Pixlr is known for providing cloud based (online) imaging tools. Their tools are all built in Flash with all available enhanced features available to public as well as developers. This unique tool we are about to review is called Pixlr Editor. This great free online image editing tool is said to be some-what replacement of Photoshop. It does lack the key features but for an online tool with this great editing capabilities, deserves to be looked at.
As soon as you go logon to the free web service (flash support is a must), a splash appears with the options of creating a new image, opening an image from local drive or unique web address and access to image libraries such as Pixlr library and Facebook. Simply hit create a new image to test out the application. You can name the new image, use pre-defined presets or create your own and set the background as transparent. Neat, isn’t it?!
You will see your main menu bar with somewhat similar tabs as that of Photoshop like file, edit, image, layer, adjustment, filter, view language, and help with the addition to login or sign up to use Pixlr account. Settings and options of your pre-selected tool from the tools bar with appear right under the menu tab.
The availability of keyboard shortcuts adds more ease to the overall use of this online application. You can undo, redo, cut, copy, clear, paste, transform, distort, select all, deselect all, and define brush are some of the most used keyboard features at all times when dealing with layers and styles.
Image tab gives you brief access to overall image settings including image size, canvas size, canvas rotation, flip canvas and crop. Although to make adjustments, a separate tab has been created with the much wanted options such as brightness & contrast, hue & saturation, color balance, levels, curves, exposure and auto level. We also have some added one-click adjustments including invert, sepia, solarize, desaturate, old photo, cross process, threshold, posterize, and color lookup.
Key tools available in the tool bar are crop, move, lasso, marquee, pencil, brush, eraser, paint bucket, gradient, clone stamp, color replace, drawing, sharpen, blur, smudge, sponge, dodge, burn, red eye reduction, spot heal, bloat, pinch, color picker, type, hand and zoom tool.
Available panels can be located by navigating to View tab. Where as, navigator, layers and history will appear on your screen as default. Palette locations can be reset and full screen mode can be launched via the same tab.
Image tab gives you brief access to overall image settings including image size, canvas size, canvas rotation, flip canvas and crop. Although to make adjustments, a separate tab has been created with the much wanted options such as brightness & contrast, hue & saturation, color balance, levels, curves, exposure and auto level. We also have some added one-click adjustments including invert, sepia, solarize, desaturate, old photo, cross process, threshold, posterize, and color lookup. The best noticed feature about this editor was the availability of a number of different filters from basic blurs to HDR toning. Navigate to the Filter tab and go through different filters and available adjustment settings for each one of them.
This online tool currently supports 30 different languages.
We did a quick experiment with text, gradient and layer styles. Layer styles for any text using the type tool can be defined with drop shadow, inner shadow, bevel, outer glow and inner glow. Do give this tool a try, quick import and export options and powerful editing tools with fast processing does make this online application stand out.
If you find this tool interesting, do look at these 32 interesting tutorials for pixlr editing tool. click here!
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