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Since last September there have been half a dozen or so update releases for the program, and a lot of improvement in stability and refinement. It's still stunning to look at, but the performance profile has advanced substantially toward making it work in a fashion more consistent with its elegant looks.
Earlier this month, Pixelmator's U.K.-based developers Saulius and Aidas Dailide released version 1.2.3, so it seemed topical as well as timely for another review reporting on Pixelmator's progress. This latest release adds a few more features, squashes a gaggle of bugs, and adds a lot of refinement. The evolution of Pixelmator in its first year has been steadily incremental, with no single major advances but steady improvement, and after using this latest version for a week or so, I'm happy to report that it's the best Pixelmator yet and now a very polished performer.
However, Adobe hasn't been exactly resting on its laurels, and the release of Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac back in March raised the bar other low-end graphics applications must attempt to at least stay in sight of. Pixelmator is still well short of Photoshop Elements in terms of feature set depth (especially for photo editing), versatility, and raw power. On the other hand, while version 6 of Elements marks a significant improvement in responsiveness and speed (especially startup time), Pixelmator still runs proverbial rings around it for liveliness, has come closer in functionality, and still costs $30 less than PSE.
It's definitely gotten bigger, growing from the 24.4 MB compressed file download of Version 1.0, to 54 MB for version 1.2.3, which makes it a formidable download over my dialup INternet connection, but no problem over broadband. The interface has grown on me. A year ago I expressed some reservations about the functionality of Pixelmator's bordered in translucent black document windows and black backgrounds for the various tool palettes, which I found pretty, but somewhat distracting. However, I guess I've gotten used to it, and interestingly, Adobe went with a charcoal-themed user interface for PSE 6 in what appears to be a frank homage to Pixelmator's design influence.
I still have to give Elements the edge for power, convenience, and versatility in digital photo image correction, but the gap has closed a lot, and I would rate Pixelmator's color Curves adjustment tool inn particular as superior to its PSE counterpart in slickness, and I love the "Exposure" adjustment tool, for which there is no direct equivalent in PSE, although you can achieve similar results with other tools, and an "Auto Enhance" tool was added with Pixelmator version 1.2 along with a Color Balance tool for controlling the overall color mixture in an image if you're doing color correction work.
On the other hand there are a whole raft of features in PSE 6 that just aren't available in Pixelmator - things like automated panorama merges, group shot merge, cutouts, advanced Black & White conversions, the new new Quick Selection Tool , camera lens distortion correction, and more.
Yet another shortcoming is that if there is a way in Pixelmator to clone-drag a selection, which is a very useful retouching function supported by both Photoshop Elements and even the ancient Color It!, I've been unsuccessful in discovering it. The Clone Stamp tool is something of a substitute for this, but not a totally satisfactory one. I also miss Photoshop Elements' convenient view options, especially its ability to enlarge your on-screen image to the maximum size that will fit the space available with a single click.
And while Pixelmator can be configured to use iPHoto for image library support, it has nothing to match PSE for Mac's The Bridge CS3 organizer application (previously only available with Adobe Creative Suite applications) that lets you browse through your hard drive to locate the photos you want to open and manipulate. The Photo Browser palette in Pixelmator offers quick access to your iPhoto Library, events, albums, Smart Albums and pictures in your Pictures folder. Best of all, just drag-and-drop any of those images as layers to your Pixelmator composition.
Pixelmator’s graphics drawing tablet support allows you to hand-draw or paint with the Pencil, Brush, and Clone Stamp tools, and erase with the tablet’s eraser as well as utilize a tablet’s pressure sensitivity to manipulate the program's Blur and Sharpen tools.
Being an OS X-only application Pixelmator is designed to tap into OS X's powerful native graphics technologies like Core Image, which uses your Mac’s video card for image processing, and well as Open GL and ColorSync, The power and sophistication of your Mac's graphics support also will be a significant factor in Pixelmator's liveliness and responsiveness on your Mac. Claimed to be "The World's First GPU-Powered Image Editor," Pixelmator relies heavily on OS X's Core Image technology that uses your Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with a lot of video RAM, you should find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations enhanced substantially, so one can deduce that you're going to get substantially better performance with Pixelmator on a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro with a real graphics accelerator card and 128 MB or more of dedicated video RAM, than with a MacBook or Mac mini with Intel GMX 950 or 3100 integrated "vampire video" that shares RAM with the system Task progress, even simple things like image saves, also continue to be a bit sluggish on my old PowerBook.
A really cool Pixelmator wrinkle in recent versions is that the currently-selected tool's icon gets magnified in the tool palette, which helps mitigate the criticism of them being a bit hard to decipher on that black palette field, and the icons themselves are strikingly attractive. On the downside, I really dislike having to switch to a Move Tool from a Marquee Tool in order to move something around. I would much prefer to be able to select and Option-drag.Pixelmator can open and save all of the popular image file formats, including PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, EPS and others and can also can open and save Photoshop format files with layers support intact.
Pixelmator is getting progressively better from what was an amazingly strong start, and this 1.2.3 release addresses more of the complaints and concerns I expressed in the previous review. However, it's still not quite there yet for me. I like using Pixelmator for its relatively quick startup, and less complex and ponderous interface than Photoshop Elements', especially Elements 6, however for production image editing when I'm in a hurry and have a lot of pictures to process I'm still inclined to go for either the power and versatility of PSE or on the other hand the incredible user-friendliness and lightning speed of Digimage Arts' venerable but still superb Color It! 4.5, a Carbon application that dates back to the Mac System 7 era, but whose slickness, simplicity, and interface conventions the Pixelmator and PSE developers could both profitably study and emulate.
That said, I do really like Pixelmator, and have found myself using it more lately. Most of the time it can handle anything I throw at it, although I'm anything but a graphics power-user. My criticisms are meant to be constructive, and I'm rooting for Pixelmator as it grows into a real competitor for Photoshop Elements. Depending on your graphics editing requirements, it may already be.
New in version 1.2.3:
New Features Added...
• Ability to move layers from window to window using the Move tool
• Ability to move or duplicate (via Option) layer mask to another layer
Bugs Corrected That Caused...
• Type tool problems with comma and dot symbols
• Transform tools to work incorrectly when layer opacity is lower than 100%
• Document window and View menu to be inactive when using the Crop tool
• Document window focus problems with palette sheets (edit brush, edit layer, edit mask)
• Incorrect layer mask appearance when layer is moved to another document
• Quartz Composer filters not to work with smaller than 16x16 images
• A crash that occurred when using the Last Filter command on type layer
• A crash that occurred when merging hidden layers
• A crash that sometimes occurred when switching between the Move and Hand tools in full screen mode
Improvements Made To...
• Move tool
• Crop tool
• Transform tools
• Fill function
• Rulers when working in full screen
• Performance of Eyedropper tool options palette
• Gradient tool when working in full screen mode
• Scrolling in layer palette
• Image Size and Canvas Size
• Serial number sheet
• Quick Mask mode when using the Move tool
• Rectangular selection tool when drawing selection outside the canvas
• Help documentation
Keyboard Shortcuts Added...
• Images will be centered when dragging from Finder or Photo Browser with Shift pressed
• Duplicate: Layer Command + J
• Fill Layer: Shift + Backspace
• Fill Layer: Foreground Color Option + Backspace
• Fill Layer: Background Color Command + Backspace
• Fill Non-Transparent Pixels of Layer: Background Color Command + Shift + Backspace
• Fill Non-Transparent Pixels of Layer: Foreground Color Option + Shift + Backspace
• Command: Click on a Layer Mask to Load Selection
• Cycle through Brushes: < >
• Minimize All Windows: Command + Option + M • Incorrect type layer handling when transforming
System requirements:
Pixelmator requires Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later, but 10.5 is recommended. Core Image supported graphics card (recommended), some features require iLife.
More information, along with the 30-day Pixelmator trial, is available as a free download at the Pixelmator Web site.
Pixelmator 1.2 is available to order for $59 (US). Pixelmator 1.2 is a free update to current Pixelmator customers.
Pixelmator:
http://www.pixelmator.com/
Direct Download Link:
http://www.pixelmator.com/download/
Purchase Link:
http://www.pixelmator.com/buy/
Screenshot:
http://www.pixelmator.com/company/
Screenshot/App Icon:
http://www.pixelmator.com/company/
Charles W. Moore
Tags: Hot Topics ï Reviews ï Graphics/Design ï
