It's been just over three months since Google gobbled up Seattle-based Picnik. At the time of the deal, there was some chatter about how the online photo editing service might combine with Google's own Picasa photo editing service. Well, at least the first steps of that integration were made public today, with Picnik's Web-based editing tool being integrated with Picasa Web Albums.

The company writes in a blog post:

"So from today, all Picasa Web Albums users have seamless access to the editing power of Picnik without ever leaving their account. When you save your edited photo back to your PWA album, you can either replace the old image or save a new copy."

Meanwhile, Picnik's Jonathan Sposato tells Cnet News that the company remains committed to its other photo partners, including Flickr. And he explains the process of moving the Picnik servers onto Google's infrastructure, a process he said that should be completed in another month.

The integration of the Picnik service into Picasa also underscores that the service will for now remain as an independent brand, reports Josh Lowensohn of CNET.