On screen ruler to measure pixels

If you’re a graphic designer and need to regularly measure the pixel size of logos, photos and other images, how do you usually do it?

For most people, it’s a simple case of right clicking and selecting “Properties” or “Get Info” but this may not always be an option, especially if you’re trying to measure something in Flash or a PDF document. That’s where PixelWindow comes in an as a simple, light-weight, cross-platform application for measuring things on your screen.

PixelWindow is an Adobe Air tool that creates a transparent window that acts like a pixel ruler with its width and height calculated in real time in the center. Simply drag it around and resize it to measure whatever you want. You’ll need a good eye to measure things exactly right but if you’re working on a big screen, this shouldn’t be a problem.

If your image is extremely small, it may be tricky to measure and in this case, PixelWindow reveals the pixel count in another pop-up in the top left corner so you can see it more clearly. However, it would have been useful to have had a magnifying glass or something to help measure more accurately. If you can’t see what’s behind the ruler, you can change the opacity of the window pane simply by rolling the mouse wheel. If you want to measure several objects at the same time, you can also open several instances of PixelWindow.

There’s not much more to PixelWindow than that. I still prefer to use the CMD-click route to see the size of my images but I can see that it could be a useful tool if this option weren’t available.