PicMonkey Review

Detailed Reviews

Coming across numerous images online, we can clearly see a craze that has engulfed this world with pictures. With so many photos, it is evident that some are better than others, and some are hated to extinction.

With this, came the rise of photo editing software. The power to edit any photo and turn them whimsical with these applications. Most high-quality photo editing software are used offline over desktop, because of numerous features.

Pros

• No training needed for using editor functions.
• Tons of templates to choose from.
• Full cloud storage and unlimited image
• Decent collection of shapes, graphics, fonts, and photo effects.
• Dedicated themes designed for special events like Halloween, Valentine, etc.
• Workable mobile interface for meek editing.

Cons

• Slow responsive
• No useful external integrations.
• Team and printing features need more attention.
• No search function in graphics section.
• Average quality in editing over mobile interface and needs more features in mobile editing.
• Expensive team management plan.
• No Batch or multiple editing.
• Editor needs more brushing and UI tools.
• Needs more customer support services besides the Email services.
• Half-baked tutorials and help section, and with fewer audio/video tutorials.

Overview

But, can we take our desktop everywhere with us? Probably not and so we need an online photo editing software. It allows users to edit images from the get-go along with tons of other features.

Amongst such online photo editing software, comes PicMonkey. Launched in 2012, at Seattle, USA; PicMonkey has gained tremendous popularity among photo editing applications.

Not only over desktop but also in mobile platforms, this application managed to be among top 100 website list in 2013 PC Magazine awards.

It is equipped with many design templates, shapes, and other photo editing options to give users an experience similar to classic photo editor. It was founded by some of the Picnik company staff, after the fall of parent company.

Since we are going through the review for an online photo editing software, we will examine editing features for raw camera images to smallest JPG files. Let us see if this application does possess a caliber for top 10 best online photo editing software.

First steps, First!

As we expect from any services, be it online or offline, a trial version must be available for free. Given the trend we are living in, almost every software product gives a trial version for its most used plan.

PicMonkey also offers a similar plan, but users need to provide a credit card for it. This is a bit annoying for users who have no credit card. They also have a PayPal option, but that too is not so common among everyone. They should’ve given a free trial version without card details, which we feel won't cost company big.

Nevertheless, we took the trial version for business plan, the most commonly used, and with most features. After signing up for plan, the site directed us to main dashboard.

There are currently two versions for their site, one being an old one and another a beta update. For latest upcoming feature and to test them, we used beta version of site.

Keep in mind that this application requires flash plugin to run and so you should allow it in your browser. Many similar sites run on HTML5 too, which is way more stable than flash plugin.

The new user guide will take you directly to editor interface, and from here, you can directly start working. From here on, we will be mining for every major feature PicMonkey has to offer and see if it is worth our money and trouble.

Templates

The base of any editing tool is the templates it possesses. So, what are these templates basically for?

Well, as the name itself hints, these templates are base over which users can practice editor functions and replace graphics. This makes it simple for people who aren’t too creative or have no time to think out of the box and design something.

When users use Create New button, they will be prompted to select a suitable template for their design. Like a good photo editor, PicMonkey does possess a plethora of template’s stock.

Their templates are nicely grouped into several categories like ads, banners, branding, business, flyers, Facebook, Instagram cover, invitations, posters, infographics, etc. Each category has almost 100s of unique samples to choose from.

These were predesigned stock from PicMonkey. Other than this, users can also choose from blank templates and collages.

When choosing blank canvases, there are limited choices to select the size of portraits. Maximum dimension of portraits or images possible is 4000x4000 pixels.

Other than manual dimensions sizes, PicMonkey has given many preset canvases like HD video portrait, Facebook covers, Instagram covers, 4K UHDTV, Pinterest covers, twitter headlines, YouTube arts, etc.

These sizes are fixed. One of the disadvantages is that 4k size limit is restricted. Many high-resolution pics from cameras have way more dimension than this and so there is no way currently except scaling the photos down, which may also reduce image quality.

Also, raw images from camera are not importable. We tried with raw files from Samsung, Nikon, and Canon but were unable to import them. The only supported formats that worked were JPG, PNG, and SVG. This is a bit of negligibility from developers’ side since they should allow direct import of raw files from such popular cameras.

Moving on to another blank format, i.e. collage section. Collages are basically used to integrate multiple photos into a single pic. This not only reduces number of photos but also allows us to create chronological and colorful memories.

The collage section has around 30+ unique templates and were customizable too. This was a good plus in PicMonkey as not many photo editors allow to edit collage templates.

 As we see, the number of templates are more than sufficient to make good editing in your photos. The raw file’s import is still needed, or else they can provide a file converter inbuilt to import raw photo formats and convert them accordingly.

The best part was that most of templates were assembled appropriately, and this made navigating them easier. A search button in templates section along with precise name for each template made it very cheesy to find and use them.

Image Editor

Now let’s explore photo editor inside PicMonkey. This part has many roles in deciding actual value of editor. Things can fall or rise based on this feature, and hence, we will be critical while reviewing it.

Unlike dedicated apps on desktop, with so many photo editing functionalities, PicMonkey has given a sleek editor capable of satisfying an elementary as well as mid-level photo modifications.

Judging from normal looks, this editor is very rudimentary. However, once you input any element or image on blank page, some advanced editing options will appear after that.

This editor has three main sections for wider editing. The first option, Canvas Edit is used to edit a canvas. Using this, users can directly change size of the canvas they’ve selected.

Be mindful that in case you select any infographics or preset templates, you will need to realign elements if you alter their size. You can directly use percentage reduction tool too.

Then there is a crop, rotate and color option for a blank canvas. The rotate function is a bit tricky to use. The users have four options for rotate function. There is a standard CW/ACW and also straighten option till 5 degrees. Users can also flip the images right or left.

This may work of some images, but these options can be easily reduced to a rotation wheel. It will take you some tries to get proper rotation with current method, especially for a full 270 degrees along with using straightening option.

The next option for canvas was basic editing. It is used to improve some color aspects of images that you have uploaded. It has exposure, colors, and sharpen option.

The advanced option has some interesting editing functions. This includes cloning selected pic, dodge and burn, levels, and curve functions.

The dodge and burn are used to lighten and darken pixels using a brush. The other options, level and curves are used to alter RGB settings of selected layers. These settings are easily learnable if you get some practice via tutorial videos.

Now, apart from these three sections, this editor also has a floating box. This graphics’ box can be dragged anywhere on editor field.

The main options it contains are, editing selected images, general adjusts, effects, and erase them. The first tab in this box has adjust mode to change color fading, blend mode, rotation, and replacing images.

The effects section is limited to internal and external shadows. This option is quite detailed and can alter shape, size, color, distance, blur level, and rotation of shadows. The last section is erase tab, and as it suggests, it can be used to delete a specific section of images or any layers.

The editor has some more useful items in top and bottom bar. On the top bar, they have given some options like adding images, editing copies, changing name of the projects, and save option.

The bottom bar has some productivity tools like layer button, alignment button, undo/redo, zoom in/out, and Fullscreen/fit to screen buttons. The layer button is very useful here. In case you input too many elements on screen and can’t find required one, you can directly access that layer from the list of layers.

This is because it becomes a bit tough to select correct layer for correction. The layer selected only display a dotted outline when selected. There is flatten all layer option to unify all layers into a single image.

The users can change layers settings from this panel itself. The layers can be moved to front or back, it can be straightened or flattened from here, or you can directly copy, cut, paste, or delete layers from here.

One more detailed aspect is given in alignment button. It has option to turn entire workspace into grids. The maximum size of this grid is 400x400, which is way too much even for advanced editing.

Overall, these are main settings and changes that you can do in the base editor. It is better than other products like Lucidpress in this zone.

However, once again like its competition products, it also lacks proper spacing tool. The spacing tool does not suggest unified spacing between two blocks; neither does it suggests pixel coordinates.

Both of these are quite crucial in advanced editing. Even though it is one of the better editors, its functions still need a bit more improvement. Now we can move on to widgets section to see what kind and how many elements can be added to our images.

Widgets

Most of the photo editor websites not only rely on massive stocks of templates but also need useful additive elements. These extra additive elements are called widgets and are most common amongst website builders and photo editors.

The widgets section can be directly accessed via main editor window. These items have a separate section for each of its type. They are present in left side navigation bar.

The mains widgets in this section will be reviewed as below:

Photo Effects

Be it from flashing colors of an Insta Diva to cool filters in trekking photos, or many photo effects and filters; these functions are bread and butter for almost everyone using social media. These effects are usually used to enhance an image or change its color and looks as per an individual’s want.

There are numerous effects that can be used from PicMonkey library. To use these effects, users need to select the layer that they want to change.

The effects available are shown on a left pane. The effects are mainly categorized as tried and true, basic, B/W, paint box, camera look, light, area, and artsy. Every category here has almost ten unique filters to choose from.

These effects will have very detailed settings when you select one of them. The users can change color of layers, borders, shadows through these effects.

Face Touch Up

For an image editor, one of the most used features is edit and touch up faces for social media postings.

So many crazy photos flying across social media, and everyone trying to look like gods, all fair and scar free. Due to this, online photo editors came equipped with face correction tools.

These face correction tools are not needed for everyone, except the ones who want it all perfect for photos. Let us check out what exactly these effects are?

They have some very basic editing features for face. The first touch up is Skin. The skin tab consists of editing using airbrush, wrinkle remover, blush boost, spray tan, and blemish fix. If you have used any editing software before, you can easily identify these options.

The next one is Mouth Tool. In this, users can use whiten teeth button to put on a sparkling smile. There is also a lip tint that is used to change the tint on lips.

The subsequent one is an Eye patch up. There are options like brighten eyes, tints, mascara, eye shadows, pencils, and red-eye remover. This looks like a big makeup kit!

The last one here is miscellaneous option. The first one here is Sculpt tool. It is used to strengthen edges and give a sculpture like a look to face. The second one is Weight loss. Umm, sorry not your physical weight but weight of image; either by expanding or shrinking the layers.

The third is Highlights option. As the name says, pick any color you want, and you can just highlight the selected parts. The last one is Clone button. It is used to clone an area of image unto other areas.

Overall, as we can see here, these options are indeed used for minor face editing and work fine. One of the problems was the issue with a brush.

For some reasons, brush was not editing over selected part but rather some distance away from it. This was very annoying to deal with. We asked the customer support to help us with this issue and they did help us repair it.

One more thing we encountered, was a very slow movement of brush. It wouldn’t matter if we chose a 50 Kb photo file or 15 MB. The responsiveness of brush was way too slow. Same was the case with choosing colors and brush size. The UI performance was not fast enough, and so this has to be improved by PicMonkey.

Adding Texts

Text editing is one of the most basic requirements for any type of image editor. A text is an element that can never be skipped from any editing setup or functions.

The text editor in PicMonkey is not very advanced and only works with a floating window. When you click on Add Texts button, a new floating window with appear.

This floating widget contains all editing function that you can put in for texts. There are once again three tabs for changing texts.

The first tab is to do general editing for texts. This tab has choice to change colors, font type, size, alignments, letter spacings, fade, and rotate option.

The users can choose a color, size for text fields. The max font size is 1600 pixels. There are some interesting font styles given by PicMonkey in this tab.

The font styles are nicely categorized in several formats. The main font types given are Sans Serif, Serif, Handwriting, Scripts, Display, and Monospaced. Apart from these preset themes, users can also upload their own styles via upload your fonts button.

The font styles under Serif and Serif Sans category have some perks with them. The regular styled fonts are accessible for some formatting operations like bold, italics, etc.

The font under category of Handwriting and Scripts have not these options. The users can only change size of these fonts. This is because these two categories have a fixed style of writing, and formatting options can ruin that.

The next tab is effects tab. Just like effects tab in image section, this function too has options to change the shadow style of the texts. Same options are given for other texts.

There is also a separate option called Curved Text in it. The curve option gives curvature to the fonts. However, curve is limited to only two modes, i.e., Arc and Circle. The Arc allows only upper or lower arcs while circle gives a full round table type curve for texts.

There is no spacing option for circular curves, and normal arcs cannot be stretched beyond 180°. Some more effects can be provided in this section for fonts like a blur, pixelate, stretch, zoomed texts, etc. to make it even better.

There is one more option in text editor window, and that is Erase button. The erase brush can be used to remove texts and their shadows. However, similar to issues before, brush movements and response was slow here too.

All in all, this text editor was a bit mediocre in our experience and could have been made with a better and efficient UI format. But font styles database was good, and also some basic editing functions.

Let’s Add Some Graphics

With the advent of many types of graphics design apps in market, it is a new fad to insert emojis, emoticons, hats, goggles, and similar types of custom or predefined items.

These items are provided by almost all online editing applications. PicMonkey also has many such visuals in its baggage. The graphics tab can be accessed in left side navigation bar of main editor.

When you click it, users will be prompted with a list. Under this list, there are more than 500 unique designs to be chosen from. If users did not like illustrations from these stocks or want to add their own custom-made, they could do it using Add Image button.

The main categories in types of graphics are basics, design, social media, business, sports, foods n travel, banners, and many more. Each category has tons of shapes and visuals to be chosen from.

The basic section includes many items for simple graphics like arrows, shapes, hearts, animals, comic bubbles, etc. Although customization is limited in these, they have some decent stock to choose from.

Overall, shapes are all good, but one problem is that they cannot be added with text. This is not a big problem but rather an easy QOL update. Other editors like Canva have given direct text addition for some of shapes.

PicMonkey can also do the same and allow adding text into plain symbols and some traditional items like comic bubbles, etc. One more disappointment was with search function in graphics section.

There is no search function in graphics section. This is really bad because imagine the time it is going to take to recall and search for a shape once you delete it.  This needs to be on priority list for PicMonkey.

Either a search button or unique names and codes for these shapes can help in finding them quickly. Although the shapes are very well categorized, to open them one by one and search for required item is very time-consuming.

Frames and Textures

Once we are done editing our photos, we may now want to add some final touch to it. This can be in form of adding some frames, boundaries or textures to it.

Even the difference in frame types can carry a huge advantage when competing for an art competition and so they are somewhat important in online editing also.

The Frames section has only three categories currently. They are under three category Shape Cutouts, Simple Edge, and Museum Matte. The first section, i.e. shape cutouts has around a dozen of frame sin shapes like heart, round, oval, rectangle, etc.

The other one, simple edges, has traditional frames. The users can select a frame surrounding the photo that you have made. They can alter colors of inner and outer edges.

Similarly, last frame called museum matte will give an exotic look to your photo. Honestly, these frames are very limited, and so is their customization. This means that PicMonkey needs to bring more and more frames and their personalization if they want this feature to be used more.

Let us move to next part of this section, i.e., textures. These textures are applied similar to other design apps that you have used. To use this function, first step is to select layers that you want the textures to be applied.

After layer selections, users can see various kinds of textures in list. They are under several categories like Dust & Scratches, Film Warps, Foils, Stones, Glitters, etc. There are around 50+ textures to be chosen from.

Lastly, both frames and textures are decent, along with the personalized settings they provide. They need to increase their stock with many diverse items, especially in frames section. Search function was missing in this menu too.

Themes

Well, haven’t we done enough of editing in the photos? What else do we want now?

As we have seen through many editing software, too much of customization can sometimes spoil the work. This can be possible because novice users may experiment too much with fonts and colors and end up making a visually imbalanced project, even though the content might be rich.

To avoid such situations, most editors come up with what is called preset themes. These themes are just like simple themes or set of certain colors and fonts, except they are assigned by advanced developers with knowledge of color schemes.

To aid this, The platform also comes with some preset themes to choose from. There are around a dozen themes currently to choose from. From lovely romantic setup to spooky and freshman types, even though only a handful, they have made some amazing arts in them.

So, what items do these preset themes have? These themes have assigned several items. The main elements preset in these themes are texts and graphics. Some themes, like of comic books, have speech bubbles like in comics, superhero symbols, comic sound effect symbols, etc.

These themes have some amazing text effect and custom symbols under several categories. On top of that, they still have allowed editing those preset items using colors and other simple formatting.

Overall, this feature has now become one of our favorites, and we would certainly be joyed if PicMonkey comes up with some more unique themes. Apart from that, if you just want to make a quick photo editing on your valentine or Halloween, use this theme section directly and save your time.

User  Interface

As we went through most of the features of PicMonkey, there are few more things to be reviewed under the UI category. UI is important in any editing software since it provides an idea of how easy and accurately users can use given application and its other services.

PicMonkey too has a reputation of giving very modest and smooth UI. These emotions will be reciprocated by most users when they use this service.

PicMonkey has given its services on two platforms. One is desktop browser-based, and another is on mobile devices like Android and iOS. Let’s start reviewing from browser-based UI first.

Web Browser

As you head on to web interface, it is the most used and crucial interface for PicMonkey, being an online image editor. Let us now check real UI tricks and perks given by PicMonkey.

After you have entered in the web interface, the home page of your account is adjusted very properly. The first row will display the images edited till now, or auto-saved.

The second row has listed all featured templates, i.e., most used or recent ones. The last row has a list of some popular collage layout and blank canvases.

They have divided web interface into four major tabs. They are Hub, Editor, Templates, and Learn. The accounts section can be accessed directly from here. There is also a switch button using which users can switch back to the old UI.

The hub section has the main dashboard which we described before. The UI is nicely tweaked by developers to give information about date/time of creation/modification.

They have also added a small preview as we see on desktop file managers. This preview displays a preview of images that we have edited. This preview pan also shows details of files viz. image dimensions and date/time.

On left side navigation bar, they have given a Recent and User folder. Users can directly create new folders from this pan and access those items in it. The lower navigations bar also has some good options like duplicate, move, export, delete, and share button.

This tab can be improved much further by having an image manager, cart section, and storage informer. PicMonkey does lack a dedicated image manager, which most of online editing software provide.

The next tab is the editor. Once again, we have already reviewed this section in this article. However, there are some more UI tweaks that’ll be needed to make it better.

They can add a small toolbar with dimension and rotate function on it. This toolbar should have the X and Y coordinates of selected layer or image, and user can directly insert pixels/coordinates to move or resize them.

There is no display of pixels while using a cursor across work field. Some of the top editors have given this feature. This can help to design better and resize images with guidance from these pixels across decided work frame.

The third tab is templates tab, and users can directly pick or use search button and start editing on it. The last tab is help section, which we will discuss in later support section.

Overall, browser-based desktop UI was great. Although it is always debatable that how many features you can add to it, we found that such a non-complex interface is what makes it very unique and a relaxed editor.

The old UI is very similar to the new beta version. This offers a good testing chance for users as well as the developers to improve UI.

Mobile Interface

Now it is time to move on to one more platform that is supported by PicMonkey. It comes with support for mobile devices with a PicMonkey App on both Android and iOS platform.

The thing is that, with a good photo editor on mobile devices, it becomes very easy for users to utilize services on the go. The mobile application is very similar to desktop interface.

The users just need to login into their registered account on mobile app. You can also make a new trial account via the app.

Once you get into app, you can see main dashboard of this interface. Unlike desktop interface, mobile interface is very limited and sleek. It is mostly used as personal photo enhancer on mobile devices.

The mobile interface has basically four tabs viz. blank canvas, edit photos, my hub, and upload. These four tabs have all functions of mobile interface.

The first tab is Blank Canvas. As the name suggests, this tab is used to make new portraits and graphics images. The initial screen will display the blank portrait.

From here, users can see three editing options for this blank page. They have given a size tool, patterns tool, and background color tool in it. The size tool allows users to select size of the portrait they want to edit. Unlike desktop app, this tool limits the size to social media templates.

But it has all size templates for social media posts like Facebook covers, Instagram covers, LinkedIn profiles, Google+ icons, etc. There is also a custom size create tool to add size in pixels manually. Unlike the desktop interface, users can only add up to 3000x3000 size blank canvas in mobile app.

Once you have chosen the size of your workspace, it is time to see next feature called patterns. Just like the browser interface, this feature is equipped with around 30+ different patterns. These patterns can directly be selected and reflected on the blank canvas.

Now, as per mobile interface, they have the pinch zoom in/out and rotate function using fingers. The users can now choose color of the patterns too. The colors tab directly replaces color of shapes. The next option is opacity and delete button, that hides or remove everything you have done on canvas.

Now choose a background color as per pattern or whatever you like and click next button. As we can see here, independence of editing like in desktop version is minimum.

We have to use a stepwise approach to edit or make items in mobile interface. Whereas in desktop version, users can directly start adding items from widget section.

Once you have clicked next button, you will be redirected to a new menu. This new section has much diverse and unique editing feature than desktop version. It is more focused on general editing done over mobile phones, i.e., regarding social media pics, face enhancing features, etc.

The main editing functions provided here are crop, adjust size, effects, touch-ups, cutouts, text, graphics, and doodle. Most of the photo freaks reading this must have gotten an idea by now. But regardless, we’ll review them for novice users.

Crop function, as usual, allows chopping images in desired dimensions. Now, there is one unique thing that PicMonkey gives to handle the crop function easily. They have given various preset sizes to crop the images. As we said earlier, if you fail to choose correct size of canvas initially or want to crop images later on, there are plenty of styles for social media posts, covers, etc. type sizes available.

You can move crop field across the canvas. Apart from this, you can rotate back canvas or use a flip button. As we can see, these functions were directly given in editor’s floating tab on web interface, and now they’re separated.

Moving on to Adjust Image option, we can see some traditional image light adjusting options like brightness, contrast, shadows, saturation, blur, and temperature. Most of these features were fine and did not offer better performance than other mobile photo editors. It was just decent enough to do some novice editing.

Same is the case with Effects section. This section has some visual filters. These effects are not there in the desktop version. Regardless, they too offer not so great flashy settings and nothing else.

Let us now jump to one of the most used and anticipated editing options, which is Touch-Up button. This is the place to turn a beast into a man and ugly to beautiful.

This touch-up section is used to edit facial photos so that they look better. They have given a unique option in here called Presto. This option uses a three-click interface to fix any known defects on the face. This option uses some preset conditions and auto adjusts face effects.

From here on, there are some manual functions given to edit images. The first one is a Smooth function. You must have used this feature in other similar apps, and it does same task here. There is a nice UI feature where users can long press photos to see the original image, which reverts to editing after you leave it.

Users can select effect intensity from 0-100% and also change brush size using the +/- button on screen. The smooth function was a bit erratic in our testing. Compare to top class mobile photo editing apps like Photoshop Express, Fotor, YouCam Perfect, etc. the results were mediocre.

Next option called Blemish Fix performed a bit better. It successfully detected blemishes, scars, etc., being tested on 15+ faces, it perfectly smoothened them. The successive options were Whiten( teeth), red-eye remover, and Nip Tucks( used to compress, reduce, and fill pixels).

The next option to test and review is the Cut-Outs section. As it indicates, it is used to remove surroundings in a photo. It can help with various options for cut out from smart selection to manual and shapes. The shapes library for cutouts is also vast. This indicates some genuine efforts from the developers.

However, cut-out function also needs some more adjustments as pixel selection was not working properly on image edges. One more annoying factor that is found in other mobile photo editors was common in PicMonkey too.

Usually, for any cutouts, desktop apps have mouse cursor which allows users to precisely select boundaries in a photo. But in mobile apps, we have to use fingers, and due to them blocking our view of selected area, it is very frustrating to select a perfect perimeter to be cut like in desktop apps.

PicMonkey can use an extended pointer or brush to resolve this. Overall, this too performed not so good.

The Text Editor given in mobile app is quite amazing too. Not only it has some good fonts but also has all functions like curve, shadow, style, opacity, etc., found in the browser UI. The fonts may feel less than the desktop version, but that is understandable.

The last editing function is Graphics section. Similar to the desktop category, this section too has some nice graphics elements to be added in images. The number of graphics are limited in mobile version.

From general shapes and designs to symbols; themes like Halloween, spring, witches, Xmas, etc., many themes are available in it. Users can change shape, size, color, and rotation of these objects just like in web UI.

Now, if all these seem less, you can finally use to Doodle to do baby style Gugu gaga on a canvas. These were all the possible editing functions in mobile application.

Other than this, there are no other additional options given in mobile app. You can view the files into your cloud using Hub button and also upload files into it.

Overall, this mobile app, although not best of all, provides enough resources and functions to edit those sparky social media photos. PicMonkey has a lot to improve in mobile application, especially for making editing easier and better.

Miscellaneous Features

As we have gone through most of editor features in both mobile and desktop application, we will review some left out features that may not look big but can improve productivity of the services.

Most of you may now be thinking about collaboration feature in PicMonkey. Well, they do provide users with collaboration features. This feature is not so advanced as other products like Visme, Canva, and Fotor, but it gets work done.

The team feature is given in advanced plan only. It can be accessed by Teams options in the accounts section. From here, admins can either invite, approve/disapprove join requests.

There is a log generation for each activity like in other products. Although team notifications for any changes are displayed, but there is no self-activity log in the service.

As for now, there is another feature to be added called shared space. We still have no idea of what features it may include, but from name itself, it is supposed to be a shared folder. We hope PicMonkey makes a note from other top products and makes this feature bit advanced as a part of collaboration.

For real-time collaboration, there is some restriction by PicMonkey. Users cannot edit or use an element on a webpage at the same time.

Another part is user access level. Currently, PicMonkey has given limited role levels viz. owners, admins, contributors, copier, and viewers. There are no detailed access roles, and this part is still developing, we can see a full-fledged access control system in future.

Moving on to last section, i.e., print support. This section is not so much developed currently as users need to contact customer support for separate vendors. Users can easily go to print section and upload their image, choose the frames and checkout.

Overall, since both team management/collaboration and print section are under development, we would expect some good and useful changes in them.

Final Verdict

PicMonkey is indeed a good tool to edit photos and images online. Given that it has some amazing features and hassle-free UI, it is amongst top photo editor applications.

They had some cool widgets and templates for mid-level editing. The mobile interface still needs a lot of work to compete against top players. Same goes with team management and print services.

The subscription plans seemed mediocre. The extra team management was a bit costlier. The pricing structure of Canva, Fotor, etc. is much better than PicMonkey, and this is also a part we recommend improving.

The editor section was quite good compared to many other similar products, but it definitely needs a constant brush up to compete with top dogs in the market. The customer support was very responsive even though they had only one mode of communication, which also needs to be extended to live chats, forums, etc.

Concluding to our review, we would say that for novice to mid-level photo editing and even for advanced users, PicMonkey is the go choice. But for pro-level features, effects and quality, they still have a long way to go.