Pixlr

We have posted on this tool before, back in February of last year, but with so many people cropping, resizing and compressing photos for websites, I thought it deserved mentioning again.

Pixlr (http://www.pixlr.com/editor/) is a free on-line picture editor that allows you to crop, resize, compress, add filters, work with layers, and do pretty much anything you are able to do in Photoshop or GIMP. You go to the site, import the picture from your computer or a URL, and then use the toolbox and the menus to manipulate the picture. Cropping is done using the cropping tool in the toolbox (shown at left, cropping tool is circled in red). Resizing is done by choosing Image Size in the Image menu and changing the number of pixels. Compressing is done by choosing Save As in the File menu, where you can choose the format of your final image (e.g. .gif, .jpg, .png) and the quality of the compression.

If you are familiar with Photoshop, you may recognize these commands, as they are the exact ones you'd use to accomplish these tasks in Photoshop. You'll also recognize the workspace below, as it is quite similar to the Photoshop workspace. The difference? It's on-line...and it's free!