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Tag: lasso

  • Freeware Shorts: PixBuilder Studio (Image Editor)

    Freeware Shorts: PixBuilder Studio (Image Editor)

    PixBuilder Studio (Version: 2.1.1 as of this post) is a capable image editor. It has many features of those much more expensive than it.

    PixBuilder Studio’s features include the typical brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, color balance, auto levels, (background and foreground) fill and more but also support for layers (including rasterize and combine), gradients, masks and even more that elevates it to Photoshop levels. Transform, flip, drop shadow and filters like Gaussian blur, sharpness, emboss and dithering are worth mentioning in terms of the Photoshop comparisons but it doesn’t end there.

    Its tools are also numerous. They are pencil, line, brush (configurable type and sizes), eraser, healing brush, clone stamp, ellipse, rounded rectangle, eyedropper, 8BF plugin support and more. The select menu has many of the options one would expect. Lasso, magic wand and magnetic lasso make image and layer manipulation easy and convenient. Color selection and range make working with specific colors within images easier as well.

    PixBuilder Studio
    The browser panel (Tools—>Browser Panel) eases navigation, a full screen mode (View—>Full screen mode) cleans up the interface, Rulers (View—>Show Rulers) aid in image creation and sizing, multiple undo covers up mistakes, Palettes add many coloring modes and options.

    Much like its expensive counterpart and lookalike there is also web preview for JPG, GIF and PNG formats. It can read JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, PSD, TGA, ICO and PBS formats and save to all except PSD. PixBuilder Studio is optionally installed in portable mode and requires Windows XP or newer.

  • Hornil StylePix: Feature Packed And Freeware Photoshop Alternative

    Hornil StylePix: Feature Packed And Freeware Photoshop Alternative

    Hornil StylePix, Freeware Photoshop Alternative

    Hornil StylePix is an impressive Photoshop replacement that is not only freeware but is only 1.5MB in size. The layout is similar to that of the expensive Adobe product. Not unlike other free Photoshop alternatives it supports a lot of the features or functions of the much bigger product and does them reasonably well.

    Hornil StylePix’s features include the likes of lasso (free, polygonal and others and all with extra settings to increase, decrease, fill and generally work with the selected region), erase, spray and an easy way to draw shapes.

    Walking through the program menu, the following are also available.

    The file menu: Batch processing with control over output size, name, orientation and filter. Browsing, previewing and navigating folders from within the program. Setting images as wallpaper.

    The edit menu: The usual series of tools like brush, clone, fill, color drop, text, zoom, transform, fix red eye and others. Here is also where one can use Hornil StylePix’s support for multiple undo levels in addition to the histogram.

    The image menu: Rotate, resize, duplicate and crop.

    The object menu: ‘Inserting’ images into other images and working with them as groups and then aligning, blending and layering (the image shows two pictures ‘grouped’ together)

    The Filter menu features a list of filters including the likes of noise, sketch, glow, blur and others.

    The view menu : Grid, ruler, and zoom. Also full screen mode and slideshow for the current image’s folder. This is also where the program options reside where the slideshow, interface grid, program skin and other settings are configured.

    The Window menu arranges windows and preserves or saves the layout for future sessions.

    A pro version with layer styles such as emboss, shadow and glow is also available. Hornil StylePix runs on Windows XP and newer PCs.