How to use Pixlr X - Easy Graphic Design

hi there jamie keith here today at teachers tech hope you're having a great day today today i want to show you how to use pixlr x which is an easy to use graphic designer recently i just made a video a short video on how to use pixlr to remove the background of an image and it's just done in seconds by using this feature right here and simply drag and dropping things over now i'm going to be using pixlr x right here which is all online and has that feature and more i'll be using the 30-day trial one but even using the completely free one you can do most of all the actions using it so let's get started today with pixlr x on teachers tech so as i just mentioned i'm using the 30-day trial if you want to check out the pricing just click on the pricing up here and i signed up through this i used the free for years with pixlr and the big thing the difference will be the ads once you if you do sign up you won't get the ads on the page i've never found them that big of a deal but you can check out the differences what you get when you pay monthly to a yearly and all the different options and just so you know if you're an educator or student you can actually get pixlr for free this is something i like to use when i was teaching and if we were only having chromebooks for certain classes that this is what i used to teach graphic design because i could they didn't have to install anything and they could just go in and work away from there so i'll put this link down below in the description but let's go over to pixlr x right here

and this is where we're going to get started from and if you're looking for something specific look down below in the description in the timestamps and you can jump right to that part of the video to save you yourself some time so when you first see pixlr x uh you notice that we have latest projects this kind of stores your latest ones here notice what it says this is local temporary cache so if you're working on it long term make sure you save it as a pixlr document and i'll show you how to do that later we have templates and these templates are great and after i go through this tutorial i think you'll understand how to manipulate those because it can save you a lot of time working with templates especially when they have already the great design set up for you and then there's the collages where you can simply just fill in the place for pictures but where i want to start with

is working with an image opening up images you could create a blank document i'll show you how to do that later but let's start with opening an image and there's different ways we can do this i could go open image and go find one from my computer these are old thumbnails and open them up i could load from a url so what i mean this is if i go to i'm just moving over to an image off my site if i right click on this one and i go copy image address and come back and i paste this in here and hit load it can pull it off the web into here so i'm just going to hit this home button back again here another way you can do it is simply drag and drop so i have some images right here if i drag this over do i want to create new or add to current well in this one add to current would be adding it to already one i'm working with but i'm going to hit create new what do i want to work with i'm going to just keep it at full hd you can see what the original size is this is the difference in the paid for in the free one you don't get the option of this one with the free one but i'm going to hit apply on this one and it loads up so i have my image now inside here and i can give you a little walk around here and this is the toolbar in today's tutorial that i'm going to go through and show you all the different things that it can do we do have over here you can see our layers we can zoom up here and we can use our mouse i use my wheel on my mouse we have our history down here so what i'm going to do first is unlock

this because right now i can't do anything it's locked as soon as i hit unlock on this notice i get some different options now what do i want to do if i want to change the size of the image i could click down on this one and you can see i could just put in different numbers and it's going to stay a proportion constraint if i change this number and i'll just change it to 400 and you can see now it's much smaller and i'm moving around just clicking and holding on my mouse i can also change it by dragging here i can rotate this just like this and i can also grab too so i can rotate these around i'll zoom out again so you can see where it kind of is on the canvas and i'll place this one right here so as i click on it notice that we get more options as i move this the x and the y change on here so now i can add more images this to this if i want to so if i go back to this one i can do this in a few different ways i could hit image here add image i could go over to here and hit the plus and this is the ad image right here and i'll just add another image because what i want to show you and i'll use this one and i'm going to go through stock and

there's you get all a lot of stock and i'll put dog again and we will use just this one right here so do i want to add to current if i say add to current it will add it uh to the one i'm working on you can see over here there's the background there the original one was on but this one's so big it's covering everything that it's in front of so i could go to this one and resize this one too uh so if i go to you can see if i move it around you can get an idea that it's behind so i can start to resize i could do it in different ways i'll just move my numbers down to similar and i'm just going to drag this back

down so now i have two images and i also have two layers right here so if you think about it if you had a kind of a construction piece of paper and you had different pictures that you're laying down one would be in front of the other so if i drag this one over this is on top of it but i can change the order of most these here so now if i can drag over you notice the other ones in front so there's layers happening and this is working so when i work inside pixlr if i save this as a jpeg or png which i'll show you later it flattens everything together and then you won't be able to move them around and the transparency disappears if you save it as a jpeg too all right so there's just a couple tips of bringing things in making some changes adjusting the picture so you can do this as you're playing around with this so right now i have this image selected and if i go ahead and click on the background uh now i have the background selected and you can see i can quick add so click on the image that goes away click on the canvas and then i have my quick ad so i'm going

to just add these real quickly to show you what these are so we can add a frame now a frame i can add an image to this and a couple different ways i could do this i could just double click on this plus right here or i could go set image and open up and i already have this folder open here that is connected to and from my computer and i'm going to hit open and there it will load up inside this frame now i can change the a few things about this frame down below so i can change the image and i can still change the size of this and the other thing i want to note notice that it's on the top right here it is another layer so this can be moved around just like all the other ones by clicking and holding on it but so now i can put an outline around this too so if i go ahead and click on outline i'm going to just change it to a different color that you can see it a little bit more if i just scroll down i can change the size of the outline just like this we also have shadow so if i go ahead turn on the shadow uh you can see it a little bit here but i can change uh the colors of the shadow and i you can take a look at all the different things that you can change from the blur the distance uh to the direction that you want in the shadow so something to go and play with now i'm just going to actually turn off you just can click off these to turn them off but you do have different way different shapes you can quickly change so if i wanted a circle i can change it well that's more of an oval but i can change just quickly to have the image inside these different shapes so that's how you could add pictures inside a shape just like that we have our text if you want to add text

in a hurry and remember this plus over here we could add text over here so there's a few different ways here's our frame that we can add to it so there's a few different ways you can add things if i go ahead and add text here it comes in with the alarm ipsum but i can quickly change this too so notice over on the left as soon as the text came in i had the options to change all these things now so if i go over here and i'm just going to say hello you can see how it changes now that's pretty small i'm just going to go down here to size and just drag this up and you can see it get larger just like this i can go through all these different options that i showed you with the images where you can start rotating uh you can transform it very similar in the same ways but you get all these different options that you can go through so even if it was line spacing if i had double or more lines of text if i want the letters spaced out i can go through here we have our alignment and then there's even more make sure you're scrolling all the way down sometimes i've seen people just not see these things at the bottom but if i turn this on you can see i have some options of how i want the text to appear in this one so as i turn it on i just flipped it here i'll just turn it on again you can see it it's at the bottom but there's all these different things i turned on background turn them on and off and see all the different ways there's the color up here so if you wanted it at a different color you can just simply click on it and you have a different color on this another great way to add text is by clicking right here and hit this add text you'll see that these are all kind of presets with great designs so if i uh if i just go to this one keep it simple and click on it and it has this and you can customize this so if i look over in the layers it added three different layers so if i just select one layer so uh if i wanted to change the word from stupid to silly i could just type that in there and i could go through and make my adjustments to color and different things so that add text make some nice looking text that you can add very quickly to your graphic now i'm going to go back to this option

click on the background here and i want to show you just lastly under this one the shapes here uh no that's kind of a boring one just a rectangle but as i click on uh different ones you can see how it adjusts and i can go through and change the colors just like i did before and make all the different changes to it so again make sure you check scroll all the way down to make sure you've seen everything open these up to see the different adjustments you can make to each of the things that you turn on now let's say i'm just gonna move this out of the way and i know this is kind of random right now but it's also good to make sure you have your thing saved so if all of a sudden i go back to home here click on home and i'm going to just hit home right up here i don't want to be under the stock search this is what we're working on and we have some options here you can see we can duplicate from here we can delete i could hit the x i could make it a favorite but if i go back into it opens up and i can

continue but remember what i said if you're working long term it's good to save it so if i hit save here now this is where you want to save it if you're not done working in pixlr on it and you want to make sure you keep all the layers and everything so you can keep everything moving save it as this right here then give it a title and then hit download and that will put it on your computer and then when you upload it that will you'll be able to keep working with all the layers if you choose like jpeg or the png pmg will keep things transparent background jpeg won't it will turn it into a white background but it will flatten your image so if you want to keep working on it make sure and upload it again make sure you save it as this so i'm just going to cancel i just wanted to make sure that you knew that the other thing that i wanted to point out is our history this is great here so this is these are all the things that happened in this corner here if i click on different ones notice it goes back in time depending on where i was so each move it gets recorded and i can go forward and backwards into time so that was further back on it if i go oops clicked on the wrong thing if i go back to shapeset you can see towards the bottom it gets back to where i was so remember the history if you make a mistake you can control z too but history makes it so you can quickly uh go back and see at a different point maybe you like something better that you've done a few moves before if you ever want to

change the canvas size or the image size take a look at the layout and template so if i go and click on this we have resize image and resize the canvas so if i i'll show you the difference here so if i say resize the image and i'm going to make this smaller and you'll be able to see it makes everything smaller so it's the whole image together i'm just going to undo that but if i re uh do this size of the canvas and if i do that same thing here and apply you can see i've just changed the dimension of the canvas there so not everything fits the same and this is if i want to put a background right now these little squares means that it's transparent or see-through so if i put it on top of another image but if i do want a background i can click on it and make the adjustments uh to it to have a background if you are doing more of a poster thing too i'm just going to undo a few steps

here i'm going to go down to add elements here because i just want to show you all the different things and this is where you're going to see some of the difference differences when you have the paid for a counter if you're on the trial so i'll just go to the stickers here right away and it's going to load up these stickers now whenever you see a premium and i'll be allowed to use these those would be ones that are part of the paid for one so if i uh if i click on one of these it adds the stickers in here so if i load it just like this so i have these stickers that come in here really quickly so i'm just going to go ahead make this a lot smaller place it over here i'm going to go back and i'm not going to spend a lot of time showing you all these different ones but you can play and have a lot of fun with these if we wanted borders again if you're using the premium ones you'll see the difference i'm just going to go i'll go to the flowers and we'll pick this top one and it adds the border just like that and notice when we click on it we can change the transparency of these two so i'm going to go back here and i'm going to go back one more time and at this point i'm going to actually start from new again and open up an image to show you some of the more things you can do just with the images so i'm just under stock search right here and i'm not going to open up this image right

here to use it as an example i'm going to hit create new just to show you a few more things what you can do with your images now if i hit unlock i want to point out so these open up below just like this these are actually kind of shortcuts so if i click on effect notice it just jumps down to the effect if i go back up if i hit cutout it goes the cutout so it just it knows it's an image and it gives you the options and it just brings you to those parts here now also up top we have some things we can do i'm going to just make this a little bit smaller here and drag this up notice that we can flip vertically we can flip horizontally and we can duplicate so we can have two of those i can duplicate it again and again or i can use the garbage can like so now i'm just going to go back to open in my history i'm going to hit uh go back actually i'm going to go to crop and rotate so i just want to point out we have some things if we wanted to get a selection of the image to crop we could do a straightening so if there was something we need to do notice as i drag this it rotates her face but it also crops it around so same thing with the other side like that so i'm just going to go bring it back to zero here we'll bring it right to there and we have the same options that i showed you before when we're up top we have a rotate or sorry our flip and horizontal but we can rotate through here i can crop this way too by grabbing the handles and finding a certain area to crop and then if i hit apply it crops that certain area i'm just going to undo a step but if you want to make sure it's locked if we hit the select aspect this always keeps it at one to one so i can't i can bring it in and out and change the size but are these it's always going to stay at one to one i could if i knew there's a certain size i had to crop that i would put my size in and i can crop specifically at that so that's how you go ahead and do some uh cropping so i'm just going to hit apply just so we get a little bit closer up now next if we go up here and i'm going to hit unlock

i just want to point out the adjust here so again if i click on adjust it brings me down here we have all these things from color light details scene toning fill i could use the ai up here so if i hit auto you can see how it changed i can hit black and white and it uses the ai to kind of correct things how you might want to do that but you could go through manually and open any of these up and start to adjust them one by one and at any time if you hold down the compare down here it brings it back to see the kind of the original what you're working with and if you wanted to go back to the original you can hit reset but make sure you kind of go all the way down and keep opening things up and seeing all the options that you have to change it now i'm going to go back up to here and so i've showed you adjust effects

and i want to go to retouch on this picture so if we go to retouch now i just wanted to point out these different tools here so we have heel repair so here's an example i'm going to zoom up and let's say if i i'm going to go to patch and i'm just going to go and make this a little bit smaller you can see here so i'm going to make this smaller a little bit smaller still all right so now if i click on this spot here you notice how it starts to disappear so this is how you can go through and fix different images with it if you make your uh you notice if you make it larger it starts doesn't look as good if you take your time and go through and kind of do things in a smaller way that's how you would do it the infill would be the opposite to the patch like if i make it smaller i'll give you an example if i click on an area you can see kind of uh how it kind of fills it would fill in a spot of it but i don't really have anything in there that would work quite properly to show you we have our clone stamp so if i click on clone stamp what's my source that i want to go from so if i uh if i go to my source and i'll say this i and i'm holding shift down right now so if i click on shift and now if i go and if i go now and just click and hold my mouse you can see i'm copying the eye you can see the source file going through just like that so it's copying of it so if i was going to the mouse if i click on it hold shift and click and i could put the mouth right up here so it's just copying down below you can see the uh how it's copying it up here so you can have some fun using uh that tool we have our blur and sharpen and i'll let you play but you can see as you just click and hold how it blur and sharpen would be the other one we have her dodge and burn so we're if you want to lighten i'll hit darken so you can see it better you can kind of see um as it goes through me if you want it to go stronger you can start to see how you can adjust the images that way too so i'm going to move to a different image to show you a few more options that you have

so this time i'm just going to grab this picture here of these two dogs click on it we're going to create new and i want to show you the cutout feature how quickly it can work and if you have to fine tune things so this cutout here and this is very similar to the other video i made using the background removal but you have a few more options when you're using this we have our ai cut out this if i click on this like this you can see it just instantly removes it keeps what you think you uh want out just like that so it works super easy and you can go through and adjust the image you can make this smaller if i go back to arrange and unlock i could go back and make these smaller just like that and add more uh to it so now if i go back to my cutout again here and i'm just going to go back to open to back to the original we have more tools that we can use to cut out too so we notice we have our mode is keep and remove if we are removing and we could do a shape cutout so if i had the heart if i draw the heart it cuts it out just like that so there's different shapes you could cut those things out we do have a brush tool so if you wanted to keep something if i go keep i could fill this back in and say hey better keep that but we could also say remove i could draw around an animal one of these animals like this i'm just going to do this quick i could make my brush smaller if i wanted the softer edges on it i could just bring it over and you can kind of see how the softer works again you can go and hit keep make your brush really big and i'm going to go back to here and i can as long as it turns green it puts it all back to normal here we do have our lasso so i could go around and this will be quick if i go around a certain object just like this and connect it cuts that area out of it so very quickly you can go out you can apply cut out reset cut out invert cut out so the invert would be the opposite of what you had selected so do take a look uh if you need your background removed this is a great option uh it's super easy to use so this liquify tool is a lot of fun to use and

i'm just going to use the same image that i was just using but you select what you want to do by clicking on the actions here so if i was going to go to push and i won't change anything right now but if i click and hold on my mouse you can see how i can stretch out the photo so i'm just clicking holding on my mouse and i can stretch it out and i can undo my steps so there's always the restore so i go back hit restore and kind of draw wave my mouse and holding it brings it back there's these other uh fun tools here though if i go over and you can change the size the strength the density all the time but if i want to make the eyes bigger just like that if i want to shrink the eye i can go and shrink it like this so maybe i want to shrink the whole head i can make the size of the brush a lot larger and start to shrink everything like this and i can always go to the restore and we have our swirl in here that as you click and hold it does things to it so a lot of fun with this tool with it now i'm going to move down to the draw tool and the draw i could add it to any of the other photos if i click on it i get these but what i want to do is actually i'm going to go back to home here and i mentioned it before i want to create a

new so just a blank no images if i go create new and you can title and everything and i'll just say test do i want a background i'm going to say yes i'm going to use the white background and i have different sizes i could pick the size if i want i'll just use 1920 by 1080 hit create and so i have

this kind of this canvas that i can draw on now if i click draw we have our brushes so if i better pick a different color rather than white you can start to see how easy it and how smooth you can draw and change the colors and you can go through the size of the brush the softness transparency of the brush on all these we have our eraser tool that we'll go through we have a pen tool so i'm going to make this a lot larger so you can see it uh even larger than that and then if i make i'm going to go to this color and you can see how it works like a pen a uh but we can go through and do different things so as i uh turn into sketchy you can see how the uh the how it looks different so you do the drop down here you can do crayon uh and it keeps changing in it so lots of fun with these we can add our shapes very quickly to the canvas right now that was white i can change it and add the shapes to it and the thing i want to point out notice when i'm drawing it's not going a separate layer over each one a lot of times when i'm showing kids or something i start with this just so they get used to just using the mouse and drawing a picture on this too but then moving over to the shapes the image is a lot of fun to start to adjust so i hope you like this tour of uh pixlr here today uh use the free one to get started or create your 30 day account like i did to show you with all the different options i love it that it's all online and how it works pretty easily especially on the chromebooks i'll do a different video on using the more advanced pixlr on it but thanks for watching this time on teachers tech i'll see you next week with more tech tips and tutorials