Web User - UK (2020-01-22)

Onceyou’vetriedPhotoPea,youmay
neverusea desktopimageeditoragain

42 22 Jan - 4 Feb 2020

EDITYOURPHOTOS
WITHOUTSOFTWARE
Thanks to the proliferation of
smartphones, taking photos has
become a daily occurrence, but if you
want to post or share a snap, it might
need some editing beforehand, to crop
unwanted elements, fix colour issues or
just apply a snazzy filter. There are
some great online tools that are
comparable – or even superior – to
desktop photo-editing software.
PhotoPea (www.photopea.com) and
Pixlr (www.pixlr.com) are our favourites.
PhotoPea is a brilliant free online
Adobe Photoshop clone that brings
advanced editing capabilities to your
browser. It offers all the basics you need
for resizing, rotating and colour-
correcting photos, and includes a
number of advanced tools, including
support for layers, layer masks and
styles. It can also open and edit vector
graphics and PSD (Photoshop) files.
The most recent update to PhotoPea
introduced smarter selections and a
background eraser.

Pixlr, another advanced photo editor,
offers two versions: the Flash-based
Pixlr Editor and the newer, faster Pixlr X.
All the tools you require to make
changes and improvements to your
photos are accessible from a strip down
the left-hand side, and include a wide
rangeoffiltersandeffects.

Software you no longer need:

Photoshop, GIMP

FIX PROBLEMS IN PHOTOS
All online photo-editing tools
provide filters and effects that you can
apply to your images, but Polarr (bit.ly/
polarr493) is especially good and offers
a selection created by professional
photographers that you can quickly
apply and tweak. This free web app can
also automatically detect faces, allowing

youtoremoveblemishes,smooththe

subject’s skin and adjust the tone and

saturation. It even lets you play with

face width, chin and forehead height,

eye size and brightness, and nose width

and height. It can also whiten your teeth

and, if you don’t look happy enough in

a photo, Polarr can plaster a smile on

yourface.

Software you no longer need:

Paint.net

REMOVE THE BACKGROUND

FROM IMAGES

If you’ve captured a stunning portrait

but find that the background leaves a

little to be desired, you can use an

image editor to crop around the subject,

then copy and paste it to a new

background. Getting the results you

want can be tricky – you need a steady

hand to cut around your subject – but if

your skills fall short, there is an excellent

online solution.

Uploada photototheamazing

Remove.bg (www.remove.bg) and it will

strip out the background automatically

and let you download the copy in

preview (small) or full quality. And that’s

not all. If you click the Edit button, you

can erase or restore part of the image

(useful for improving the cut-out), and

add a different backdrop or colour. You

can also add a customisable amount of

blur to the new background to make it

seem more natural. The only restriction

is a one-hour hour time limit to

download each image before it gets

removedfromtheservers.

Software you no longer need:

Corel Photo Paint

CREATE PHOTO COLLAGES

ONLINE

A great way to present a collection of

photos is to turn them into a collage for

printing or sharing. Fotojet (www.fotojet

.com) is an online collage maker that

Photos, videos & music

Evenif yourhomePCisn’tparticularlypowerful,

you can still use it to run the latest resource-

hungry games and software by harnessing the

power of the cloud. Shadow (shadow.tech) is a

new service that’s due to launch in April. It’s

essentially a full computer that you access

remotely and store your programs and content

on. Everything is hosted on Shadow’s servers

and streamed directly to your own PC, and the

company promises any games you play will run

smoothly and without any latency.

As you may expect, this technology doesn’t

come for free. Shadow is priced from £14.99 a

month, for which you get a GTX 1080 graphics

processor, a 3.4Ghz, four-core CPU, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage

(you can pay extra for additional space). If you’re after something meatier,

there are Ultra (£29.99 a month) and Infinite (£49.99 a month) packages on

offer. Shadow says an internet connection with a minimum speed of 15Mbps

is all you need.

STREAM YOUR PC FROM THE CLOUD

Polarr’s tools let you bring out the best in

your photos’ subjects

Forget shaky cut-outs – use Remove.bg to

strip the background from photos