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Pixelmator Team Releases Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman
•Software Updates •Graphics & Design •Software News •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman, a second significant update to the revolutionary GPU-powered image editing tool, furnishing users with everything they need to create, edit, and enhance still images. Available today as a free software update, Pixelmator 1..2 Draftsman features rulers, guides, grid, snap, color balance, auto enhance, curves, and polygonal lasso tools and much more.
"Pixelmator opened the door for all users to explore their imaginative side through image creation, editing, and enhancement," said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. "Now with powerful, but easy-to-use rulers, guides, curves, auto enhance, color balance, and polygonal lasso tools, Pixelmator provides users with an even wider range of creative opportunities."
Pixelmator's translucent black windows are a feast for the eyes. In fact, the new Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac woth its charcoal theme appears to be a frank nhomage to Pixelmator's design influence, as do the new photo editing and correction tools in OS X Leopard Preview.
Claimed to be "The World's First GPU-Powered Image Editor," Pixelmator relies heavily on 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. In addition to Core Image, Pixelmator harnesses the power of Mac OS X's Open GL, Automator, ColorSync, Spotlight and many other technologies. Pixelmator was built exclusively for Mac OS X, and it shows.
For a profile of Pixelmator's basic capabilities,
check out my original full review of Pixelmator 1.0.1 here.
Pixelmator 1.2 introduces a powerful rulers tool, which is helpful for the exact positioning of images or elements. Additionally, users can adjust the rulers origin to measure from a specific point on an image and change the units of measurement to pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, or percent. Guides appear as nonprinting lines that float over the image, which users can add, move, remove, and lock. They can also utilize the grid to lay out elements symmetrically and the snap feature to position selection edges precisely.
Powerful, yet user-friendly new adjustment options in Pixelmator 1.2 include a sophisticated curves tool for adjusting the entire tonal range or making precise adjustments to individual color channels in an image and a new color balance tool essential for controlling the overall color mixture in an image for color correction work. Pixelmator 1.2 also furnishes users with a new auto enhance tool, which can dramatically improve less-than-perfect images with one click, and a new polygonal lasso tool, useful for drawing straight-edged segments of a selection border.
In addition to a free transform tool, Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman features new and updated help documentation, enhanced Automator actions and transform tools, minor user interface and compatibility improvements, as well as bug fixes.
Pixelmator is an interesting application, which counts for a lot, and while it's not yet quite in the same league as Photoshop Elements, it has a ton of promise. In an interview with TUAW's Mat Lu last fall, co-developer Saulius Dallide affirmed that the objective with Pixelmator is to " definitely give Photoshop a run for its money," and "be able to be a competitor for Photoshop in some way." I hope that they continue following through on that. Photoshop Elements is a wonderful program, but competition improves the breed. They're off to a good start.
Pixelmator has a few features that out-do PSE already. I especially like the convenient "Exposure" slider tool that lets you alter image "exposure" values in real time very slickly, and is nicer to use than the equivalent tools in Elements.
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/
•Software Updates •Graphics & Design •Software News •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
Article URL:
http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/20233
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