It was whilst reading a comment posted on Stephen Fry blog that led to me looking at Pixlr. Pixlr describes itself as “…a free online image editor, jump in and start edit, adjust, filter” and is a handy online service for working on graphic images especially if you need an image for a blog post or other web site article and you are away from your regular application.

Getting started with Pixlr is the quickest and simplest experience I have seen on an online service to date – click on the Jump in n’ get started! link and you are off – no registration, no email activation, just point and paint. Better yet, a number of languages are supported in case English is not your first language. Pixlr does require Flash to operate so ensure you have it installed prior to visiting the site.

If you have used other paint programs such as Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Corel Painter or others you will feel right at home in Pixlr with the tools palette, menu bar and other features located where you expect them to be. Feature wise, transparency is supported, an 800% zoom level, pixel level control, canvas rotation, crop, layers and an array of filters – Water Swirl, Kaleidoscope and Scan lines being my particular favourites.

Files can be opened locally or from a URL and saved locally too – in JPG format. Pixlr is being constantly updated and new features added regularly included the recent addition of a Free Transform Tool and the ability to directly load images without going via the Pixlr site. You can keep up to date with new developments on the Pixlr Blog at http://pixlr.blogspot.com/

For developers Pixlr offers a free open API (Application Programming Interface) which allows you to hook Pixlr up to your own web application. This allows you to do really cool things like this (give it a go…)

Select An Image To Edit

Filename

Localization

Pixlr can be found at www.pixlr.com

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