Quick and Easy Photo Editing with Pixlr Why bother? If you upload pictures to the SharpSchool web site as they come from your camera the file size is over fifty times the size that is needed for your web page. When you upload a picture and change the picture size in the dialog box below you are only changing how the web browser displays the image not the actual image size. Please take a minute and resize your pictures with Pixlr a photo editing program that is unbelievably good for a web based program. Pixlr can do many of the edits you can do in Photoshop. If you spend a few minutes with Pixlr you can save a great deal of bandwidth for those accessing our web site. You can find it at: http://pixlr.com/editor/ I suggest that pictures be in the 480 x 360 pixel range for group photos. A large scene might be 640 x 480 pixels. A recommended individual portrait shot size is 400 x 300 pixels. The numbers represent pixels wide x pixels tall. Any variation of these numbers work for a web picture whatever is needed to show the subject. Pixlr s Easy Interface You start here with an easy choice. Most often you ll open a picture from your computer.
Once your picture is open you can control the display size using the Navigator Panel. This does not change the picture size, only the size it displays in the browser window. You notice that you can work with layers and picture history as in Photoshop if you are interested. You can learn the toolbar tools (seen at right) by running your mouse over the tool and waiting for the dialog box to appear. It describes the tools function. Your First Task The first task after opening the image is to either crop the image to size or to resize the whole image without cropping. Cropping Cropping is a good way to reduce image size and to control the main content of the picture. The crop tool is pictured at the left. You have choices about how the tool helps you calculate the crop. The most useful is to constrain the crop to a particular pixel dimension crop to size. See the picture:
This lets you crop the picture and resize at the same time. In the next picture I m doing just that. The area to be saved is enclosed in the bounding box. Double click in the box and the crop is completed. Results of crop. Resizing Resizing is done under the Image menu at the top of the main window. You should constrain the aspect ratio. Second Tas Fix the Color These tools are under the Adjustments menu at the top of the main window. You will probably only do this step if your picture is underexposed, overexposed, or needs a bit of a boost in color. All of these adjustments can be done easily, but go easy on the controls.
Here are the three tools you will try first: 1. Exposure lighten or darken your image. 2. Brightness & Contrast does what its name says 3. Color Vibrance this tool saturates select colors makes them more intense. It leaves colors commonly found in human skin alone. It works subtly but makes a difference. Move the slider to the left and watch the difference. Final Task Sharpening the Image This task is saved for last. You cannot fix a picture that is badly out of focus by sharpening select a better picture instead. To sharpen a picture you should actually use the unsharp mask tool found under the Filter menu. When you select this filter you will get a dialog box. I suggest settings close to those in the picture. If you ve had experience with the same operation in Photoshop you ll understand the settings. If not, start here and vary the Amount from about 50% to whatever maximum makes the picture look sharper edges more pronounced, main objects more defined. If you over do it the picture will look like the next example.
Far too much sharpening! Now It s Time to Save You should save your pictures in either jpg or png file formats. Most often you ll select jpg. This allows you to create smaller file sizes. You have only one important decision to make at this step if you select jpg. That is the jpg compression to use as you save the file. This is a little counterintuitive. A lower number means more compression and a smaller file more picture data is lost. A higher the number means less compression, a larger file, but a higher quality picture. Here are two examples: Quality = 80, file size = 25 KB
Quality = 20, file size = 9 KB This picture has a smaller file size, but is of terrible quality. Generally I set jpg quality to about 50. You can set the quality to around 50-60 and not really agonize over the decision. You now have pictures ready for web display without much trouble and no expensive software. If you have any questions contact me at bartlett@sd6.k12.mt.us.