Pixlr Editor/Menus/Adjustment

ADJUSTMENTS - change your photos in several different ways. Adjustments are normally applied to the whole photo/layer or selected areas.

Brightness & Contrast – are used to lighten or darken and/or enhance differences in between dark and light portions. Brightness adjustments can lighten or darken the image. Contrast brings the differences in portions of a photo. Adjustments are made using slider bars.

Hue & Saturation – makes 4 kinds of adjustments to the image; Hue, Saturation, Lightness, and Colorize by the use of 3 slider bars and a check box for Colorize.


 * 1) Increasing the saturation by moving the slider to the right, increases the intensity of the color. Notice how much greener the leaves are as well as the flower. A slight decrease to the lightness also improved the image. Moving the saturation slider to the left, desaturates the image and turns it black and white if you go all the way to the left.
 * 2) The Lightness slider operates the same way as the Brightness slider as discussed above.
 * 3) The Hue slider gives the photo a tint across a whole spectrum of colors. To find out exactly which tint you wish to add to your image move the Hue slider bar left or right until you get your desired effect.
 * 4) Checking the Colorize block turns the image to one color. The color is adjusted using the Hue and Saturation sliders.

Color balance – adjusts the amount of red, green, and blue in photos. The color in digital photos is created in much the same as a television using the primary colors of red, green, and blue. Color balance can be used to reduce and/or take away tints from photos. This can useful with indoor images that have poor white balance. Note below where the blue tint to the photo was reduced by a color balance adjustment.

Color vibrance – increases saturation in areas less strong. Note below how the leaves look greener in the red daisy shown below using just the color vibrance adjustment. The vibrance adjustment is more subtle and can be useful when using the Hue and Saturation adjustment.

Levels – adjust the strength of overall light and in the red, green, and blue color channels. Color channel adjustments may sometimes restore color to older or yellowed photos like the Color Balance adjustment. Most images can use a Levels adjustment. It is the adjustment that I use the most. In the Levels adjustment window, you will see a Histogram. A Histogram is a graphical representation of how light is distributed in an image. Pixlr shows a separate curve for the combined RGB in black), as well as the Red, Green, and blue channels. Using Levels in the RGB channel, you can adjust the overall light distribution which is useful to lighten dark areas and darken light areas of your image. Under the histogram, you will see three sliders for dark, medium and light. Moving the sliders to right darkens the image and sliding to left lightens image. You can also adjust the separate color channels; red, green, and blue to adjust the colors in a photo.

Curves – perform adjustments similar to levels with more control using a line showing various levels of light, or red, green, or blue light channels. With curves, you click at point on the line in the box and move that point on the line to adjust light levels. You can select multiple points on the line to adjust various light levels on the photo.

Exposure – will make the photo lighter or darker according to how you move the slider. Auto levels – adjusts levels automatically with varied success.

Invert – makes the image into a photo negative. This is same as a photo negative in a film camera. You can use this to restore images of scanned photo negatives.

Sepia – changes a photo to look like it is an aged black and white photo that has turned brown.

Solarize – makes the dark areas light and light area dark.

Desaturate – turns the photo into black and white.

Old photo – gives the effect an old black and white photo with some fading on the borders.

Cross process –

Threshold –

Posterize –

Color