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Pixelmator

G

GeraldButton

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 16, 2010
54
0
Newfoundland, Canada
Hey everyone,

Well, I have seen it mentioned, but have yet to see a thread dedicated to Pixelmator. I was wondering how many people are using it? How do you find it? Has it replaced Photoshop or Gimp? What do you think of it's features?

For me? It has nearly replaced Photoshop completely, and I have used Photoshop since version 7. I love the interface, it's fantastic and very easy on the eyes while working. One of my biggest loves in Pixelmator is brushing, I love the brush engine, it's so dead simple to modify and create custom brushes it's unbeliveable.

I wish there were a few more filters, maybe even some smart filters. Also I wish there was better control on the layers, I really hope Layer Styles are added in the future.

I could talk much more about it, but I will wait a bit as im at work. So what does everyone else think?
 
It seems to be a very good and reasonably priced alternative to PS on the Mac
It also seems to be easier to use than the Gimp, which I find to be a little clunky
 
I've used it once or twice. It's very slick, I like the interface much better than Photoshop, but didn't use it long enough to be as smooth as I am in Photoshop.

It can handle all the basic and most intermediate stuff Photoshop can do. PS is still the workhorse, but Pixelmator is a great alternative if you won't be doing intensive stuff.
 
GeraldButton said:
Hey everyone,

Well, I have seen it mentioned, but have yet to see a thread dedicated to Pixelmator. I was wondering how many people are using it? How do you find it? Has it replaced Photoshop or Gimp? What do you think of it's features?

For me? It has nearly replaced Photoshop completely, and I have used Photoshop since version 7. I love the interface, it's fantastic and very easy on the eyes while working. One of my biggest loves in Pixelmator is brushing, I love the brush engine, it's so dead simple to modify and create custom brushes it's unbeliveable.

I wish there were a few more filters, maybe even some smart filters. Also I wish there was better control on the layers, I really hope Layer Styles are added in the future.

I could talk much more about it, but I will wait a bit as im at work. So what does everyone else think?
Click to expand...

I would love to see more learn links about Pixelmator. I'm new to it and I'm finding it hard to figure out. Have you got any simple ideas for me to try first to get used to the program?
Thanks
 
I got Pixelmator with a bundle in 2008 when I first switched over to Mac. I had been using Photo Impact on my PC. I don't routinely have a lot of intensive graphics work to do to maintain the sites I own but I do have to do artwork from time to time and I use it daily for smaller photo editing work. It can do everything I need to do and it continues to get better with age as the developers refine it. Highly recommended.
 
I love it

Like other posters have said it handles basic photoshop tasks very nicely. And I love you apply the FX filters, you drag two dots on "strings" and the strings frame the areas of the image that are affected by the filter. Renders very quickly too.

I also love the animated "tools" when you select a tool in the tool bar it becomes larger. Very helpful to know exactly what you're using at any given moment.

It works with scanners as well (you have the set the scanner to the Pixelmator app, as PM does not have the scanner feature that Pshop does).

I look forward to using it for more than tweaking screenshots in the future, but I hope the company continues to add more features that are in photoshop but keeps the ease of use that Pixelmator has.

And it's very cheap compared to Pshop. $59 as opposed to hundreds for Photoshp.

For the poster that asked about learning Pixelmator the PM site has a lot of tutorials and a forum dedicated to that.
 
It's a very promising product. I spent some time with it, seeing if I can replace ps. Very close, but missing a vector shapes (e.g. rounded rect.) tool which I can't live without. Yes, there are workarounds, but they are quite cumbersome, and not quite precise enough for me.

One day, I think it will replace ps for me.
 
It just so happens that Pixelmator is on sale for half off ($30)!

I still suck at graphic editing but i'm pleased with the evolution of this app. It gets better and better and they've never even asked for more money. 1.6 coming soon will be Snow Leopard only and hopefully optimized.
 
Pixelmator is a very cool app, but still missing a few important things compared to PS (for me, the pen tool and vector shape tools are the killer, although I miss layer styles too). I recently bought PS CS5 after running Pixelmator for awhile. Photoshop is just plain more powerful. That said, Pixelmator has come a long way and I have a lot of hope for future versions.

Oh, and it needs to handle long operations more gracefully. Anything taking more than a second to 2 to crunch results in a beachball until the operations finishes. Big pain with those real time filters. They need to take a cue from Motion, and not have the UI wait for the image to update. Motion just updates the canvas in the background as best it can, and lets you keep working.
 
Just fired up Pixelmator and it's downloading a new version. v1.60, which comes with 64-bit support, some tool revisions and new integration for image import and export. And once again, it's free for existing users :)
 
Pixelmator is definately the better alternative to PS Elements because it's much sleeker and easier and not bloated with features.

I prefer it also over PS from a hobbyist point of view because it's simpler yet has all the relevant functions.

Unfortunately at work now so I can't check out the new version 1.6. It's supposed to be fast and good but Snow Leo only.

I can imagine making pixelmator my standard photo editor for iPhoto and such. PS Elements takes too ong to load for that and is not intuitive enough for me.
 
kazmac said:
It works with scanners as well (you have the set the scanner to the Pixelmator app, as PM does not have the scanner feature that Pshop does).
Click to expand...

Mac OS X has built-in scanning support in Preview.app and Image Capture.app (scanner drivers are downloaded automatically with printer drivers). I haven't checked the latest version of Pixelmator, but I see no reason it couldnt tap into that same API if it's public.
 
I was part of the original beta testing team and bought it when it came out. I think it's slowly building itself up to something that could replace Photoshop completely some day. For what I use Photoshop for, I don't think it's close to replacing it for me, but I can see someone who does more basic tasks being much more comfortable in Pixelmator.
 
Fuchal said:
I was part of the original beta testing team and bought it when it came out. I think it's slowly building itself up to something that could replace Photoshop completely some day. For what I use Photoshop for, I don't think it's close to replacing it for me, but I can see someone who does more basic tasks being much more comfortable in Pixelmator.
Click to expand...
It's no Photoshop, but it meets the needs of 95% of people who may otherwise think they need Photoshop. There was a definite gap in the Mac marketplace for a decent home/semi-pro image editor. Before Pixelmator we really only had Adobe's high-priced suite or the open source alternatives to choose from. Pixelmator fits perfectly into that gap, and with the constant addition of features it is quickly ensuring that it fills it completely.

I love using it too. A great piece of software.
 
I've been using Pixelmator at home for a while now. The motivation for getting it was purely price - I couldn't even stretch to PS Elements at the time.

It's okay. It falls down somewhat on productivity. I produced a background image for a web page which featured little overlayed photos which each had a drop shadow. This sort of thing I could have achieved in about 5-10 minutes in Photoshop took me about an hour in Pixelmator, purely because of the lack of layer effects.

The "save for web" feature is also severely underdeveloped. It's a two-function process, instead of one like PS. The image has to be resized first (and the resize function is very basic, not giving different resizing algorithms), then "save for web", which gives a very basic interface for optimising the image. Apple's built in Preview app. can do almost as well if not better for this function.

Having said that, I think it's worth the very reasonable price and I also think, if you cannot stretch to PS Elements or Photoshop, then it's worth buying now to get used to it and be ready for the next upgrade which I hope will address some of the missing features.
 
covisio said:
I've been using Pixelmator at home for a while now. The motivation for getting it was purely price - I couldn't even stretch to PS Elements at the time.

It's okay. It falls down somewhat on productivity. I produced a background image for a web page which featured little overlayed photos which each had a drop shadow. This sort of thing I could have achieved in about 5-10 minutes in Photoshop took me about an hour in Pixelmator, purely because of the lack of layer effects.

The "save for web" feature is also severely underdeveloped. It's a two-function process, instead of one like PS. The image has to be resized first (and the resize function is very basic, not giving different resizing algorithms), then "save for web", which gives a very basic interface for optimising the image. Apple's built in Preview app. can do almost as well if not better for this function.

Having said that, I think it's worth the very reasonable price and I also think, if you cannot stretch to PS Elements or Photoshop, then it's worth buying now to get used to it and be ready for the next upgrade which I hope will address some of the missing features.
Click to expand...

I have the feeling that for some time the Pixelmator team focussed on speeding up the application and built a solid core rather than just adding features. In general I prefer that because it keeps the application nice and sleek and fast.
I'm sure they get tons of feedback and feature requests and will have already a priority list of what features to add next. Right now it's good enough for me to not even think about photoshop elements anymore.

I can't wait for version 2.0. I guess that I will have to pay for that upgrade but if the keep the price at $50 or 60 I'm happy to pay for it.

I hope the find the time to convert the app to an iPad version. on the consume level at least that would be a neat thing to have. Work on the beach and sync your changes to your mac.....well I'm dreaming:)
 
I like it first off because it does what I want, and it is very reasonably priced and perhaps more important than even price for PS, I'm just not smart enough to use PS. :D
 
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