PIXLR NOTES

Edit 5 of your best photographs (that need editing) to hand in after thanksgiving.

 Tip: Do step 7, Save your photo and rename it right after first open the photo in pixlr. Then you don't risk to loosing what you have done if the internet connection closes or freezes . If you "Save" regularly when you edit your photos, everything you have done up untill the last saving will still be there even if you loose your internet connection.

Go to Pixlr

The work flow:

1) Open your photo from Pixlr.com (advanced version)

2) Use Levels (if necessary)

3) Use the burn and dodge tools on the left to lighten or darken certain areas if needed.

4) Crop the photo

5) Sharpen

6) Save your photo


Step by step.

1) Go to the editor on Pixlr and choose "Open image from computer". And find the photo you want to edit on your flash drive.

2) Go to Adjustments at the top of the window and choose levels from the drop down menu. A window will pop up giving you your exposure adjustments black point, white point and mid-tone gliders. Make small increment adjustments to develop your photograph achieving the a correct exposure. (Not too dark and not too bright) Remember can increase the brightness of the whites only by use the white arrow slider on the right or make the black darker with slider on the left.

3) Burning and Dodging. These tools can be found in the tools palette on left hand side of the screen. Click the doge tool to lighted an area of your photograph that is too dark. The brush sizes can be found at the top of your screen (see photos below!) Make sure it is the same size or smaller than the area toy want to dodge (make lighter) . This way your dodging blends in on the photograph and does stand out by having area that got dodged that should not have. (think paint by number, you want to stay in the lines of the area you are dodging. Remember the statue in the photo I demonstrated on in class. I only wanted to make the figure of the statue lighter by dodging it and not the back aground wall behind him. The same applies for burning (make a specific area of your photograph darker). 

Next choose either shadows, highlights or mid-tones from the drop down menu next to the brush size. Depending on if the area you want to make darker is either too bright (highlights) or a shadow area of your photo you want to make even darer (chooses shadows).

Then choose the Exposure adjustment amount: Chose a low number like 10 (see below) at first and then you can increase the number if that is not enough of an adjustment.

4) Crop your photo. Choose the crop tool in you tools palette on the left. Then at the top of the window choose aspect ratio from the drop down menu to keep your crop consistent with the size of your photograph. type in the number 4 and 3 right next to the drop down menu as seen in the photo below for horizontal images. For vertical images type 3 and then 4 in the width box.  

 

Next drag the courser across your photo from the top corner to lower right corner and left go of the mouse. A grid will pop up on your photo. you can then use the blue boxes at each corner of the crop mark to drag the crop in to the desired cropping. Click enter on your key board when your happy with where the crop marks are on your photo to crop it.

5) Sharpen. Go to Filter at the top of the page and choose unsharp mask. Photos need to be sharpened a little be before they are printed. Amount should be 20 and no less than 10. Radius keep at 2 Threshold 10.

6) Saving. Go to file save. Change the Name: of your photo using a name that relates to the photo such as: kid playground. Or keep the orignal file name and just put the word edited after it. You'll be saving two versions of your photograph. Go to file at the top and chooses save. For the first version choose PXD for the format. (This file type is bigger but it saves all the steps you did above in case you want to go back and change what you did later or add to those edits). Next click ok. Choose where this photo will be saved. Select your flash drive. Then make a new folder and title it Edited Photographs. Next click save. Follow the same step to save again this time keep the files name as it is and choose jpg for the format. Save this also to your edited photo folder.