Talking about graphic design and image editing I have tried two interesting Flex applications that you can use to work on pictures adding effects or just text layers. They have both a direct connection to some of the most famous community websites as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa or even to personal website.

http://www.splashup.com this is an image editor similar to Adobe Photoshop. The interface is plain but nice to see and very easy to use, it’s perfect if you don’t want to waste time to understand a professional image editor and you need just to do fast correction or adding some simple effects to an image.

The interface is designed in order to let the user move all the window inside the workspace which is one of the main characteristic of Flex applications.

The only thing I can say it would be nice to see updated soon, is the effects section which is a little bit too much empty, it would be nice to have the chance to play with many different kind of special effects and not only with blur, desaturate, emboss ecc. So let’s check in some weeks if there will be something new in this application:)

http://www.flauntr.com/ This editor it has more buttons, sections and tricks to use on your images.

The interface is not as user friendly as the other one, but you have the possibilities to transform your pictures in something different adding funny frames, overlay graphics, text, effects and then transform the image to fit the size of your mobile, some magazine covers or the profile picture of your social networks. This is a very useful and nice thing to have on an application like this.

The interface is more static that the one we have seen before, but you can navigate all sections using a TAB navigation for the main menu and using an accordion menu for the effects to apply.
It’s interesting to see how Flex is starting to be used not only to create widgets, commercial websites or private company applications but also to create alternative on-line tools for private or professional users to work with.