Pixelmator is a great photo editor app alternative to Adobe Photoshop for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Available in the App Store, Pixelmator includes advanced image editing features like layers, brushes, effects, filters and more. Use various selection tools to accurately tweak specific regions of a photo or use content-aware fill to automatically remove elements from a scene. Pixelmator is frequently updated to support the latest Apple technologies and platform features and uses iCloud to sync and collaborate on projects across its iOS and macOS apps.
Pixelmator is one of the best Photoshop alternatives available on the Mac App Store. I’ve been using it for quite some time now, but mostly just using a trackpad or mouse to manipulate layers, access tools and edit functions. There are tons of keyboard shortcuts. And if I had the time or patience to learn them all, I would have. Needless to say, I didn’t. So when I got the chance to check out EditorsKeys keyboard specifically designed for Pixelmator, I jumped at it.
To cut it down to the very basics – This is essentially a wired Apple keyboard with numeric keypad. Except it has custom keys to clearly label the Pixelmator keyboard shortcuts, making photo and image editing much quicker and easier. Simply put: If you use Pixelmator on Mac and you don’t already have a grasp of all the shortcuts, you should get this keyboard.
The sale includes 100 apps and games at “new low prices”, most of which are $0.99. While we have posted some of these titles over the past week in our daily/game app roundups, this is the first time they’ve all appeared together in one giant sale. Now is your chance to fill up your app library, as we are seeing all-time lows on games, productivity apps, photography apps and much more.
A couple standouts are Pixelmator (Reg. $5), GoodReader (Reg. $5), The Room Two (Reg. $3), Rayman Jungle Run (Reg. $3), BADLAND (Reg. $4), Real Racing (Reg. $5), Angry Birds titles, and well, far too many to mention here. Not even including the insanely popular Angry Birds games, just these apps alone combine for a 4+ star rating from 100,000 reviews.
If there is still a couple apps you can’t find in this sale, then be sure to hit our daily roundups for even more discounted options and the new Free App of the Week.
Pixelmator for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.0.2 bringing even more features to the popular image editor for iOS and Mac. This update adds a new kind of brush stroke called Dynamic Touch, which simulates pressure sensitivity by examining the size of the finger input that touches the screen. Larger surface area produces thicker strokes on the canvas. Similarly, using just the tip of a finger results in fine lines in the app.
Update: Pixelmator for iPhone is now available. Download it here.
Pixelmator is releasing an update to its iOS app tomorrow, making the app available on the iPhone for the first time ($4.99). The universal app means you can buy once and download Pixelmator on both iPad and iPhone. Existing iOS users of the app naturally get the iPhone version for free as an update. The new version also brings the Distort tools, like warp brushes, to the iOS app for the first time.
Pixelmator for iPhone works very similarly to the iPad version but scaled down for the smaller canvas. You can read our full review of the iPad app from last year. Rather than popover panels, selecting an action opens full-width menus encapsulating options. This is a necessary concession for the size of the display.
Pixelmator is bringing its photo and image editor to the iPhone soon, as announced in a blog post today. Pixelmator was exclusive to the Mac until late last year when the developers ported the application to the iPad. It is now nearing completion on the iPhone version.
The especially good news for current Pixelmator users is that the iPhone version will not be released as a separate app. An update to the iPad app will make the software universal, so you can buy the app now and get the iPhone update for free when it is released. Even better, Pixelmator for iPad is currently on sale to celebrate the announcement…
The developers behind Pixelmator have just released another free update to the Mac app, available in the Mac App Store ($29.99). Despite the bug-fix identifier, Version 3.3.2 packs some cool enhancements to support Apple’s latest technologies and hardware.
For one, as demoed in the screenshot above, Pixelmator brushes now support Force Touch so you can draw with multiple levels of pressure by pressing harder on the touchpad of your new Retina MacBook (or early 2015 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro). This is useful for quick adjustments although serious painters will still want to use dedicated drawing tablets. The update also adds support for the Photos app and a revamped Repair Tool …
Pixelmator has today released a new update for the iPad version ($9.99) of its popular image editor. Version 1.1 includes a brand new watercolor painting feature, which can be used to create brand new pieces of art from a blank canvas or add stylistic additions to existing images and photos. Brushes overlay new colors additively with soft radiuses to create beautiful blends and shading. Pixelmator says they spoke to real artists to help design the brush strokes. It feels really nice to use.
Although watercolor painting is the headline addition, Pixelmator 1.1 also includes a new Color Picker with a swatch of previously selected colors, an updated rendering engine for better performance and much more. You have to see it in action … (video below)
Apple’s iPhones became Flickr’s most popular camera phones in 2008 and most popular cameras overall soon thereafter, but even now, iPhones constitute only 9.6% of the photo-sharing site’s userbase. Despite the iPhone’s undeniable popularity, over 90% of photographers are using other cameras: Canon has a 13.4% share, Nikon 9.3%, Samsung 5.6%, and Sony 4.2%, with tons of other brands following close behind. While the cameras in phones continue to improve every year, they’re not the best tools for photography — they’re just the ones most people carry with them all the time.
If you shoot photos with a DSLR or point-and-shoot camera, you probably aren’t sending images directly to the Internet from the camera itself. You probably come back home, transfer your photos to your computer, then edit and share them with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom or one of Apple’s three photo management apps — iPhoto, Aperture, or the beta version of Photos.
For around $30, your iPhone or iPad can change the way you shoot, edit, and share photos. Using the right accessories and apps, you can easily publish DSLR-quality photos a minute after snapping them. I’ve been doing this for years, and it works incredibly well; today, it’s actually better than at any time in the past, thanks to recent iPhone and iPad hardware improvements. This new How-To guide will walk you through everything you’ll need to know to use your iPhone or iPad as a photo editing and sharing station, looking at photo transferring accessories, editing software, and sharing options…
Popular image editor Pixelmator has been updated today with a whole host of new features, fixes, and improvements. First on the list is something many users (myself included!) have been hoping to see for quite a while now: full support for Apple’s pinch-to-zoom gesture. The update also makes the Shapes, Gradients, and Styles palettes capable of scrolling and being resized.
Apple has announced its favorite apps, music, movies, TV shows and books of the year, with Elevate – Brain Training declared iPhone App of the Year while number puzzle game Threes! won iPhone Game of the Year.
Hot off the heels of their iPad app, the Pixelmator team have today released Pixelmator 3.3 for Mac. This update centers around design and structural optimizations for OS X Yosemite, including an extension for integration with other apps and a new icon to match the ‘flatter’ aesthetic of the operating system. The update also includes a new file format to improve syncing and compatibility with the iPad version.
Although the app largely resembles previous versions, with custom floating panels and black chrome, it now takes advantage of Apple’s transparency effects to mesh well with the OS.
Note: The app is still rolling out worldwide. Check back soon if the links don’t work for you!
Announced during Apple’s October event, Pixelmator for iPad ($4.99) is an important stepping stone in the iPad’s history. The Mac app is regularly featured by Apple as an exemplar app in the Mac App Store and it is clear Apple wants to use Pixelmator as a ‘trophy’ app in the same way. No doubt this app (aside from games) is one of a handful that will directly benefit from the A8X performance gains.
I tested the app on an iPad Air, although the app technically supports all the way back to iPad 3, even some operations on the Air felt slow. I would be a bit cautious if you intend to install it on one of Apple’s older tablets.
As a 1.0 release, the depth and breadth of this app is staggering. There are a myriad of effects, painting brushes, color adjustments and other features to help edit and create images. The vast majority of the Mac app’s functionality have been ported across to the iPad with a touch-friendly interface, including advanced editing options like layer styles. There are also some template options that aren’t currently included in the Mac app to appease the ‘Photo Booth’ selfie crowd.
Read on for 9to5Mac’s full review of Pixelmator for iPad …
The Pixelmator team is relentless, releasing significant updates to the application every few months. Version 3.2 (codenamed ‘Sandstone’) is no exception and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store now. Codenamed Sandstone, this iteration adds a majorly-revamped Repair Tool, 16-bit channel editing for all Macs (not just the Mac Pro) alongside a whole bucket of other improvements.
The Repair Tool now uses color-correction to match repaired areas seamlessly. It also has clever smarts that mean you don’t have to precisely select an object anymore, the software will remove the whole object automatically. Pixelmator will also try its best to infer the structure of the background area, for a more natural final edit.
The Repair Tool now has three different options, Quick, Standard and Advanced. Quick is meant for small blemishes, whereas Standard and Advanced tackle the removal of larger objects from a scene. It’s not exactly clear under what circumstances you are supposed to change mode, so I chose ‘Advanced’ every time in my testing and the results were fantastic. It’s sort of like magic. You can see an example of what this is capable of after the break …
Pixelmator have released the latest version of their app today, version 3.1. As usual, it is available exclusively in the Mac App Store for $29.99. Codenamed Marble, this update brings several enhancements to the image editor including specific Mac Pro optimizations such as 16-bit image support.
Primarily, Pixelmator 3.1 optimises for the new Mac Pro’s hardware. Apple has used Pixelmator before to tout the Mac Pro’s performance benefits, and the developers are clearly keen to push this further still.
The “exclusive” support for the new Mac Pro enables the simultaneous use of both GPU’s for even faster composition and rendering. In fact, the app can compute the autosave data whilst the image is being rendered. This translates to significant speed improvements across the app.
Today, the team behind Pixelmator has released the latest version of their app, version 3.0 FX. As before, the app is available on the Mac App Store for $29.99. The update brings a slew of changes to the already popular image editor, especially considering version 2.2 was only released a few weeks ago. 9to5Mac has had access to a preview copy of the update for a few days … so read on for a full walkthrough of the changes.
The headline feature for Pixelmator 3.0 is the addition of layer styles. Layer styles apply effects such as strokes, fills, shadows and reflections to the entire layer in very few clicks. More importantly, these changes are non-destructive — they affect the layer, not the canvas pixels themselves. This means layer effects can be undone and manipulated without changing the underlying image data. In fact, layer styles can even be copied to the clipboard and duplicated across layers.
Pixelmator quotes a 2x performance improvement when saving documents, as a result of a move to a new file format. For instance, when saving to iCloud, Pixelmator can now push small deltas of what has changed between saves, rather than saving the entire image every time. This speed up is noticeable in use, with projects saving nearly instantaneously on a Retina Macbook Pro.
