If there is one thing I just love about the rise of the tablets it is the fact we have become untethered from our desktops. Creativity can now breakout anywhere. For example, you can shoot an image on your iPhone or iPad, open it in an imaging app while sitting on a park bench and manipulate the photo using an app designed for that purpose. Then you save the photo, make some further revisions in Photoshop and then add the photo to a web page or other creative project.
One of my favorites these days, is Pixelmator from the Pixelmator Company. Available in desktop and iPad versions, this image editing application has become one of my “go to” image editors when I am untethered.
In this “How To” we are going to use many of Pixelmator’s features to “jazz up” an image using an iPad and ,instead of using my finger- which you can do – I will be using the Adonit Jot Touch pen. Let’s get started.
How To Open An Image In Pixelmator
When you first launch the application. You can choose to work on a Pixelmator document opened previously or import one from a variety of sources including iCloud, your Photo Library or even take a photo using the camera. Your choices don’t stop there. If you tap iCloud and then Locations you can choose an image sitting on Google Drive or Dropbox. My image – SteamPunkLamp.jpg - is sitting on Dropbox.
Once I select it, it is downloaded to Pixelmator and opened.
How To Use The Pixelmator Interface
When the image opens, you will see a series of icons along the top. Here’s what they do:
- Paintbrush: This is the Tools menu and your main editing menu. The popdown lets you Paint and Erase, Retouch, Adjust the image colors, add some preset effects, select and area of the image and crop the image. The format choice lets you manipulate the image and even resize to width and height values you input.
- The Plus Sign (+) : With this menu you can choose another photo to add to the composition, add a layer, text and shapes to the image.
- The Gear: This is the app settings menu and lets you resize or rotate the image, add guides, use devices or an Intuos Creative Stylus.
- Share: Once you are finished with the image this menu lets choose which format, including Photoshop, for the image and how to share the image to a variety of location ranging from Facebook to iCloud and Google drive.
- Help: Tap this icon and you are first off, as shown above, the meaning of the various icons. Tap the “Learn more …” strip and you are taken to the Help documents.
How To Resize An Image
The image was over 3,000 pixels wide which simply didn’t work for me. To deal with this I selected Image Setup in the Settings menu. I then tapped the image dimensions to open the Adjust Size menu and changed the dimensions to 900 pixels wide and 602 pixels high. To accept the change, I tapped the image and then tapped Apply.
How To Zoom In On An Image
Getting in tight on the bulb and the oddly shaped tubes and gauge was an issue. In this case, you can pinch and zoom to come in close on an area of the image. What you don’t want to do to move around is to use a long press and drag to move around. All that does is assume your finger is a brush. Instead use two fingers to accomplish this task.
How To Desaturate A Background
The plan here is to pull the user’s attention to the Steam Punk Lamp. One way of doing this is to desaturate the image’s background colors. By doing this the eye is drawn to the color in the image .
Select Retouch and Desaturate in the resulting screen. I selected Very Hard as my desaturation approach simply because the color had to go. From there you can use your finger or, in my case, a stylus to paint the desaturation.
When you are finished tap Done.
How To Saturate Colors
With all of the color in the foreground, I decided the bulb, the light fixture and the Pressure Gauge should “pop”. Saturating color increases its intensity. I tapped Tools>Retouch to open the Retouch options. I selected Saturate and, in this case, I went with the Soft value. When you are finished, tap Done.
How To Add A Pixelmator Effect
I wanted to keep the fixture in the foreground as the primary focal area. To do this I decided to blur the background and keep the subject in focus. To start I select Tools>Add Effects. A series of preset effects opened at the bottom of the screen. You can see what each effect does by tapping a thumbnail for the effect. If it doesn’t do what you want, tap Undo at the top of the screen
The effect I chose was Focus. When the effect is applied two dots appear. The dot with the plus sign is the center of the effect which you can think of as being the Focal Point. The second dot allows you to set the diameter of the Focal area. Everything outside of that area is blurred. The slider at the bottom essentially lets you set the amount of the blur. When you are satisfied, tap Apply.
To save the image I tapped the Share Icon and selected Save to iCloud drive. I selected the PNG option and tapped Done.