Have You Met…Pixlr?

Have you ever needed a little something to resize you images or crop them, perhaps brighten or enhance your image or add a filter without having to rely on Snapchat or Instagram? Can’t Afford the likes of Photoshop or Paintshop Pro? Well Pixlr may well be an answer for you.

Originally created in 2008 as a suite of tools that resembled the layout of many popular image editors and creation tools, the web application has come a long way growing into a suite of applications and since the purchase by Autodesk around 4 years ago an extension and a mobile app, depending on what you wish to do with your visual art, from basic creation to intermediate editing tools. It’s also worth mentioning all of the web based apps are completely free and simply require a web browser and a copy of Adobe Flash Player (or equivalent) to run.

As a reference, here’s the original image I’m making use of in all 3 programs:

For the taking on filters, Pixlr-o-matic makes a simple and fun job of it. Firstly you get to choose between a webcam snapshot or a file upload. Following this, you’ll be taken through a darkroom filter selection, an overlay pattern and finally a frame – also having the opportunity to crop to a square image if you prefer too. Don’t be fooled by what you see on the default filmstrip – clicking on the small icon in the bottom left opens up a hidden library of bonus filters. If you don’t know what to do and need a little inspiration, just hit the shuffle button to let to program decide the steps for you. Once you’ve finished having fun, simply hit the save button to save it to your device.

Stepping up a notch, enter Pixlr Express, currently the most popular application according to their website, Express offers a little more control when it comes to editing your image. Unlike the methodical approach that Pixlr-o-Matic takes, Pixlr Express takes a ‘free roam’ approach to effects and processing, feeling very similar in experience to the Aviary editor and Instagram’s Edit mode on iOS and Android. Each of these effects and processors offer granular control on their influence, whereas stickers and the splash tool allow you to draw on the image to size/position and place things where you’d like. Once you’re happy, you again hit Save and download your image.

Finally there’s the original Pixlr Editor, whose closest resemblance wouldn’t be far from Photoshop Elements. The scope of this level of editing goes beyond the scope of a paragraph, but common features such as image resizing and cropping, drawing, painting and shape making, cloning and tweaking sections of the image, colour and light tools and even layering! Saving opens up more options in the editor with specific file formats to choose from and the option to save to their own cloud storage with an account.

Finally, there’s a mobile app. Whilst I haven’t been able to try this out myself just yet – from looking on the Anrdoid version of it, the application offers a lot of similar functionality to the Editor version with the nice simplicity UX to that in Express.

If you’d like to give the family a try, please follow the link on the right to the website. From there you can choose from the Web Apps or Mobile items at the top or use the links on the homepage to jump straight into the editor. For those that may have used Pixlr’s suite before, what did you think to it? Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

Mike

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