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Posts tagged with "pixelmator"

Pixelmator Pro Announced

Just before WWDC, the Pixelmator team teased a Mac app they’ve been working on for five years. The big reveal came today with an announcement that Pixelmator Pro will be joining the Pixelmator family of image editing apps this fall. Reimagined and rebuilt from the ground up, Pixelmator Pro promises a whole new level of power and ease-of-use.

According to the announcement:

“Pixelmator Pro provides every tool you could ever need to create, edit, and enhance your images on a Mac in an incredibly intuitive and accessible interface”, said Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator Team. “And with its GPU-powered, machine learning-enhanced tools, it’s truly one of the most advanced and innovative image editing apps on the planet.”

I haven’t tried Pixelmator Pro yet, but judging from the announcement, I expect we’re in for a treat. The most noticeable thing about the new app is its striking UI. Gone are the floating toolbars, replaced by left and right-hand side panels that fade into the background, so the image you’re working on dominates your workspace. I like the one window approach a lot, if for no other reason than I know exactly where my tools are at all times. The combination of a minimalistic toolbar, sparse chrome around the panels, use of transparency, dark interface, and ability to hide UI elements give Pixelmator Pro an expansive feel that emphasizes the image in your workspace instead of the tools.

The changes announced go much deeper than just a redesign, though. The Pixelmator team has taken the opportunity to incorporate the latest Apple technologies and harness Machine Learning. Pixelmator Pro’s editor takes advantage of a Mac’s GPU using Metal 2, the graphics framework announced at WWDC that will debut with macOS X High Sierra. CoreML, also announced at WWDC, will drive much of Pixelmator Pro’s editing engine according to the announcement. There’s also support for the new HEIF image file format.

Also, editing in Pixelmator Pro will be non-destructive:

Pixelmator Pro’s color adjustments, effects, styles, and layouting tools are completely nondestructive, giving users the freedom and flexibility to go back and modify or delete individual changes at any point in the editing workflow. Thanks to the new presets feature, you can create endless combinations of multiple adjustments, effects, or styles, save them to your favorites and reuse them in any of your images. Drag-and-drop sharing also makes it a breeze to share presets with others.

I expect the ability to share combinations of effects, styles, and adjustments will be especially popular.

Pixelmator Pro will be available exclusively from the Mac App Store this fall alongside the current Pixelmator app.

Pixelmator for iOS Adds Quick and Magnetic Selection Tools

Pixelmator 2.3 for iOS was updated today to add the same Quick Selection and Magnetic Selection tools that were introduced on the Mac with Pixelmator 3.5 in May. The Quick Selection Tool lets you paint over an image with your finger to select it. Magnetic selection grabs the outline of an object based on anchor points you create as you trace around the object with your finger. Pixelmator detects the edges of the object in the image and snaps the section to them. In my brief tests, both selection tools worked well and are particularly well-suited to touch.

In addition to the new selection tools, Pixelmator 2.3 adds many small refinements and other improvements, including:

  • Apple Pencil pressure sensitivity support for the Quick Selection Tool;
  • Greater Apple Pencil precision when using the Free Selection Tool;
  • a ‘tap to invert selection’ button;
  • improvements to the precision and speed of the Color Selection Tool; and
  • snap to pixel precision for the Free, Rectangular, and Elliptical Selection Tools.

Pixelmator 2.3 for iOS is a free upgrade for existing Pixelmator customers and is available to new customers on the App Store for $4.99. Pixelmator 3.5 for Mac, which we previously covered, is available for $29.99 on the Mac App Store.

Pixelmator as a Screenshot Editor→

Gabe Weatherhead at Macdrifter highlights something that puzzled me when I wrote a roundup of screenshot apps last December:

While there’s a wealth of options on the Mac for image annotation, there are very few complete options on iOS. PointOut is wonderful for creating magnifier callouts but not much else. Pinpoint has really easy redaction, annotation and arrows but nothing more. Omnigraffle has everything plus a great deal of control but it’s too many taps to do anything basic.

The problem is compounded by the fact that many screenshot apps on iOS are unable to detect a screenshot once it has been edited by another app. As a result, there is often no good way to pass a screenshot from one app to another to apply multiple edits.

Gabe’s solution is clever. He uses Pixelmator, one of the most powerful image editors available on iOS, to create call-outs, redact sections of a screenshot, and draw arrows. I use Screenshot++ and Pinpoint regularly, but it’s good to have Pixelmator as an option for more complicated combinations of edits. Check out Gabe’s post to see how it’s done.

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Pixelmator Updated with iOS 9 Support, iPad Multitasking

Copying a mind map from iThoughts into Pixelmator.

Copying a mind map from iThoughts into Pixelmator.

The excellent Pixelmator for iOS – which I use regularly on my iPhone and iPad to assemble screenshots that can’t be automated with scripts – has been updated today with support for 8K images and iOS 9. I’ve been playing with a beta version of Pixelmator 2.1 on my iPad running iOS 9, and the ability to work with the app’s canvas alongside other apps in Split View is a refreshing change that saves me time when creating images off multiple assets.

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Pixelmator for iPhone→

With a universal update, Pixelmator has been released on the iPhone today. I took Pixelmator for a spin last year when it launched on the iPad, and, while I don’t need all the features of this app, I’ve been using it regularly to create simple image compositions and edit screenshots for the site.

On the iPhone, the Pixelmator team went with some interesting choices. The app feels a bit constrained on the smaller screen but you can still access all the tools from the iPad version. I like how you can view layers with a swipe on the left edge of the screen, and I appreciate the effort they put into rearranging menus when you switch to landscape (I tried the app on an iPhone 6 Plus – make sure to check out the Tools menu in landscape). As you can see in the screenshots above, I’m going to use the app until I figure out a way to automate Apple Watch screenshot generation with Pythonista or Workflow.

Pixelmator is one of the most impressive mobile adaptations of a powerful desktop app – and now you can use it on an iPhone too. $4.99 on the App Store.

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Pixelmator 3.0 FX [Sponsor]→

Our thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Pixelmator is a full-featured image editing app for OS X that takes advantage of Apple’s latest technologies to make image editing twice as fast and fully compatible with Mavericks. Version 3.0 brings numerous improvements to Pixelmator, such as Layer Styles (to quickly apply non-destructive changes to individual layers) and Liquify Tools (to shape images in multiple ways).

Built exclusively for the Mac, Pixelmator 3.0 integrates with Mavericks features like App Nap and Compressed Memory to make the app consume less resource and be faster overall. Other existing OS X integrations, such as Retina display and full-screen support, are even more impressive on Mavericks and Apple’s latest line-up of MacBook Pros.

Pixelmator 3.0 FX is a free update for owners of Pixelmator 2.0, and it’s available at $29.99 on the Mac App Store. A free 30-day trial is available here.

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Pixelmator 3→

On Tuesday, the Pixelmator Team released a significant update to their app that continues to make it faster while adding lots of new tools. Instead of rehashing the press releasing, I’ll direct you to their announcement instead.

The Pixelmator Team today announced Pixelmator 3.0 FX, the most advanced version of Pixelmator to date, featuring Layer Styles, Liquify Tools, and support for new features in OS X Mavericks, delivering blazing fast performance with its new, state-of-the-art image editing engine. Pixelmator 3.0 FX is available today as a free upgrade from the Mac App Store.

Between the Mac App Store and the colorful row of icons for iWork sits Pixelmator, which I consistently use for making quick touch ups to screen grabs and photos. I don’t have any real talent as an artist, nor do I understand the intricacies of all the tools, but it’s been indispensable for what I do on the site.

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Pixelmator 2.2 Tops 500,000 Downloads In First Week→

Impressive results from the Pixelmator team:

Pixelmator 2.2 downloads have surpassed the previous record downloads and topped half a million making it the most successful release in our history,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Also, the customer response to Pixelmator 2.2 is absolutely incredible. We’ve been overwhelmed by the 5-star reviews on the Mac App Store and the fantastic support we receive from our customers.

Pixelmator 2.2 came out last Thursday with over 100 new features. 500,000 unique Mac App Store downloads (trials are not included) beat the previous record of 250,000 downloads in two weeks.

Pixelmator isn’t new to Mac App Store records. In January 2011, three weeks after the Mac App Store launched, the Pixelmator team announced their app had grossed $1 million in 20 days.

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Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry

Viva la Pixelmator!

Viva la Pixelmator!

Pixelmator 2.2, codenamed Blueberry, includes more than 100 new features and improvements for quickly creating and shaping shapes, contextually working with images and vectors, and recreating sunny retro-inspired images. Artists will find new Color Popovers for faster access to color swatches, new gradient presets, improved drawing tools, a refined Type Tool, and the ability to copy a shape’s style to other shapes.

The standout features in Pixelmator 2.2 let artists quickly create and edit shapes for logos, web elements, flyers, and more. Smart Shapes provide easy-to-use controls for adjusting a shape’s outline, while Shape Styles make adding gradients, changing stroke styles, and adjusting inner shadow effortless. For those looking for a jumping off point, a brand new Shapes palette comes prepackaged with over 40 custom shapes that can be added to the canvas with a simple drag and drop. New shapes can easily be added to the palette, and new shapes can be quickly shared with friends and coworkers by simply dragging the palette to the Desktop. Text can also be converted into shape layers with the new Convert Text into Shape tool, allowing artists to reshape individual letters to apply separate gradients, shadows, and strokes. As image layers and shapes can intermingle, the Smart Move Tool brings up the appropriate options you need as items on the canvas are selected. And swapping between image and vector editing is as easy as a keyboard shortcut.

For budding photographers, the new Paint Selection Tool lets anyone simply brush the canvas to select objects in their images without having to manually trace an outline or use selection tools. The new Light Leak effect can also add a bit of flair to images for creating retro-artistically illuminated images.

Pixelmator 2.2 is now available for download through the Mac App Store at a promotional price of $14.99, or as a free update to previous customers. A free 30-day trial of Pixelmator can be downloaded from Pixelmator’s homepage. Read more