If you are a Photoshop heavy user like I am, you are likely to miss it when you are away from home, without your PC or laptop: sure you have Photoshop.com as a great alternative, but it might not satisfy you at all, specially from the layout point of view since it looks totally different from the original version.

Luckily there is a fantastic fully web-based alternative, which will make Photoshop’s absence easier for you: its name is Pixlr, an online full-featured Photoshop-like image editor, which allows you to modify your images without installing any type of software, at begginer’s and advanced levels.

Pixlr Editor

This is the main tool available on the website: the interface looks, apart from the colors, very similar to Photoshop’s. When you first open it, youll be asked if you want to open a blank new canvas or an existing picture from your computer or URL.

When the image has been opened or imported, you will be able to modify it as you wish, using all the features Pixlr offers to you:

• Tools

  

  Practically identical to Photoshop’s, this toolbar lets you access a variety of tools that allow you to select parts of your image, add text, make advanced sharpening or blurring edits, pick colors from the image, and many many more.

• Navigator, Layers and History

  

  On the right side of the screen, there you’ll find three boxes: the first one is the Navigator, and here you’ll have a nice overview of your picture with positioning infos, as well as zoom level. The Layers box, as the name says, gives you complete control over layers, enabling you to create new ones, delete them, add effects and masks, and more. The last box, History, briefly tells you all the things you’ve done to your image, making it easy to undo steps.

• Upper Toolbar and Shortcuts

  

  The upper toolbar looks just like a normal software’s, with the usual “File, Edit” menus. There you will find buttons to save your project, rotate it, add filters, make adjustments etc.

  If you use Photoshop’s shortcuts, you will see that many of them work in Pixlr as well (and example is the Ctrl-J to make a duplicate of the currently selected layer).

Pixlr Express

If you want to do some basic improvements to an image, you may use Pixlr Express: it is a reduced and simplified version of Pixlr, which gives you access only to the main features and effects. When an image is opened, you will be able to resize it, crop it, and rotate it. Other than that, you can add filters and basic effects, as well as adjusting brightness, levels, sharpen and blur, and remove red eyes.

Extensions

There are two extensions available, both for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. When you install them, you will be able to right click any image, on your computer or or any web page, and directly open it in Pixlr, without passing through the import process. This is not a real feature, but just a way to speed up the process of opening pictures.

Firefox Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9924

Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kflilpkdgadcajfcafmefmndemaafcfe

Final Thoughts

This software is just amazing for me: it can fully replace Photoshop (beyond the limits obviously) for any editing level. It works on any platform and browser that supports Flash, and it is fast and smooth with a normal DSL line, but I guess you can work on it even on slower lines. Plus, you can export in multiple formats (JPG, PNG, BMP, and proprietary PXD, similar to Photoshop’s PSD) with customizable levels of compression.

It is completely free to use, and nothing to download except for Flash player is required in order to use it.