4 ms·

Pixelmator is "The Missing Editor" (to quote TextMate but even more applicable here). I thought one weakness of OS X was that it came with no built in image ed

by frou_dh 16y ago

Pixelmator is "The Missing Editor" (to quote TextMate but even more applicable here). I thought one weakness of OS X was that it came with no built in image editor. People mock MS Paint on Windows, but it's a lot better than nothing.

wmf 16y ago
Macs shipped with GraphicConverter for many years; I'm surprised nobody in this thread has mentioned it.
- semanticist 16y ago
  An unregistered version, alongside a pile of unregistered shareware like StuffIt! That's not really how Apple work these days.
  - willifred 16y ago
    Mac Pros used to (maybe still do) come with a fully registered group licensed version, along with Art Director's Toolkit, which is an absolutely awesome tool.
deleted 16y ago
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- deleted 16y ago
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podperson 16y ago
Actually Preview lets you do a lot of the things you'd want to do with an image editor and -- unlike MS Paint -- what it does, it does very well. It's a much better PDF and image editor than, for example, TextEdit is a text editor.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  Why the dig at MS Paint? I'd say the exact opposite: it's a simple pixel-level bitmap editor, and for that purpose served me well for years before I moved to OS X. I must poke around Preview later to see what it can do.
  - Tycho 16y ago
    it has a good 'instant-alpha' feature for getting rid of the background of images
  - slyn 16y ago
    Indeed, I used to love MS Paint when I was using Windows on a daily basis. It's simple, fast, easy to use, and does its one thing very well. It wasn't until Paintbrush 2 came out that I didn't have any individual software from Windows that I missed when using OS X. I've never tried Pixelmator however so that might be a better replacement.
    - frou_dh 16y ago
      Pixelmator does a lot more besides - it's closer to Paint.NET on Windows, which is also rather good. Seashore was another MS Paint-like editor for Mac, but looking at the current screenshots, it seems to have expanded scope now.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Preview allows you to resize, crop, rotate and save images in different formats. (It is not possible to rotate in less than 90° increments which seriously sucks.) It also has nearly the same adjustment tools as iPhoto (exposure, saturation, levels, …). You can add arrows, ellipses, boxes and text to images (in order to annotate them). That seems like the perfect feature set to me, I’m not aware of any situation where I actually needed to manipulate the pixels of an image. Cropping, resizing and saving in different formats is the most important functionality to me and in that respect Preview seems much more useful than Paint. I actually never really need pixel manipulation. Tools like Lightroom are perfect for editing photos and I don’t see any need for Photoshop or similar tools at all if all you want to do is edit photos. The only time I actually needed Photoshop was to create bitmaps for a website (rounded corners, backgrounds, …). (Preview also allows you to edit PDF documents. You can crop pages, delete or rearrange them, or easily merge pages from different PDF documents into one, all just by drag and drop.)
ghshephard 16y ago
Yes - A decent, lightweight image editor is one of the weaknesses of OS X (though it has a world class screen grabbing capability built in). The very first thing that I put on any new Macintosh (mine, or others) is Acorn. Kind of a pixlemator competitor. Gets 95% of the lightweight cropping, editing jobs done - and, as a bonus - it's free if you don't need any of the advanced features.
- tjogin 16y ago
  The OS X built in Preview.app does most of the lightweight cropping and editing for me. In terms of lightweight editing, what it lacks is basically brushes.
pan69 16y ago
That seems to be a very dangerous position to be in. There is nothing stopping Apple from shipping OS X with a similar product. What if they do?
- glhaynes 16y ago
  It's happened lots of times before and will happen lots of times in the future. On the other hand, now that the App Store is out, everybody that buys Pixelmator sends 30% of $29.99 to Apple, so... :)
  - pan69 16y ago
    I can totally see how this is a win-win for both parties. Hadn't thought of that.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      If performance stays similar outside this 20 days (obviously not saying it will), this app is an $18 million/year business for Pixelmator and a $7 million/year one for Apple.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  This would suggest Apple already think highly of Pixelmator: http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/great-mac-apps.html http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/great-mac-apps.html
masklinn 16y ago
On the other hand, the (strange, considering MacPaint) absence of a built-in image editor has led to a very healthy ecosystem of small, "indie" image editors on OSX: Pixelmator, Acorn, Seashore, Paintbrush, DrawIt and Sketch, ChocoFlop, and even more "niche" products like Picturesque.
- michaelbuckbee 16y ago
  Acorn has been a godsend to me as it's just powerful enough to handle the types of family projects that come up (mostly picture thank you's, invitations, xmas cards) but simple enough that family members can accomplish the projects without my assistance.

by frou_dh 16y ago

wmf 16y ago

Macs shipped with GraphicConverter for many years; I'm surprised nobody in this thread has mentioned it.

semanticist 16y ago
An unregistered version, alongside a pile of unregistered shareware like StuffIt! That's not really how Apple work these days.
- willifred 16y ago
  Mac Pros used to (maybe still do) come with a fully registered group licensed version, along with Art Director's Toolkit, which is an absolutely awesome tool.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

podperson 16y ago

Actually Preview lets you do a lot of the things you'd want to do with an image editor and -- unlike MS Paint -- what it does, it does very well. It's a much better PDF and image editor than, for example, TextEdit is a text editor.

frou_dh 16y ago
Why the dig at MS Paint? I'd say the exact opposite: it's a simple pixel-level bitmap editor, and for that purpose served me well for years before I moved to OS X. I must poke around Preview later to see what it can do.
- Tycho 16y ago
  it has a good 'instant-alpha' feature for getting rid of the background of images
- slyn 16y ago
  Indeed, I used to love MS Paint when I was using Windows on a daily basis. It's simple, fast, easy to use, and does its one thing very well. It wasn't until Paintbrush 2 came out that I didn't have any individual software from Windows that I missed when using OS X. I've never tried Pixelmator however so that might be a better replacement.
  - frou_dh 16y ago
    Pixelmator does a lot more besides - it's closer to Paint.NET on Windows, which is also rather good. Seashore was another MS Paint-like editor for Mac, but looking at the current screenshots, it seems to have expanded scope now.
- ugh 16y ago
  Preview allows you to resize, crop, rotate and save images in different formats. (It is not possible to rotate in less than 90° increments which seriously sucks.) It also has nearly the same adjustment tools as iPhoto (exposure, saturation, levels, …). You can add arrows, ellipses, boxes and text to images (in order to annotate them). That seems like the perfect feature set to me, I’m not aware of any situation where I actually needed to manipulate the pixels of an image. Cropping, resizing and saving in different formats is the most important functionality to me and in that respect Preview seems much more useful than Paint. I actually never really need pixel manipulation. Tools like Lightroom are perfect for editing photos and I don’t see any need for Photoshop or similar tools at all if all you want to do is edit photos. The only time I actually needed Photoshop was to create bitmaps for a website (rounded corners, backgrounds, …). (Preview also allows you to edit PDF documents. You can crop pages, delete or rearrange them, or easily merge pages from different PDF documents into one, all just by drag and drop.)

ghshephard 16y ago

Yes - A decent, lightweight image editor is one of the weaknesses of OS X (though it has a world class screen grabbing capability built in). The very first thing that I put on any new Macintosh (mine, or others) is Acorn. Kind of a pixlemator competitor. Gets 95% of the lightweight cropping, editing jobs done - and, as a bonus - it's free if you don't need any of the advanced features.

tjogin 16y ago
The OS X built in Preview.app does most of the lightweight cropping and editing for me. In terms of lightweight editing, what it lacks is basically brushes.

pan69 16y ago

That seems to be a very dangerous position to be in. There is nothing stopping Apple from shipping OS X with a similar product. What if they do?

glhaynes 16y ago
It's happened lots of times before and will happen lots of times in the future. On the other hand, now that the App Store is out, everybody that buys Pixelmator sends 30% of $29.99 to Apple, so... :)
- pan69 16y ago
  I can totally see how this is a win-win for both parties. Hadn't thought of that.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    If performance stays similar outside this 20 days (obviously not saying it will), this app is an $18 million/year business for Pixelmator and a $7 million/year one for Apple.
frou_dh 16y ago
This would suggest Apple already think highly of Pixelmator: http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/great-mac-apps.html http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/great-mac-apps.html

masklinn 16y ago

On the other hand, the (strange, considering MacPaint) absence of a built-in image editor has led to a very healthy ecosystem of small, "indie" image editors on OSX: Pixelmator, Acorn, Seashore, Paintbrush, DrawIt and Sketch, ChocoFlop, and even more "niche" products like Picturesque.

michaelbuckbee 16y ago
Acorn has been a godsend to me as it's just powerful enough to handle the types of family projects that come up (mostly picture thank you's, invitations, xmas cards) but simple enough that family members can accomplish the projects without my assistance.