Pixlr – The online image editor

Pixlr had been developed by a Swedish guy who launched the service with this understated blog post consisting of just:

“So it’s sunday afternoon in Sweden and tomorrow I will let a few know about pixlr. I wonder what they will say about the result of from a years work and thousands of lines of code?”

Fairly non-committal, especially considering the strength of his application. I have no idea if this was a hobby, if he has plans to monetize it or license it, at the moment the idea seems to just be get the word out.

What immediately endeared the service to me was the fact there is no sign-up registration, simply “jump right in” and get started. This is a huge advantage, there is nothing worse then wanting to try a new service but being confronted by yet another registration form.

The application itself is more on the lines of Photoshop express, rather then a complete Photoshop replacement like Aviary is aiming to become. Personally I found it a happy medium between the two, enough functionality without being too basic either.

It also looks pretty darn good, if you’re a fan of the Vista Aero interface. Actually even if you aren’t I think you’ll be hard put to dislike it. Performance wise I would say it’s fantastic, menus are snappy and I could barely tell it was a browser based program.

That said, I will admit I haven’t fully tested it with larger photos, more tasks etc.

The ironic thing I found about using Pixlr is that I immediately wished there was a way I could have the application offline as well as through the browser. It feels a lot slicker and smoother then freeware Paint.NET and would fit well into the Vista desktop, which is a lot more then can be said for most apps.

Here you find additional links to upload images to Aviary, invite friends and launch the online applications that are enabled for your account. In my case only the image editor and a link to apply for an invite for the other applications. More about those later.

It’s only possible to upload one image with a maximum size of 5 Megabytes at a time and add the usual information (tags, title, description, rights) to it. It takes some time before the image is available depending on your upload speed and the load of the service. Max told me that he experienced a slow down of the system while uploading which I did not.

The usual community functions are available. Users can comment on and rate images, download the images and participate in the forums.

Phoenix the Image Editor

The image editor loads rather slowly but offers a wide variety of functions. Users can load images from their profile or from their computer. I’m not that into image editing but the functions that I would be looking for are all there. I can resize images, add text, work with layers and add several effects to it.

Someone who is using Adobe Photoshop or GIMP could definitely compare it on a professional level. It’s fine for the average user, that much I can say.

Images you work with are automatically saved and opened again when you open the image editor again.

Other applications

The list of applications, or tools how Aviary calls them, is impressive. A total of 18 tools is listed on their website including a music generator, vector editor, video editor and a desktop publishing layout generator.

Users can signup to receive initiations  for those tools once the invitations become available.

Aviary Invites

I have five Aviary invites and want to share them with you. I prefer at least one user with experience in Photoshop or another image editor who would like to write a short comparison which would be surely interesting to read. I would publish that comparison here at Ghacks.

If you want an invite reply here in the comments. Please add if you have experience with another image editor and would like to write that short comparison. Thanks again Max for the invite, it was really nice to think of me.