Pixlr AI Photo Editor

AI Photo Retouch & Image Generation. Express Collage Design and Editing.

Pixlr Pte Ltd

100M+

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Pixlr AI Photo Editor - A Comprehensive Review

Pixlr AI Photo Editor Review – A Powerful Free Tool With Room to Grow

Overview

Pixlr AI Photo Editor, formerly Pixlr Express, has rapidly become a dominant force in the mobile photo editing landscape. Boasting over 100 million installs and a robust 4.35-star rating from more than 1.2 million users, this free application offers an impressive suite of features leveraging both traditional image editing techniques and increasingly sophisticated AI capabilities. The app’s core mission – to empower creativity through accessible photo manipulation – is successfully achieved, particularly for those new to advanced photo editing. The recent rebranding to "AI Art Photo Editor" signals a significant shift in the platform's focus, integrating generative AI tools alongside its established functionality. This review will delve into Pixlr AI’s strengths and weaknesses, evaluating its suitability for both casual users and more experienced photographers.

Key Features

The app’s feature set is extensive, categorized primarily around image retouching, creative effects, and – crucially – AI-powered generation:

AI Art Generator: This is the headline feature. Users can input text prompts to generate entirely new images from scratch, exploring styles ranging from photorealistic landscapes to abstract art. The quality varies depending on the prompt's specificity; however, it’s remarkably effective for producing surprising and visually appealing results.
AI Photo Enhancer: Leveraging AI, this tool automatically improves photos with features like auto-enhance, background removal, object removal, and portrait retouching. It operates surprisingly well, often delivering noticeable improvements in a single tap.
Traditional Editing Tools: Pixlr retains its roots as a robust photo editor offering a comprehensive collection of tools: layers, masking, curves, color adjustments (brightness, contrast, saturation), blur, sharpen, vignettes, and more. These are seamlessly integrated with the AI features.
Collage Maker: The app includes a dedicated collage maker allowing users to combine multiple images into various layouts, complete with customizable borders and effects. Over 2 million combinations of free effects further expands design possibilities.
Templates & Presets: A vast library of pre-designed templates and presets provides instant style transformations for photos, catering to different aesthetics and social media platforms.
One-Tap Effects: Simple, impactful filters and effects are readily available for quick enhancements.

Strengths

Powerful AI Integration: The AI Art Generator and Photo Enhancer represent a significant leap forward in mobile photo editing. They provide genuinely useful tools that can dramatically reduce the time needed to achieve professional-looking results.
Intuitive Interface (for Beginners): Despite the breadth of features, Pixlr maintains an intuitive user interface, making it accessible to beginners who are unfamiliar with complex image editing terminology. The guided tutorials and tooltips further contribute to this ease of use.
High Level of Customization: For users comfortable with traditional photo editing techniques, Pixlr offers a remarkable degree of control over every aspect of the image. Layer masking and advanced adjustment tools provide flexibility that rivals desktop software.
Large Community & Support: With 100 million+ installs, Pixlr benefits from a large user base providing ample resources for troubleshooting and inspiration via online forums and tutorials.

Areas for Improvement

AI Output Consistency: While impressive, the AI Art Generator’s output can be inconsistent. Complex prompts still require careful refinement to achieve desired results. A more granular control over stylistic parameters within the AI generator would be beneficial.
Limited Free Tier Restrictions (Increasing): While "free," certain advanced AI features and higher resolutions for generated images are locked behind a subscription, which could feel restrictive to casual users who primarily want to experiment with the AI tools. The app is increasingly pushing premium subscriptions.
Performance on Lower-End Devices: Some users have reported performance issues – particularly lag when using multiple AI features or working with large image files – on older smartphones and tablets. Optimization for lower-end devices would improve accessibility.
Tutorial Depth for Advanced Features: While beginner tutorials are plentiful, more in-depth guides covering the advanced layer masking, curve adjustments, and other complex tools would be welcome.

User Experience

The user experience is generally very positive. The app’s navigation is clear and logical, with a well-organized layout that makes it easy to find the desired features. The transition between traditional editing and AI tools is seamless. However, the sheer volume of options can feel overwhelming at first. A more streamlined onboarding process could help new users quickly grasp the core functionalities. The responsiveness of the app is generally good, though as noted previously, performance degrades noticeably on less powerful devices.

Value for Money

Pixlr AI Photo Editor offers exceptional value for money, being entirely free to download and use. While premium features are available through a subscription, the core functionality – including the AI Art Generator and Photo Enhancer – provides immense creative potential without requiring any financial commitment. The subscription model is priced competitively compared to similar apps, offering access to higher resolution generation, more advanced AI controls, and removal of watermarks.

Conclusion

Pixlr AI Photo Editor represents a significant advancement in mobile photo editing. Its powerful AI tools, combined with its robust traditional editing capabilities and intuitive user interface, make it an outstanding choice for both beginners and experienced photographers. Despite some minor areas for improvement – particularly regarding output consistency and device optimization – the app’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. The free version provides a remarkable level of functionality, making it a highly recommended download for anyone looking to explore their creativity with AI-powered photo editing. The continued development of the AI features suggests a bright future for Pixlr as a leading platform in this rapidly evolving space.

User Reviews

GeekWad927

Used to Love this App 😭 Now, Holding the pic to align it, shrinks it so you can't • New UI is horrible, clunky • Long Vid Ads freeze App before it saves, losing project! • Overlay adds a border to the top image, ruining overlay • If working on a white pic, the options across the top blend in. Can't see them • Ads to buy app pops up just as you select project • No undo option when drawing • Overlay resizes the picture so it's hard to resize & lineup if using same pic

Nunaya Biznus

This used to be a good app (the previous versions were my primary photo editor for years) but after the most recent update, it's garbage. It no longer functions without a persistant web connection. I was fine with their old, in-app ads (everyone's gotta make a living) but if you have to pay for a usable app, then you're better off buying a fully-featured version from one of the big developers (Adobe, for example) and pay for it ONCE, rather than do a monthly subscription from this company. 🙄

Caveman Hikes

New update is terrible. how frustrating. why make things more complicated and less usable? fight me in real life. I wouldn't be so frustrated with pixar over the years if it wasn't such a reasonably good editing app. But it WAS a better app for a decade. Now, every change is for the worse, and to introduce more ads. I am willing to fight the makers in real life.

A Google user

Would be a nice app, but.... honestly, when you are typing a text for a photo, there is no "Done" button. Nothing! Just the usual X but when you hit that, as you probably guessed, it erases all that you just did. It's like that for other features as well, not just the texting. How they missed this is just beyond me. Maybe it's an issue that only i am having. However, idk why that would be. I have a top of the line, $1200 flagship phone and it usually doesn't make mistakes like this. However, im surprised that no one else complained about that yet. Or maybe they have, idk yet. And YES, I have absolutely looked for a "Done" button for about 10 minutes, to no avail. So something neeeeeeeds to be done about this. But for now I'm uninstalling and going elsewhere. Somewhere much better actually, but i wont say it on here so i dont wreck their business.

Stephen Abbott

Like many others, I'm going to mention the fact that it no longer saves properly. I can't find the file it's saving to, if it actually is saving the files, as e developers claim. Fix this. Otherwise great app. Until the saving issue is fixed, I'm going to screenshot the images I work on after I'm done. It's a dumb extra step, but it works.

Niki L (J.N. Lloyd)

I have used Pixlr for my photos since 2013, and I have always loyally used it. I just realized that they put in intrusive apps. Fine. I can almost deal with that, except now when I save my edited photos, they look horrible. The quality is low, there is a blue hue to the pictures. They look nothing like the picture I edited on the app. I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that you guys are trying to force people to purchase a subscription this way. I'm uninstalling and using Adobe.

Ash Santoscoy

Been using this app for years, since 2015, and have loved everything about it, until this most recent update. Now, if you lose signal for whatever reason, pixlr will try to force you to subscribe to their paid service, and if you don't, their app will immediately boot you, regardless of whether or not you were in the middle of editing a photo. It has happened to me multiple times and I have lost so much progress. I hate it.

Melody

Update: I uninstalled and then reinstalled the app and it was saving my photos again. But now here we are a few weeks later and it's not saving my photos anymore. I have paid version. Fix this Pixlr!!!! Can't save photos. The latest updates or something causes none of the photos to save. It says saved but nothing showed up anywhere in my phone. Not in file manager or also not in my photo gallery. It used to show in my photo gallery. If this is a glitch I hope it gets fixed very soon.

Dylanger Gutierrez

UPDATE: they're fully pivoted to AI now, to the point it's obtrusive to other features. Time to uninstall. Used to be a serviceable app. The ads are so intrusive at this point though that when you get one, no matter what you do, your phone is taken over for at least 30 seconds, and when you go to click the microscopic little x to exit it, it forced you into the app store to the download page, usually at least twice. Completely unusable and plays sounds from ads even when not in app.

A Google user

All I wanted was a quick resizing of an image. If this app can do it, I did not find it in my 10 minutes of looking for it. It shouldn't take more than 1 minute to find how to resize and image. Dont care what other amazing thing it can do, if it cant do the most simple of tasks than it is a failure. I will totally give this a 5 star if they add that in and make it easily accessible. The app is overall great, or it should be if it was an actually good picture editor and not just things to make cool selfies. Ugh...what photo editor cant resize an image, this is so stupid.