The editing process takes just three steps.
- Open image,
- edit
- save.
Click "Choose your image to edit" and the left pane expands to reveal the select image options. You can either upload an image from your PC or enter the Web address if the image is available online. I uploaded a photo of a flower bouquet. Whoa, it's a big photo at 1600x1200 pixels. Click zoom- icon (all icons are labeled) to get it within the window.
Here are a few basics to know before starting. To find out what a tool does, roll the mouse cursor over the tool and a pop up box appears with the details. Anytime you don't like a change you made or you want to put it back, click undo or redo. You can select an area of the picture anytime by clicking and dragging till the box shows what you want. This comes in handy as some filters can be applied to part of the image.
You might change your mind about applying an effect to a limited area, so click select all to have the entire picture selected or select none to get rid of the selection.
Let's say we want to use the photo in a newsletter. First thing to do is resize it otherwise it will swallow the newsletter whole. Click resize. 250 in the width box sounds like a good number. Enter that into the box. PXN8 automatically changes the height to 188 to preserve the aspect ratio. Unless you have a compelling reason, always preserve the aspect ratio otherwise the photo will look stretched. Click apply and the photo shrinks.
The photo should focus on the flowers and not the wall space around it. Cut out the space with crop. You can crop it with a fixed size by selecting the size from the Aspect ratio drop-down or do it yourself with free select. Put the mouse pointer on one of the corners and click 'n drag the selection. Click apply when you're happy. If you don't like it, just hit undo.
The image doesn't need any other major changes. The remaining features correct an image or modify the colors. Enhance is a tool that quickly fixes photos that are noisy, flat/colorless or both. Enhance also smoothens facial lines. Fill light adds light to underexposed images. You can repeatedly click fill light until you like the changes. See image 3 below for what fill light and the other effects can do.
You might have taken pictures by turning your camera so you can capture a long image. The picture might appear sideways, so use rotate to put it in the right position. Sometimes a picture is crooked because we couldn't hold the camera still or the object moved. Straighten it out with spirit level. All you have to do is click on the left half of the image and then on the right half. Where you click from top to bottom adjusts the image. You may have to play with this and use undo a few times till it's just right.
Image 3: Click the image to see a larger image in a pop up window.
Red eye removes the shiny eyes that look red frrrom the flash. Whiten gives you the opportunity to give someone shiny white teeth. Sepia converts the image from color to a brownish-grey color like in old photos. Colors is for adjusting the brightness, saturation, hue and contrast. You might have to play with this one till you like it.
Click "show fun effects" for six additional photo enhancement tools. We've applied each affect to the flower picture and you can see the results in image 3. When you're done, save the picture (where it's saved depends on your browser) or upload it to Flickr.
Word of warning. If you make changes to your picture and then go to another Web page from within the browser and then return by hitting the back button -- you'll lose all changes including resize. Save the image when you've made a few changes and don't want to risk losing them. You can continue working after you've saved it.
PXN8 allows direct and immediate saving of the modified image to your local hard disk in just one-click. Edited images can also be directly uploaded to Flickr (you need to have an open account - free - on it) with the same level of ease.
PXN8 is an easy to use tool that has most of the tools most users need for enhancing and editing images.
Requirements:
Linux, Windows (Apache & IIS) or FreeBSD platform
Perl installed on server
Supported browsers: Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explore 6.0
Javascript enabled on browser
You can download the PXN8 Server Compatibility Kit (zip file) to see if your server has everything it needs or not. Here's PXN8's product page.
Price:
USD $749 for installing it on a single Web server.
You can try PXN8 online and see exactly how it works for users since it's a Web-based application. The typical purchasers of the product are Web site administrators and Web developers needing an integrated photo editor with their Web site service.
Individuals can use PXN8 online free.
