6 ms·

Pixelmator Pro released

131 points by hit8run 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago
After playing with it briefly, Pixelmator Pro is interesting as instead of behaving like a Photoshop clone UX-wise, it now behaves like a macOS native productivity app (e.g Keynote). I’m excited to dive deeper. Also, I believe the $59 is a sale price, and will go up to $99 after new features are added into later updates.
- drcongo 9y ago
  Is there a comparison between this and the standard Pixelmator somewhere?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- lsllc 9y ago
  I've been happy with Pixelmator ... I suppose I can't blame them for wanting to continue to monetize their product. Seems like the app store doesn't have a way to have paid upgrades (e.g. v2 to v3). However it probably means the existing Pixelmator probably won't get any new updates aside from fixes. I also would like to see what's different/new in the Pro version, but I'll probably upgrade anyway.
stdgy 9y ago
Neat! I'm a huge fan of Pixelmator. Great example of a high quality desktop application. I really miss it when I have to edit images on Windows. I wonder if there is a similarly priced, beautiful piece of software for Microsoft's ecosystem?
- lostgame 9y ago
  Not that I’m aware of but Photoshop is more lacking in the strange UI bugs it seems to exhibit on MacOS, especially as I’m still using CS6. :P
- JonathonW 9y ago
  Affinity Photo is a direct competitor (same price range, similar feature set) and runs on both Windows and Mac: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ Their UI's more Photoshop-style than Pixelmator Pro's, though.
simooooo 9y ago
Hard not to roll my eyes at machine learning being name dropped into an image editor. Someone able to try out the layer naming?
- lostgame 9y ago
  Is it’s a MacOS framework, and it’s a native app, an easy way for devs to stay ahead of the curve is to implement them first. See it as a precautionary thing, like how we thought we didn’t need 64-bit on the iPhone 5S but that’s actually the only reason it has the longest-standing history of iOS updates, and is still up to date.
lostgame 9y ago
Pixelmator has historically been a phenomenal piece of software for OSX/MacOS (though it’s iOS offering was a ‘poor man’s version at best, especially disappointing on my iPad mini). If you’re picky about UI/UX and Photoshop’s glaring skippy/jumping UI flaws bug you enough this may just be your tool. Hoping we see a reduced price for Pixelmator, um, standard? I would love to see more people using this tool.
tomek_zemla 9y ago
Is there scripting and/or API in this version? Or any plans to add it soon?
- lostgame 9y ago
  Wow, I hadn’t thought of that, but it’d be a great way to form a community around the software. I’m sure they’ve considered it, but that’s a good one.
dawnerd 9y ago
Seeing a couple features tagged as "coming soon" which really should have been added before launch (touchbar). Link should probably point to http://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ http://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ which actually tells you whats in it.
- crossman 9y ago
  Yeah.... Quick Mask mode is still listed as "coming soon". That's going to make good selections difficult
IgorPartola 9y ago
So I am trying to sort out all of the photo editing tools out there because I just got my first DSLR and plan on taking lots of pictures. I have used Pixelmator in the past and really enjoyed it. Best $15 I spent on a Mac app, hands down. I do dislike the "here are a million little windows" UI, so the Pro is kinda nice that way. But I am not sure how this all fits with things like Lightroom/darktable. I know Pixelmator can easily edit RAW files. But darktable seems to be able to edit a batch of images at once so you don't have to manually edit each one. But should you? Plus there is something about organizing photos with Lightroom/darktable flows that I don't quite get. I have gotten by with manually organizing my files for a decade. Do I really need a star rating system? Also darktable boasts the ability to export an image into GIMP. Is that really like a big feature that you can't do from elsewhere? Isn't it just a Save then Open type situation? tl;dr photo editing is confusing. Edit: Also I just dug into what Pm Pro does, and it's damn impressive. Adobe should be scared.
- louhike 9y ago
  "But darktable seems to be able to edit a batch of images at once so you don't have to manually edit each one. But should you?" => It can be useful for pictures taken in a similar context. Like you might want to set the temperature if they were taken at the same moment and you want the same atmosphere. But you don't to have the sames values for all parameters for all your pictures. "Do I really need a star rating system?" => Not really in most use-cases, the flags are enough (rejected and accepted).
  - IgorPartola 9y ago
    How do you organize things like "those are from this shoot on location" and "these are from the studio shoot?" Do you do that using the filesystem, or only inside darktable?
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I use folders. I think most people do.
    - 9y ago
kylec 9y ago
Pixelmator Pro requires macOS High Sierra This is unfortunate. Given all the issues High Sierra has had I'm staying on Sierra for a while longer.
- lostgame 9y ago
  Upvoted and commented for truth. I really hope they get that it’s not a cool move. Just deprecate whatever API-specific calls you’re making and say ‘these features require 10.13’. I mean, how long was the development of this project? When was that poor decision made?
Tsiklon 9y ago
I'm looking forward to getting stuck in with this. I happily paid for Pixelmator.
thijsvandien 9y ago
Requiring High Sierra means I won't be able to give it a go within the next half a year or so. I only just migrated to Sierra... Professionals are generally more careful with upgrades, so I'm not sure if that requirement was worth it. Apart from that, Pixelmator was an absolute steal when it was first released but I can't help the feeling it has stagnated since then. It has become buggier and requests for very basic enhancements are ignored. As an example, it still annoys the hell out of me that a zoomed in image that is not completely visible always sticks to the edge of the window it's in—good luck selecting anything at or near the edge. At this point I'm more motivated to get to know Affinity Photo better rather than giving the Pixelmator team another chance.
- lostgame 9y ago
  Was very, very disappointed to notice that it required High Sierra, especially given the current state of its security. They lost a purchase from at least a serious dedicated fan, here, for that one.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  I never want to run High Sierra or iOS 11. Clearly, I will be required to at some point when I upgrade my iPhone/Mac hardware, but... <sigh> Why does every Apple release feel like one step forwards, two (or two dozen) steps backwards?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Because the media says so?
  - laythea 9y ago
    Because not enough people stop buying/using their products.
  - dreamcompiler 9y ago
    I'm still on Mavericks and never plan to upgrade. Every new Mac OS now seems to be a major regression in basic functionality in the name of more eye candy, more Apple lockin, and more crap I have to turn off just to get work done. I'm done. I just bought a Dell XPS 13, installed Linux on it, and I'm not looking back.
AhtiK 9y ago
I really hope Pixelmator follows the path of Serif folks (creators of Affinity Photo and Designer) by porting it also to Windows. I realize the cost of this and thereby not additionally suggesting a Linux port (which would be ultimately the best). But getting comfortable with a macOS-only high-learning-curve-tool makes the OS switches unnecessarily complex.
- thijsvandien 9y ago
  Looks like they just invested even more in macOS. If they can't even support slightly older versions of that, I don't think Windows or Linux support is something to expect anytime soon.
overcast 9y ago
I don't see anything regarding discounted upgrades for people already vested into original Pixelmator.
- klodolph 9y ago
  This is not a feature that the App Store offers, AFAIK. Some developers are pretty salty about it.
  - bm5k 9y ago
    App bundles are the current "workaround", at least in the iOS store.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
AhtiK 9y ago
Regarding the future of existing Pixelmator and comparison to Pro: from the announcement, it looks like the current Pixelmator will be simply phased out so no need for the comparison or ensuring the current version gets any updates. Making this conclusion simply because the current version was not mentioned at all. Let's hope for the fair play, so the current Pixelmator license owners would get the Pro with a discounted price.
nickjj 9y ago
Does anyone know of an equally high quality / PSD compatible image editing app for Windows that isn't Photoshop or GIMP?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- starsinspace 9y ago
  There's Affinity Photo, which used to be Mac-only, but has now been available for Windows as well for a while: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
  - nickjj 9y ago
    Nice, thanks. I haven't heard of this one. My issue with Photoshop is that lately it's been really laggy with no resolution in sight after hours of trial and error. It came out of no where but now it takes 10 seconds to draw a 5 inch line with a stylus. I'm not an artist but I do a fair bit of image editing.
- simongr3dal 9y ago
  There’s Affinity Photo. I don’t know how good it is I only have experience with Affinity Designer, which I find to be great for my needs.
bovermyer 9y ago
I liked Pixelmator when I tried it out. However, I do most of my graphics work on a Windows machine, so that means I only really have one choice: Photoshop.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  Not true. Affinity Photo [1], Lightroom, Capture One, RawTherapee (free) are all great photo editors. If you're doing lots of manipulation/painting/drawing then Affinity is still a great option. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
  - bovermyer 9y ago
    The graphic work I do is mostly digital painting. How have I never heard of Affinity? How long has it been out?
    - ricardobeat 9y ago
      Affinity Designer has been around for a few years, Photo was launched maybe a year ago.
matthoiland 9y ago
With Photoshop being so sluggish recently I'm willing to try anything. Just a few minutes in with Pixelmator Pro and I can see myself using this quite a bit – even just the little things like creating a new file and setting canvas dimensions, this takes ages on Photoshop now. Although, I hate the native color picker. Being able to paste in hex values is important to me – bringing in a Photoshop or Sketch-like color picker would be much appreciated.
- CyberDildonics 9y ago
  It's strange to have something like photoshop essentially rot from the inside out. It may go down as a legendary slow train wreck of software engineering.
samgranieri 9y ago
I've been very happily using Pixelmator for years. I'll gladly pay for the upgrade of the new version.

131 points by hit8run 9y ago

After playing with it briefly, Pixelmator Pro is interesting as instead of behaving like a Photoshop clone UX-wise, it now behaves like a macOS native productivity app (e.g Keynote). I’m excited to dive deeper. Also, I believe the $59 is a sale price, and will go up to $99 after new features are added into later updates.

drcongo 9y ago
Is there a comparison between this and the standard Pixelmator somewhere?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
lsllc 9y ago
I've been happy with Pixelmator ... I suppose I can't blame them for wanting to continue to monetize their product. Seems like the app store doesn't have a way to have paid upgrades (e.g. v2 to v3). However it probably means the existing Pixelmator probably won't get any new updates aside from fixes. I also would like to see what's different/new in the Pro version, but I'll probably upgrade anyway.

stdgy 9y ago

Neat! I'm a huge fan of Pixelmator. Great example of a high quality desktop application. I really miss it when I have to edit images on Windows. I wonder if there is a similarly priced, beautiful piece of software for Microsoft's ecosystem?

lostgame 9y ago
Not that I’m aware of but Photoshop is more lacking in the strange UI bugs it seems to exhibit on MacOS, especially as I’m still using CS6. :P
JonathonW 9y ago
Affinity Photo is a direct competitor (same price range, similar feature set) and runs on both Windows and Mac: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ Their UI's more Photoshop-style than Pixelmator Pro's, though.

simooooo 9y ago

Hard not to roll my eyes at machine learning being name dropped into an image editor. Someone able to try out the layer naming?

lostgame 9y ago
Is it’s a MacOS framework, and it’s a native app, an easy way for devs to stay ahead of the curve is to implement them first. See it as a precautionary thing, like how we thought we didn’t need 64-bit on the iPhone 5S but that’s actually the only reason it has the longest-standing history of iOS updates, and is still up to date.

lostgame 9y ago

Pixelmator has historically been a phenomenal piece of software for OSX/MacOS (though it’s iOS offering was a ‘poor man’s version at best, especially disappointing on my iPad mini). If you’re picky about UI/UX and Photoshop’s glaring skippy/jumping UI flaws bug you enough this may just be your tool. Hoping we see a reduced price for Pixelmator, um, standard? I would love to see more people using this tool.

tomek_zemla 9y ago

Is there scripting and/or API in this version? Or any plans to add it soon?

lostgame 9y ago
Wow, I hadn’t thought of that, but it’d be a great way to form a community around the software. I’m sure they’ve considered it, but that’s a good one.

dawnerd 9y ago

Seeing a couple features tagged as "coming soon" which really should have been added before launch (touchbar). Link should probably point to http://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ http://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ which actually tells you whats in it.

crossman 9y ago
Yeah.... Quick Mask mode is still listed as "coming soon". That's going to make good selections difficult

IgorPartola 9y ago

So I am trying to sort out all of the photo editing tools out there because I just got my first DSLR and plan on taking lots of pictures. I have used Pixelmator in the past and really enjoyed it. Best $15 I spent on a Mac app, hands down. I do dislike the "here are a million little windows" UI, so the Pro is kinda nice that way. But I am not sure how this all fits with things like Lightroom/darktable. I know Pixelmator can easily edit RAW files. But darktable seems to be able to edit a batch of images at once so you don't have to manually edit each one. But should you? Plus there is something about organizing photos with Lightroom/darktable flows that I don't quite get. I have gotten by with manually organizing my files for a decade. Do I really need a star rating system? Also darktable boasts the ability to export an image into GIMP. Is that really like a big feature that you can't do from elsewhere? Isn't it just a Save then Open type situation? tl;dr photo editing is confusing. Edit: Also I just dug into what Pm Pro does, and it's damn impressive. Adobe should be scared.

louhike 9y ago
"But darktable seems to be able to edit a batch of images at once so you don't have to manually edit each one. But should you?" => It can be useful for pictures taken in a similar context. Like you might want to set the temperature if they were taken at the same moment and you want the same atmosphere. But you don't to have the sames values for all parameters for all your pictures. "Do I really need a star rating system?" => Not really in most use-cases, the flags are enough (rejected and accepted).
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  How do you organize things like "those are from this shoot on location" and "these are from the studio shoot?" Do you do that using the filesystem, or only inside darktable?
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I use folders. I think most people do.
  - 9y ago

kylec 9y ago

Pixelmator Pro requires macOS High Sierra This is unfortunate. Given all the issues High Sierra has had I'm staying on Sierra for a while longer.

lostgame 9y ago
Upvoted and commented for truth. I really hope they get that it’s not a cool move. Just deprecate whatever API-specific calls you’re making and say ‘these features require 10.13’. I mean, how long was the development of this project? When was that poor decision made?

Tsiklon 9y ago

I'm looking forward to getting stuck in with this. I happily paid for Pixelmator.

thijsvandien 9y ago

Requiring High Sierra means I won't be able to give it a go within the next half a year or so. I only just migrated to Sierra... Professionals are generally more careful with upgrades, so I'm not sure if that requirement was worth it. Apart from that, Pixelmator was an absolute steal when it was first released but I can't help the feeling it has stagnated since then. It has become buggier and requests for very basic enhancements are ignored. As an example, it still annoys the hell out of me that a zoomed in image that is not completely visible always sticks to the edge of the window it's in—good luck selecting anything at or near the edge. At this point I'm more motivated to get to know Affinity Photo better rather than giving the Pixelmator team another chance.

lostgame 9y ago
Was very, very disappointed to notice that it required High Sierra, especially given the current state of its security. They lost a purchase from at least a serious dedicated fan, here, for that one.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
I never want to run High Sierra or iOS 11. Clearly, I will be required to at some point when I upgrade my iPhone/Mac hardware, but... <sigh> Why does every Apple release feel like one step forwards, two (or two dozen) steps backwards?
- coldtea 9y ago
  Because the media says so?
- laythea 9y ago
  Because not enough people stop buying/using their products.
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  I'm still on Mavericks and never plan to upgrade. Every new Mac OS now seems to be a major regression in basic functionality in the name of more eye candy, more Apple lockin, and more crap I have to turn off just to get work done. I'm done. I just bought a Dell XPS 13, installed Linux on it, and I'm not looking back.

AhtiK 9y ago

I really hope Pixelmator follows the path of Serif folks (creators of Affinity Photo and Designer) by porting it also to Windows. I realize the cost of this and thereby not additionally suggesting a Linux port (which would be ultimately the best). But getting comfortable with a macOS-only high-learning-curve-tool makes the OS switches unnecessarily complex.

thijsvandien 9y ago
Looks like they just invested even more in macOS. If they can't even support slightly older versions of that, I don't think Windows or Linux support is something to expect anytime soon.

overcast 9y ago

I don't see anything regarding discounted upgrades for people already vested into original Pixelmator.

klodolph 9y ago
This is not a feature that the App Store offers, AFAIK. Some developers are pretty salty about it.
- bm5k 9y ago
  App bundles are the current "workaround", at least in the iOS store.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

AhtiK 9y ago

Regarding the future of existing Pixelmator and comparison to Pro: from the announcement, it looks like the current Pixelmator will be simply phased out so no need for the comparison or ensuring the current version gets any updates. Making this conclusion simply because the current version was not mentioned at all. Let's hope for the fair play, so the current Pixelmator license owners would get the Pro with a discounted price.

nickjj 9y ago

Does anyone know of an equally high quality / PSD compatible image editing app for Windows that isn't Photoshop or GIMP?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
starsinspace 9y ago
There's Affinity Photo, which used to be Mac-only, but has now been available for Windows as well for a while: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
- nickjj 9y ago
  Nice, thanks. I haven't heard of this one. My issue with Photoshop is that lately it's been really laggy with no resolution in sight after hours of trial and error. It came out of no where but now it takes 10 seconds to draw a 5 inch line with a stylus. I'm not an artist but I do a fair bit of image editing.
simongr3dal 9y ago
There’s Affinity Photo. I don’t know how good it is I only have experience with Affinity Designer, which I find to be great for my needs.

bovermyer 9y ago

I liked Pixelmator when I tried it out. However, I do most of my graphics work on a Windows machine, so that means I only really have one choice: Photoshop.

ricardobeat 9y ago
Not true. Affinity Photo [1], Lightroom, Capture One, RawTherapee (free) are all great photo editors. If you're doing lots of manipulation/painting/drawing then Affinity is still a great option. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
- bovermyer 9y ago
  The graphic work I do is mostly digital painting. How have I never heard of Affinity? How long has it been out?
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    Affinity Designer has been around for a few years, Photo was launched maybe a year ago.

matthoiland 9y ago

With Photoshop being so sluggish recently I'm willing to try anything. Just a few minutes in with Pixelmator Pro and I can see myself using this quite a bit – even just the little things like creating a new file and setting canvas dimensions, this takes ages on Photoshop now. Although, I hate the native color picker. Being able to paste in hex values is important to me – bringing in a Photoshop or Sketch-like color picker would be much appreciated.

CyberDildonics 9y ago
It's strange to have something like photoshop essentially rot from the inside out. It may go down as a legendary slow train wreck of software engineering.

samgranieri 9y ago

I've been very happily using Pixelmator for years. I'll gladly pay for the upgrade of the new version.