Pixelmator Image Editor for Mac OS X
(5 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...Note: Pixelmator has been out for a short while now and has established a pretty good fan base. They just updated to version 1.1 and have added several new features that make it even a better value.
Pixelmator, presents itself as a beautifully designed, easy-to-use, powerful image editing solution for Mac OS X. It has a full assortment of the most widely used painting, gradient, blending and retouching tools along with a complete set of advanced selection tools. Layer-based editing is also a feature (as any good graphics app should have these days) and there are some interesting additonal features as well. You can import and image from the iSight camera directly into a layer as well drag and drop images from your iPhoto library directly into a layer.
Watch the Pixelmator Video Demo
There are some advanced color correction tools in the package to fine tune hue, saturation, and luminance. You can also easily adjust exposure and channel settings with the intuitive sliders. For the people who crave special effects, Pixelmator includes over 50 filters and effects like halftone, tiles, stylize, transition filters and more. You can also preview the filters in real time.
Pixelmator boasts that it’s the world’s first GPU-powered image editor that takes advantage of the Core Image technology, using your Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. They say that “Pixelmator is blistering-fast on the latest PowerPC and all Intel-based Mac’s.”
Pixelmator supports over 100 different file formats. You can open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, EPS and scores of other image formats. Pixelmator can even open layered Photoshop documents, make edits and save them back to the PSD format with the layers intact.
Pixelmator 1.0 will be available in late July for $59 (US). When compared to a full price version of Adobe’s Photoshop CS3 at $649 (US), this could be a dream come true for the designer on a tight budget. I’m looking forward to a demo of the new app and seeing if all the claims hold up.
Full system requirements and more information on Pixelmator can be found at www.pixelmator.com
I’ve recently been looking into this Pixelmator program, and was told it could be utilized in leau of photoshop. I was wondering if anyone has any information in what photoshop has that this program doesn’t. If I opted to save the $500, what would I miss out on?
This looks to be a pretty good comparison.. maybe it will help you get a good idea.
http://tinyurl.com/6pbvf5
IMHO, Pixelmator, while pretty good in it’s own right, is geared towards more of the hobbiest market and if you’re really serious about features and doing a lot of image maniupulation, photoshop is the better choice.