Pixlr now has AI photo editing tools. I tried it

The creators of online photo editing tool Pixlr want you to know that it, too, has artificial intelligence.

Pixlr isn’t as old as Adobe’s Photoshop, but it’s been around longer than your average AI startup. It was founded in 2008 as a standard photo editor with zero AI functionality. After a few ownership changes, founder Ola Sevandersson is back with high hopes for Pixlr’s latest AI tools.

In November, Pixlr added AI tools including an image generator, a fill generator, a background remover, and an image enlarger.

Pixlr is trying to distinguish itself as a more user-friendly platform than its competitors, but it says it can still cater to more advanced users. Those competitors are a formidable bunch, including Adobe Photoshop (and its Firefly AI tool), Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, PhotoRoom, and Leonardo.ai, which was just acquired by graphic design platform Canva. The price is right — there’s a free version — but Pixlr will need to do more than just offer basic AI features if it’s going to stand out from the crowd.

I tried generating images with Pixlr

To use Pixlr, click “sign up/sign in” and create an account with your email address. Once verified, you’ll be up and running in a minute or two.

I wanted to try out the image generation feature, so I asked Pixlr to create an image of a scene from the Olympic Games where a triumphant athlete wins their first gold medal.

The first result was more cartoonish than I imagined, so I experimented with styles, combining anime, neon punk, photography and origami.

Overall, they were all pretty good — although the trophy in one athlete’s hands was flawed. Still, for a free image-generating tool, it’s not bad. (In addition to the free version, Pixlr has subscription plans that range from 89 cents per month to $9.91 per month.)

I wanted to give Pixlr a bigger challenge, so I asked for a photo of She-Ra eating at a Waffle House. (She-Ra was He-Man’s twin sister and my childhood heroine.)

I was impressed with the results — although I didn’t realize there was a She-Ra reboot in 2018, which Pixlr was probably referencing. I think anyone who’s been to Waffle House would agree that the restaurant’s depictions were pretty upbeat. And the more realistic, photo-style versions of She-Ra had dead eyes. Still, I was impressed that Pixlr knew who She-Ra was.

Pixlr vs. the competition

When I asked him how Pixlr compares to photo editors like Photoshop, Sevandersson said it comes down to ease of use. Anyone can access Pixlr online for free.

“We tried to take the technology and simplify it a little bit to make sure it would work for most people,” Sevandersson said.

He declined to say how many users it has, instead saying that Pixlr generates millions of images per day. However, a November press release said the photo editor is used by nearly 10 million people per month.

“One of the most used features on our site is still cropping,” he added. “Even if someone goes to (OpenAI image generator) Dall-E and generates an image, they still want to crop it.”

This cropping feature is a relic of Pixlr’s past. The company, founded in 2008, was acquired by software company Autodesk in 2011 and then by stock photography agency 123RF in 2017.

Sevandersson left after the Autodesk deal and returned under the 123RF name. Pixlr has since been spun off, but 123RF retains a stake. The company is now headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

“We started over five years ago,” he said of the original photo-editing tool. The background removal tool was Pixlr’s first AI product.

“The biggest change started about two years ago, when the first generative image generator came out,” Sevandersson added. “Back then, we knew this new technology was coming and it was going to revolutionize everything. Nobody was going to sit and edit photos the way we had done before.”