This is a picture of me. Given that I don't have Photoshop on my netbook (My Dell laptop tragically died recently) I have been looking for a way to jam up my pictures, as I happen to take a lot of my friends, myself and most important of all, my cats.
I have discovered Pixlr-o-matic. Now, I am only just getting the hang of it but with a little adjustments and a play around, you can make your pictures look borderline professional. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they came out. This is strictly for beginners and quick-edit users only. I imagine that a professional or intermediate photo editor would spontaneously combust at how simple and limited this little program is.
Let's do a little walk through. First of all, download Pixlr-o-matic from the Google Chrome shop. Once you have done that, click on it in a new tab on your apps section (The button is at the bottom of your Chrome browser).
Now click on select an image from your computer.
The first selection on the photo editor (The Red Tab: Effects) is adding colour and gradients to the image. These all have different people names. For example the one I have used above is called 'Anne', which I chose because it darked my hair and added more contrast to the image. I recommend that if you want to use other colours, e.g. 'Melissa' but want to have more contrast, I recommend you adding it yourself using Window Live Photo Gallery (which you can find by right click on any image and then selecting Windows Live Photo Gallery, and then clicking Edit, Organize and Share in the top left-hand corner).
For the purposes of this edit, I have chosen 'Greg'.
Next up is the Blue Tab (Overlays):
Here you can choose textures and lighting effects. I simply adore adding these to my photos, banners and what not when I am using Photoshop so this is right up my street. I don't usually add them to pictures of myself but for the purposes of this review I will this time. I am choosing 'Local'.
Finally, we have the Green Tab (Borders):
This is where you can, you guessed it, add borders. There are many different ones you can chose but I prefer to use photo based ones. However there are many different ones including effects to make your photograph look like an old pre-1900s picture; effects like rustic, grunge and spot to give your pictures jagged edges and newspaper looks; and effects such as flowery and wispy to give your pictures pretty little curvy and flowery backgrounds. You can only get banners in black or white effects but there is a wide selection. I prefer black borders personally so I'm going to be boring and pick 'Black'.
And there you have it. Save:
Pixlr-o-matic gives you the choice of saving it to your computer or uploading it to imm.io. The latter is a good idea if you want to post your images to Twitter as it presents you with a shortlink like this one (http://imm.io/e95B) but otherwise I recommend just saving it to your computer if you are talking about Facebook snaps.
You can go back and re-edit the same image any time by clicking the back (<<) button or you can completely start again by pressing the 'other' button.
You also have a selection of more Effects, Overlays and Borders than the ones presented on your strip. For example if you click the little camera icon at the bottom of the page, you are taken to a selection page where you can pick a variety of different examples. The best selection is definitely the Overlays and the Borders. It would take me too long to explain why - go and have a look for yourself. The different types of each Layer to add to the photograph are added into nice little categories (e.g. Under Overlays you have things like Leaks, Chem burn, Light paint etc.)
Also if you want to have a little fun with it, you can also press the Mix-up icon next to the Camera icon, which shuffles up all three types of layer for your photo to give you different effects. You do get some nice combinations so maybe have a play around with that if you want.
Overall I would definitely say this is a nice little thing to have on your Google Chrome if you want to quickly edit images, even if you are planning a very quick Tweet on Twitter.
STATS
Type: Lifestyle, Photography, Editing App
For the: Google Chrome
Rating: ***** 5 Stars!
