Pixlr-o-matic

Pixlr-o-Matic is an app based on Pixlr, a free online editor and set of tools currently own by Autodesk. The app is dedicated to adding lo-fi and vintage filters or fun textures to your photos, and it’s mostly meant to an audience that like quick and easy editing effects. It’s universal, completely free and you can download lots of free content as well.

What I really dislike about Pixlr-o-matic is that you have no way to tune down the effects. Many of the textures are definitely too strong for my taste and they take over the image completely, while they could maybe work fine if tuned down. This get worse with the light effects.

The crop button doesn’t make much sense. It crops the image to a square format, but you have no way to “re-center” the photo. So, it works fine only if the subject is right in the middle of the image.

Not all the effects are automatically included with the app, but you can downloaded them for free from the effects section. Beware though: they can be really too much, and not all of them are that good. You can deactivate the ones that you really dislike from the “My Effects” sub-section. The whole Effects section doesn’t seem to be optimized for the iPhone: buttons and text labels look definitely too small, here.

Once you feel the image is ready, you have an unnecessary screen where you can see it “hanging”. From there you can tap the export button or go back: why not export directly from the main editor? The app supports full resolution, but every time i tried to save a 13MP image on my iPad 2 it crashed (worked fine on my iPhone 4s).

You should never complain about something that is completely free, so I cannot really complain about Pixlr-o-matic. Still, there something about this app that prevents me from using it as much as I’d like. I find the “Light” section, in particular, quite bad for my tastes: without a slider to set the filter’s strength, my preferred option is to have it off completely. Cropping should be improved and the “effects” interface should be redesigned for the iPhone. The other two sections, “Rolls” (for the main effect) and “Frames” are quite good: still, a strength slider would make the former even better once again.

PROS: Free, Universal, many effects
CONS: No strength slider, lots of mediocre effects
Check also: Snapseed, Photoforge2, Filterstorm, Instagram, Magic Hour, Vintique, Aviary

Compatibility	Universal
Price	FREE
Free/Light version?	-
Developer	Autodesk Inc.
Resolution	Full
My Rating	6/10