little help, and Picnik, a photo editing tool makes my photos incredibly unique. The editing tools are super easy to use and in no time, I was tweaking my ordinary photos and feeling artsy and creative.

Who are the brains behind Picnik?

The original brains behind Picnik are Mike (COO) and Darrin (CTO) who originally had the idea of using Flash, mostly then just used to create online greeting cards and funny internet cartoons, to make a whole application, one that could live online, in your browser. And since all of us here at Picnik World HQ love photographing Seattle and it’s environs and our travels and each other, why not an online photo editor!

They came up with this in late 2005, and during summer of 2006 brought their old comrade from Microsoft, Jonathan, to be our CEO. In the meantime they’d hired Peter, the designer, to give all this awesome technology a user interface and a brand and all the pretty shiny bits (it’s a lot to do with gradients), and soon after Jonathan they hired Brian, to add to the engineering muscle.Two years later, we’ve added a small feedback team, an office manager, two more designers, a copywriter, a marketing officer, and someone to handle ads sales and we’re still under 20 people!

What are the most popular photo editing Picnik  ‘tricks’ among customers?

One of our users’ favorite tricks is what we call Effect Painting. For instance you can use the Black & White Effect and paint the color of the original photograph back in (http://blog.picnik.com/2008/05/how-to-2-effect-painting/). Also, there’s a lot that can be done with the Clone Tool (http://blog.picnik.com/2008/12/clone-tool-out-of-the-sheep-paddock-and-into-your-browser/). Some of the tricks that people aren’t as aware of is the ability to draw a line across your photo in Rotate and have it snap to level with or vertical to that line.

What was the biggest challenge/s in being an entrepreneur?

Picnik is rather rare in the startup world in that we’re bootstrapped. This means that our founding partners, namely Mike, Darrin and Jonathan, funded themselves rather than turning to VC funds or other investments to support the company through the early years before profitability. We think this gives us the advantage of being more interested in staying small and scrappy (and cheap!).  We also get to maintain control over the day-to-day operations and long-term goals for the business. And we’ve been fortunate to find a great group of people who are likewise interested in driving profitability and staying scrappy (and cheap!).

What are some future packages for debut in 2009/2010?

I’m delighted to say, there are plenty of incredible new things we’re working on. The success of our amazing Halloween tools, effects and stickers (http://blog.picnik.com/2009/10/a-craving-for-halloween/) have inspired us to give seasonal content extra attention. We’re already hard at work making fun, classy, and goofy material for the upcoming winter holidays.

Specifically, we’re having a lot of fun improving our collection of Christmas and holiday features. You’ve already seen what we just put out for Halloween and now we’re getting the next batch ready for release. We had an awesome time creating the platform for our new slideshow builder and have more additions to that in the works, and of course all sorts of other things I couldn’t possibly mention yet.