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Apple Acquires Photo Editing App Maker Pixelmator
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Someone has. And he used to be on the Aperture team:
RAW Power
RAW Power® has the best Finder, Photos and iCloud integration of any non-Apple photo app, plus advanced RAW editing, ratings and more. RAW Power is three tools in one: 1) A fast, non-destructive image editor app. No need to import - RAW Power can quickly browse any folder on your disk. 2)...apps.apple.com
He also has a new image editor called Nitro (Mac & iPad), that replaces Raw Power going forward:
Nitro® for macOS
www.gentlemencoders.com
Use and love both (although not professionally), both are great apps but still below the vast wealth of features and support that Illustrator have due to its de facto status in the industry. Of the two I would say Pixelmator Pro leans more towards image editing with some vector and text tools where as Designer leans more towards Vector with some image editing tools. Also in terms of segmentation I’d say PP targets beginner to enthusiast, while AD targets enthusiast to pro but I’m sure others will have their own opinions on that.
Interesting to read the comments. So many people seem to like this acquisition, while normally people are like "I bought Pixelmator because it's independent from big corporations". But now all of a sudden you are fine with the acquisition by a big corporation???
I have always used the free version of Pixelmator - Pixelmator Classic, which they stopped a long while ago now I believe. I tried Pixelmator Pro at one time and didn't like it - was quite different to the 'cut down' free version I have, which does exactly what I need, so just stuck with it!
I really don't see that happening. Apple usually acquires developer teams either to nurture the app or to integrate it with one of their own apps. Some companies actually do buy a company just to terminate competition from it, but I don't think that's Apple. (Which "other products before" are you thinking of?)
Has Apple finally realized that a good number of users don't want their photos looking like everyone else's Apple directed HDR'd, denoised and over-sharpened edits? I really hope Photomator keeps progressing with the original team🤞
Yes, I had a few audiowerk cards, but what about them? Apple got them for Logic and it's still a standalone s/w
After how badly Apple screwed up Dark Sky, this is a very troubling development.
Guess it's time to suspend Photomator subscription...
I remember the great weather app “Dark Sky”, or Aperture, Apple is also constantly ruining its own apps with “improvements”. Also noticeable was the discontinuation of the “old” Final Cut, which left users who depended on this software in the lurch ...
So while Pixelmator is everything to the guys who created it, it doesn‘t mean anything to Apple. May they need the developers or certain features of the software and if it doesn‘t turn out the way Apple wants it, Apple with throw it away.
Well, all right:
Dark Sky's main draw (it seemed) was hyperlocal rain prediction, which was integrated into Weather.
Aperture, I thought, was Apple's original app, not an acquisition.
Presumably users of Final Cut Pro 7 can still use it on the machines for which it was designed and supported? There was no "kill switch" that Apple threw, and they've obviously put at least as much energy into Final Cut Pro X.
So, I'm afraid I think your estimation strikes me more like a large-scale mischaracterization.
The Pixelmator acquisition strikes me as more analogous to Logic, where Apple really admired the app and wanted to own and develop it, ultimately turning something that was already great into something even more powerful and valuable for the price for users. We'll see, but that really feels like what this is.
Oh, come on. A photo editing app that doesn't even support keywords? That's the sign of software that's half-baked, at best. Maybe Apple will solve this for them and soon.
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Currently using Photoshop on my Intel Mac mini, I do a lot of animation exports from Photoshop layers and import a lot of PDFs and convert those to GIFs.
Never use the program before so I download the trial.
Tried importing a PDF and it seem to try to convert the PDF to some type of vector instead of a bitmap but maybe I’m just doing it wrong.
Then I tried to create some an animation gif but couldn’t seem to figure out how to animate layers.
Did some searching online and it looks like it’s not a planned feature for the future.
So for now I’m stuck with my non-subscription Photoshop. I was hopeful this was going to replace my workflow on the newer computers.
Never use the program before so I download the trial.
Tried importing a PDF and it seem to try to convert the PDF to some type of vector instead of a bitmap but maybe I’m just doing it wrong.
Then I tried to create some an animation gif but couldn’t seem to figure out how to animate layers.
Did some searching online and it looks like it’s not a planned feature for the future.
So for now I’m stuck with my non-subscription Photoshop. I was hopeful this was going to replace my workflow on the newer computers.
I am in two mind about this. On one hand this is great because it will hopefully allow for tighter integration of the app with the OS. But on the other hand big companies have a habit of buying up products... putting a half hearted effort in continued development into it before they eventually either absorb it into their own sub standard products or abandon it all together.
He also has a new image editor called Nitro (Mac & iPad), that replaces Raw Power going forward:
Nitro® for macOS
Thanks!
Yeh, I saw that, but didn't read it. Now that I have, it sounds he took the logical step: code gets old, the foundation by Apple changed, so he build something new from the ground up, with his expanded knowledge.
It's a little uncomfortable to see that my purchase here in Europe was 'Lifetime Raw Power for € 32,99' and that lifetime sell hold up for only 4 years.
Now I 'need' to buy the € 89,99 'lifetime Nitro'. And because I'm a buyer of Raw Power I ought to be glad I'm getting a € 10,00 discount.
Oh well, let's see how long Nitro will be 'lifetime'. If it's going to last a mere 4 years people may very well be better served in getting the subscription.
In-App Purchases
Pricing seems...off. 4 years ago lifetime was 32,99 and Nitro is now 99,99
And there's the brilliant PhotoLine. Still going strong with an off-line shareware license.
Pixelmator main focus is image editing.
The only decent Illustrator alternative (aside from CorelDraw) is VectorStyler:
Inkscape is pretty good, but doesn't do CMYK.
Also a good combo is PhotoLine with InkScape (due to PhotoLine's external app link with InkScape and the decent vector tools in PhotoLine and its great CMYK and colour management support).
Both VectorStyler and the PhotoLine/Inkscape combo feature all the missing vector functions in Affinity Designer:
- blend tool
- true vector patterns
- bitmap to vector tracing
- gradient mesh tool
- true vector warping
- vector brushes (VectorStyler)
- and much more that is missing in Affinity Designer.
A combo of PhotoLine, VectorStyler, Inkscape, and Krita (with its genAI plugin and ai selection plugin) is arguably as powerful (or more so) as Illustrator and Photoshop. If high-end 2d animation is required: add in OpenToonz/Tahoma2D to replace Flash/Animate/Photoshop. If professional video editing is wanted, mix in DaVince Resolve. If professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering is wished for: Blender.
This "personal creative suite" consists of 2 paid-for apps: PhotoLine and VectorStyler. The rest is free (and mostly open source).
This list of alternatives is a nice one (although VectorStyler still isn't part of the AI alternatives):
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Yeah that’s unfortunate I’m afraid. Been burned like that once or twice in the past myself.
might be worth waiting to see if there are any Black Friday discounts or something.
Pixelmator main focus is image editing.
The only decent Illustrator alternative (aside from CorelDraw) is VectorStyler:
Inkscape is pretty good, but doesn't do CMYK.
Also a good combo is PhotoLine with InkScape (due to PhotoLine's external app link with InkScape and the decent vector tools in PhotoLine and its great CMYK and colour management support).
Both VectorStyler and the PhotoLine/Inkscape combo feature all the missing vector functions in Affinity Designer:
- blend tool
- true vector patterns
- bitmap to vector tracing
- gradient mesh tool
- true vector warping
- vector brushes (VectorStyler)
- and much more that is missing in Affinity Designer.
A combo of PhotoLine, VectorStyler, Inkscape, and Krita (with its genAI plugin and ai selection plugin) is arguably as powerful (or more so) as Illustrator and Photoshop. If high-end 2d animation is required: add in OpenToonz/Tahoma2D to replace Flash/Animate/Photoshop. If professional video editing is wanted, mix in DaVince Resolve. If professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering is wished for: Blender.
This "personal creative suite" consists of 2 paid-for apps: PhotoLine and VectorStyler. The rest is free (and mostly open source).
This list of alternatives is a nice one (although VectorStyler still isn't part of the AI alternatives):
Adobe isn't "spying on you". The people who came up with that are egg headed brats who don't understand deep learning in the cloud, which was voluntary.
That image is like the charts trying to work out tin foil hat conspiracy theories. Stop posting junk images shared by tards on Elon's idiot site.
The majority of the apps in the list are absurdly bad and if I as a professional had to dump Adobe for some stupid **** like Gimp, Kdenlive, Paint Shop Pro etc I would be laughed at by colleagues and probably dumped by clients for being too slow.
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Professionally, there is no replacement for CC. And Adobe knows it. What has come closest, Affinity, has been bought by Canva and we will see how that turns out. Pixelmator, another contender against PS/LR, is now bought by Appke and I would be surprised if they opt for another «war» with Adobe And what will happen with the App. It‘s almost strange that no one comes up with Illustrator or Indesign or After Effects when DaVinci proves it can be done with something like Premiere, which is even more complex. But it isn‘t happening so far. I for one would wish for something, not even cheaper, but more coherent, more open, faster. Affinity Publisher had its problems and I work with ID professionally, but it was faster, more reliable even in the early betas that ID is in v20, the UI is better. There is so much room for improvement and joy in these content creation softwares, it‘s sad that the field grows so monopolistic.
So which great Application did Apple create recently? And why do they have to enter the Image/Photo editing business?
Apple could renovate it‘s works suite with a more modern structure, add some AI capabilities and so much more. Keynote was once the leader of the gang, no one is talking about anymore. Facetime failed, everyone uses Teams or Zoom. Safari got a lot of bad mouth and was really falling behind Chrome and Edge, while being the „father“ of these browsers.
No, at the moment I don‘t trust Apple in terms of software. Nearly every new iOS there is a big „Oh no!“ when Apple kills features that were working as expected the last version.
And after Adobe subscription hell I was really glad to find something like Pixelmator and Affinity Designer v2. Let‘s cross fingers that Apple doesn‘t ruin it.
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Keynote was great until they emasculated it so that it would work on iPad.