My Pixlr.Com Alien

Pixlr.Com Review

Although photo editing tools have been widely used for years, I have not had very much experience utilizing such applications.  In acclimating myself with some of the Pixlr.com’s capabilities, I edited at a novice level, but did navigate the interface of Pixlr.com to familiarize with functions aside from ones I explored.

I found interest in Filter tools such as Waterswirl, Vignette Frame, Night Vision and Less Noise.  I also used the Flip Canvas tool to change image orientation. Waterswirl added a vertical wave affect to the photo, also allowing adjustment to the degrees of the wave’s length and height.  Next, I explored with the Night Vision effect.  I was then able to change the “gain’ level in the image, brightening the night vision.  Reducing the grain level was achieved by applying the Less Noise effect. Surrounding the picture is a Vignette Frame effect.  Below is my edited image.

            In general review, I find cloud services useful for document sharing, but prefer to keep my work saved to my computer.  As a Corporate Systems major, my early ideas and thoughts could manifest into proprietary information.  The risk to document privacy is decreased with less public sharing.  I am, therefore not such a proponent for image creation with cloud services. In review of Pixlr.com’s interface and functions, I found it useful to upload pictures from various gallery locations (IE: Facebook), onto Pixlr.  As a beginner with photo editing, I was relieved to find prompts ensuring that a user wanted to apply changes, as well as undo/redo functions. These options also made it easy to track effects that I was experimenting with.  Additionally, I found Pixlr’s response to known keyboard commands to be user friendly.  What I found to be an inconvenience as a new user was that I did not need credentials to access the editing area of Pixlr.com, but later found specific capabilities, such as Layering functions, will prompt signup.  This, I found to be an unnecessary interruption to work. 

            In comparison to Adobe Photoshop, I noticed through research that Adobe seems to offer more to the user.  An example would be the 3D graphic editing in newer versions of Adobe Photoshop.  Furthermore, plugins available to Photoshop, such as one to process raw image files (containing less processed data), advance this software beyond Pixlr.com.  As Adobe is a more widely used photo editing tool localized to individuals systems, I would be more likely to use it before Pixlr.com.