New release of pixlr editor!

In this release of the editor we have a whole new set of icons for the tool-bar. Loads of more colour, might take some time to get used to but I think it looks fab!

Also updated the Crop Tool, now you have options like crop to size and constrain aspect ratio.

Right click menus are added to the canvas, different tools have different menus.

Also some minor bugs where squashed.

//Ola

New hosting

During the week we moved the pixlr.com site to new servers with a bit more room and speed to support further growth and all the cool stuff coming this fall and wither.

Please let us know if you get some error or something that don't work as it used to.

I would also give a big thanks to Thomas and Netfirms who have supported pixlr during the last 2 years, with them I have been able to focus on developing the service and they have kept the site running without any trouble. I would recommend them to anyone needing high quality hosting.

Cheerio

Ola

2 year anniversary! Big update!

Today is a special day here at pixlr headquarters, not only is it the 2nd anniversary of our service but it's also the very first day at our first office. Believe it or not but until now pixlr has more or less been running as a side project (a lot of time has went into it though).

So 2 years .. I could do the same as last year and tell you how great it's going and whatnot .. it's all good we have grown more then 350% since last year and made several cool releases but that's not all that fun for you.

Instead I'm going to tell you about the release we just did, some very intense days with not that much sleep have produced no less then 13 spanking new features and updates! All of the updates are for the editor the product which started it all.


Gaussian blur, Box blur and Unsharp mask

First out is some different new blurs and sharpen. We have added two new blur and one new sharpening method.

All three functions are something the editor has been missing since the launch of the service.






Polar coordinates and Water swirl

Two new displacement filters have been added, the image to the left is made with the polar coordinates filter, before at the top and after is the bottom part.

A newish filter is water swirl, it's not entirely new but its now a lot more useful. Setting for size, amount and direction are added.




Glamour glow

Glamour glow adds a fuzz, pale and intense effect on your photo. This filter works best on lighter images and you may need to adjust the curves a bit afterwards depending on the image you are using.








Mimic HDR

HDR is a popular effect where you use several images with different exposure and combine them to get a larger range of colors. Our mimic HDR filter tries to add the same effect but with only a single image.

This effect is like the glamour glow, it don't work on all images but it can create a rather cool effect on the right ones.

Hope

I'm quite sure I don't need to explain this filter so much but for you who have lived on a other planet for the last couple of years it creates an effect that mimics a certain poster ..








Sepia, Solarize and Exposure

Three new color adjustment added to the editor are sepia which gives the image an old feel, solarize mimics an effect from old days and exposure can fix under or over exposed photos.








Added more curves presets and new gradients

The last news in this release we have filled up two existing features with more content.

In the curves adjustment we have added an additional 15 presets that create nice looking photos, my favorites are "The 60's vintage" and the new "Cross process" but "Light Amber" and "Chocolate" are also nice on the right photo.

In the gradients tool and color lookup adjustment we have added 25 new gradient presets.



I'd love to hear what you think of this large update, play around and let me know will ya.

With love from middle Stockholm!
Ola & Kim

imm.io - up again

So for you who have noticed imm.io has been down for a couple of days. The provider we used for that service (not the same as pixlr.com) didn't like us since we used a lot of storage and bandwidth.


We have moved imm.io and it's up and running for most of you. If you cant see the site it's a delay in some DNS servers. 


All the images are currently being uploaded to the new site so it might take a day or so before all the content is back.


Peace!


//Ola 

High-res brushes

I just added three more brush packs in the editor, clouds, dirt and suds. These sets are all in high-res and quite large so it can take some time to load them.

Have fun =)

//Ola

Color replace tool

By request here is the release of our color replace tool. In the first release we focused on getting the tool out and see what response we get. We will add functionality and tweak the algorithms going forward.

The tool works in the way that you select a color in the main color pad (bottom of the toolbox).

Then you start drawing on the color you want to replace, the tool use the center of the brush as a reference for the replace color (i.e the entire brush don't have to cover the color).

A tip is to play around with the tolerance and also do the entire replace in one sweep.

Let us know how it works!

From Sweden with love - Ola

Elliptical Marquee

Just added the Elliptical Marquee tool to the editor .. It's a bit embarrassing that we do this so late into the game .. just sorta fell of the list of (fun) stuff to do :)

We have also added quite a lot of new brush sets during the last couple of weeks - so if you haven't played around take the chance to do so.

Cheerio - Ola

Brush browser!

So it's a bit past midnight here in Sweden and (since I'm a firm believer that sleep is highly overrated) I just made a new wicked feature available. It's the brush browser, this little util makes the previous releases a bit more usable.

With the new feature you will be able to browse through the different custom brushes we have to offer thus enabling you to create even more stunning images.

There are a handful packs right now but we will be releasing new brush packs as often as posible. To open the browser just click the "MORE" button on the right hand in the brush panel.

Play around and enjoy!

Peace - Ola

Crushed paper, doodles and circles ..

Three additional brush sets:

Crushed Paper

Circular

Doodles

//Ola

New brush packs

Three new brush packs:

Star Burst

Soft Dots

Flowers (updated)

If you want to create you own pack just draw figures on a white or transparent background, select the area with one of the selection tools and the click Edit->Define brush (Ctrl+K).

If you made a wicked brush pack please send it to us!

Have a nice weekend - Ola

Custom brushes ..

Earlier today we made a pre-release of the new brush features with the possibility to load custom brushes - this means painting with anything from charcoal to hearts and all other types of objects and shapes.

Right now we just released the basic features and you will need to load the brushes from your local computer. Soon will will add the brush browser so you can load direct from our server into the editor.

The browser is next on the list but for now you need to download some of these sets and load the set from the editor.

Animal Tracks

Atlantis

Charcoal

Eyelashes

Flowers

Hearts

Peace And Love

Smudge

Splatter

Stars

Download, open brush selector, click Load set and select one of the downloaded files. Please let us know what you think, it's important that it works well.

If you want to create your own brush just select the area you want and click "Edit->Define brush" in the menu. If you create a cool set please send it to us so we can share it with the rest of the users.

Cheers

Ola

Maximize windows

Just released a new feature for the Pixlr Editor, beside the close button there is now a maximize icon as well. When you click it the canvas will expand and cover the entire screen. The controls jump up to the right of the optionbar. When working in maximized view there is also an icon to list all of the open document so you quickly can jump between them in maximized view.


Feels good to be back on track and develop new features. Don't miss out on giving your 2 cents on what you want us to release next..

http://blog.pixlr.com/2010/03/whats-next-take-3.html

Also fixed some bugs from the release yesterday.

Ola

Whats next - Take 3

For you guys who have been around for a while (60% returning visitors!) this is not new :)

Again we would like to hear what you like to be next and you know we listen, ALOT of the stuff that are requested are implemented in the editor in a fast pace.

Even if someone else just said it - go ahead and make your voice heard as well. The stuff most commented will be higher on the list!

Thanks!

Ola

New release .. finaly!

It feels like it was ages since I wrote about a update ... so it's really great to finaly release this update of the editor. Almost three month of development and you will not see the difference, yes we have done a lot of boring re-factoring.

However the things you will see is the first update of the text tool, now there is a floating palette when playing with the tool, more updates will come. It's also possible to draw lines with the different brush tools by holding down shift key.

As usual don't hesitate to contact us if you find any error, there are a lot of changes done.

Peace!
Ola

Pixlr Grabber - now for Chrome!

So it's been a while since we released something, we are actully doing a big boring refractory of the editor *phuh*. So I'm very happy (and humble) to announce the Grabber extension for Chrome. It's popular on Firefox and has been requested by many to Chrome.

This is a BETA so I love to hear what you think, we had to do some weird stuff to get the small number of chrome features to do what we want.

-> Get it HERE <-

//Ola

New Pixlr Service - Imm.io!

This is a exciting day, we are happy to announce our latest service - Pixlr Imm.io. Imm.io is a one click image sharing service, that alone is of course not that special. But if you hook the other pixlr services onto imm.io that's when the real power arise.
Both Pixlr editor and Pixlr Grabber now has a choice to publish your image direct onto imm.io. In return you will get a short url to share among your friends and foes.




We also released Grabber 2.0 for Firefox.

This version of the popular extension we have redone the entire thing and I'm very happy with the result. Now you can choose to Edit, Share, Save or Copy the screen grabs you make. So as soon as Mozilla have approved the new version it will pop up in your browser.

The next time you what to show of something you did just select the "Share to imm.io" in the new editor save dialog.

Peace!

//Ola

New release!

We just sent out a new release of the Pixlr Editor, this time we focused on the selection tools and updates to filters and adjustments.

Since we have added anti-alias and feather all of the tools, filters, cut/paste, mask etc had to be updated.
Now if you want to make a cutout or filter a specific part it will be smooth sailing.

This is whats new:

- Feather in Lasso and Marquee tool.
- Anti-aliasing in Wand, lasso and paint bucket tool.
- Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast and Threshold adjustments are now shown in real time.
- Cross-process, desaturate and Tilt-shift are much faster.
- A bunch of small tweaks and fixes.

That' all for now :)

Out!

New decade - major release!

Hope all of you had a nice decade and looking forward to this new one. I can tell you that we are very pepped to see what the turns of the web and cloud services takes us.

This first release of 2010 we bring you more advanced users good news, we just release a update of Pixlr Editor with the possibility to add Layer Masks. This is the first release of masks so the basic stuff should be there and will be updated later on.

Since masks are a very big deal this also means that to get masks into the application we had to go poking in all areas of the code, all from saving to resizing and painting. If you run into any bug or weirdness please please help us by submitting a bug report.

You find the mask in the "Layers" top-menu, in the right-click context menu of the "layer panel" and also the icon.

Other updates in this release:

• Fixes of a couple of bugs and glitches.
• The image will always open to fit on screen so you don't need to zoom out.
  
• You can now press CTRL+J to create a layer copy.
• If you save the same image you are working on often it will remember the type and name.

Thank you for this amazing year!

Cheers
Ola

Adding Christmas hat to your profile picture - 6 easy steps!

So Christmas is just around the corner and you of course want to add a Christmas hat to your twitter, facebook, myspace etc picture. In this quick tutorial I'm going to show you how to do this in just 6 easy steps!

Step one: Select and open a hat in Pixlr Editor, just click the hat you like and we will do the magic.










I choose to click the third one and a window opened which look like this:

Hope this is similar to what you see :)


Step two: Now it's time to open a image of you. Click "File" -> "Open" in the top menu. Locate a nice and happy image of you and click "Open"

The image of you will now be open in the editor on top of the image of the hat.









Just like this :) (Oh no I'm not Brad Pit, but it's Christmas and one can wish)








Step three: Click on the window with the hat to put it in front of the image of you, now locate the layers panel at the right, with your mouse Click and drag the "Layer 0" layer to the window with you (yes it's now behind the hat window), drop the layer on-top of the image of you.

The image with you will now pop up in front of the hat and the hat will be copied to the image with you.


Step five: Transform the hat so it fits your head! The image you just copied to the image of yourself kinda don't fit, so now we need to move, resize and maybe rotate the hat so it fits.

In the menu click "Edit -> Free transform". Outline and corners will be added to the image of the hat.



See the Corners!


Move the hat by dragging the entire square. Resize by dragging in one of the four corners, hold down the shift key to constrain the proportions. Rotate by dragging outside of one of the four corners just like I do in this screen-shot:

When you are happy with the size and placing just click outside the square and click "yes" in the dialogue.


Step six: When you are satisfied with the result then it's time to save. Click "File -> Save" in the top menu. Select Jpg and type the name of the file you like, click OK.



Woila´, now just upload the image as a new avatar and spread the Christmas Spirit!

Merry Christmas to you all!
Ola

Copy & Paste Layer style, Drag & Drop Layers.

Ok I'm not going to make this such a big thing that apple did when they added Copy/Paste to iPhone ;)

But you can now copy and paste layer styles between layers in the same image and between different image.

You are now also able to drag and drop layers from one image to another. Just grab a layer in the layer panel and drop it in a other image, tada!

And yes both features where requests from you users!
Over and out - Ola