PixelWindow 06/11/12

Some things are beyond measure, but your screen shouldn’t be one of them. PixelWindow is a simple app for measuring it.

All of the visual apps in the Adobe Production Bundle have rulers and guides so that you can measure things to pixel perfection.

I don’t know about you, but I think this experience could be a little better.

In Photoshop,  pressing  OPTION + COMMAND + C displays the Canvas Size window which shows me that this image is 442 X 172.

But what if I want to know the dimensions of just the number 3?

I hope you’re working at the beach, because you’re gonna need a lot of fingers and toes to count the pixels in this box.  The info box in Photoshop is not much help either.

That’s why it was nice stumbling upon PixelWindow.

According to the developer Christian Cantrell (who is coincidentally a product manager and Web app developer at Adobe) it’s:

a simple, light-weight, cross-platform application for measuring things on your screen. It creates a transparent window that acts like a pixel ruler with its width and height reported in the center. Just drag it around and resize it to measure whatever you want.

Using PixelWindow in Photoshop shows you that the dimensions of the number 3 are 78 X 81.

It would be nice if it were an actual Adobe plugin so that it could integrate with apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.  Then it could do things like snap to the guides or maintain accurate measurement when the image is zoomed in or out.

That notwisthanding, it’s still a great app for getting approximate measurements on your screen and for the price of FREE, it can’t be beat. PixelWindow, you rule!