Pixelmator 2.0 Launches Tomorrow, With Content-Aware Fill and Full Lion Support [Now Available]

[xizar]

You just don't get it. Installing a tool on your computer doesn't give you any understanding of typography, composition, illustration skills, character design etc. etc.

Installing a tool on your computer also doesn't provide you with an original idea.

By your logic anyone with a simple enough version of Autocad on his computer could come up with great industrial design. So Jonathan Ives design of Apple products is really nothing special, because anyone on the street could have done it given a simple enough software.

By your logic I'm a carpenter because I can hold a hammer.

Misunderstood logic is misunderstood. (or perhaps, hasty generalizations are hasty.)

The more appropriate generalization would be "By your [*LTD*] logic **there exists someone who is** a carpenter because **that person** can hold a hammer.

Your failure to produce "professional quality" results with a particular tool does not imply everyone's failure.

Counter example: Jonathon Coulton. He did not have a "professional" music studio at his disposal. I will argue by vigorous hand-waving that he is an element of the set you would label "noob".

 

[firestarter]

I am in the same situation. I paid 60 when it first came out... had I waited until it was 29.00 through the app store I get the 2.0 upgrade free. They pay a percentage to Apple to sell via the App store so they made a heck of a lot less off the recent customers that the people that supported them when they started. When they started they needed the money to get to the point where version 2.0 was released. Why punish the people that helped them survive to sell software in 2011?

Seriously?

 

[Winni]

Does this program do something that PS can't?

YES: Costing only 30 bucks. That's something that PS simply doesn't do, and that's a killer feature.

But if you already have the latest and greatest Photoshop... You probably don't need anything else.

----------

I think they also need to be a bit more serious about their RAW conversion.

It's no good converting a RAW file into an 8 bit internal file without allowing any sort of exposure correction on the way. Exposure correcting inside the app is bound to result in posterisation and rapid loss of image quality.

I also think it's questionable to use Adobe RGB colour profiles in only 8 bit. Again, most colours will be concentrated into 7 bits or less and posterisation will occur.

I think these are only issues when you don't use Aperture or Lightroom FIRST. Buy Aperture and for a total of 100 bucks (including Pixelmator) you can get very, very far. Neither Pixelmator nor Aperture are standalone tools, and neither is Photoshop, when we're honest about it - it doesn't have a library, for example, it's "just" a huge image manipulator. I also don't do any RAW processing in Photoshop - I do it all in Aperture, the I use PTLens, and THEN I fire up PS or any of the other programs.

----------

Check it out...

http://www.gimp.org/

Please, stop kidding yourself. The GIMP is only an option when you're on Linux and when you don't have ANY money to spend on software AT ALL. The GIMP is a usability nightmare - designed by Linux geeks FOR Linux geeks. I'm not even sure if the word "designed" should be used in this context.

Nobody who actually tries to do productive work and has 50 bucks in his wallet gives The GIMP a second thought. You're better off with ANYTHING else, especially when you're using OS X which has the worst port of The GIMP that there is.

A photographer that I know once said: "The GIMP is nice for programmers that love to play with pixels. But photographers use Photoshop."

 

[chaosbunny]

Misunderstood logic is misunderstood. (or perhaps, hasty generalizations are hasty.)

The more appropriate generalization would be "By your [*LTD*] logic **there exists someone who is** a carpenter because **that person** can hold a hammer.

Your failure to produce "professional quality" results with a particular tool does not imply everyone's failure.

Counter example: Jonathon Coulton. He did not have a "professional" music studio at his disposal. I will argue by vigorous hand-waving that he is an element of the set you would label "noob".

I think you misunderstood pretty much everything I wrote in this thread.

I was saying that it's not the tools that make a craftsman a good craftsman. A talented illustrator will create a better illustration with a pencil and a tissue than someone with no talent will with a Mac Pro and the CS5.5 Master Collection.

What counts is talent, imagination, routine and knowledge.

Apart from that, I labeled no one "noob". That was another poster.

Misunderstood logic is indeed misunderstood.

 

[karlth]

As has been said by many pro web guys, we can't move from Photoshop to Pixelmator fully until Pixelmator supports a full suite of non destructive layer styles.

Agreed. Layer effects are an absolute must when designing graphical elements for UIs and Websites.

Hopefully they'll add them soon.

 

[macswitcha2]

So if you got the non-App-Store version you can't upgrade for free?

 

[Mersailios]

So if you got the non-App-Store version you can't upgrade for free?

That's correct, you only receive a free upgrade to version 2.0 if you purchased Pixelmator via the Mac App Store.

 

[maflynn]

I'm a light to medium user and I'm debating whether to stick with pixelmator 2 or go to CS5. I have the opportunity to buy it under the education discount because I work at a teaching hospital. I think I'd rather spend 200 and have the full suite of tools.

 

[firestarter]

I'm a light to medium user and I'm debating whether to stick with pixelmator 2 or go to CS5. I have the opportunity to buy it under the education discount because I work at a teaching hospital. I think I'd rather spend 200 and have the full suite of tools.

I only make light usage of Photoshop, but when I do use it I expect to be able to do everything. I downloaded Pixelmator 2 to give it a try, and while I think it's great for creative graphics use (it's pretty and it's slick) it doesn't do half of what Photoshop does, so i won't be buying it.

If you can get Photoshop for cheap, I'd definitely recommend it. Once you have it, you can just keep upgrading (usually I upgrade every second release) and it's pretty cheap to run.

 

[Mal]

I'm a light to medium user and I'm debating whether to stick with pixelmator 2 or go to CS5. I have the opportunity to buy it under the education discount because I work at a teaching hospital. I think I'd rather spend 200 and have the full suite of tools.

The trick with Pixelmator is that you can do everything that you can do in Photoshop (or at least 90% of the time), but it may require you to go through all the steps, instead of one-click solutions. Drop shadows are a good example of this, though there are tons of other functions that Adobe has patents on that Pixelmator can't implement, even though you can achieve the same result with some work. If you can get a good deal on Photoshop, it's definitely a time-saver if nothing else. I'm going to stick with Pixelmator because I can't justify Photoshop at full price, though.

jW

 

[firestarter]

The trick with Pixelmator is that you can do everything that you can do in Photoshop (or at least 90% of the time), but it may require you to go through all the steps, instead of one-click solutions. Drop shadows are a good example of this, though there are tons of other functions that Adobe has patents on that Pixelmator can't implement, even though you can achieve the same result with some work. If you can get a good deal on Photoshop, it's definitely a time-saver if nothing else. I'm going to stick with Pixelmator because I can't justify Photoshop at full price, though.

You're being fantastically over-generous. There's a very large amount of stuff that Pixelmator can't do.

I use PS mainly to fix up photos that I can't quite finish in Lightroom.

One thing I find myself doing all the time is fixing converging verticals (if you use a wide angle lens and shoot upwards, you'll get them).

Pixelmator can't do this at all. I tried opening one of my 21megapixel files in it, and because Pixelmator seems to want to redraw the entire image all the time, I just got grey checks when I tried a transform operation (on an 8 core MacPro). I downsized the image and then tried again - and the transform really is rudimentary - just scaling and rotating.

Back on Photoshop I opened my file easily in 16bit ProPhoto RGB (Pixelmator can do neither 16bit nor ProPhoto RGB). I selected 'free transform' and managed to skew/converge/shift the image in real time (Photoshop seems to snapshot a screen-res copy, so it has a manageable image to update). Hit return and the changes are applied. All in 16 bit, all in a proper colour space.

Here's another thing you'll need to do when you're photo-editing: make a selection.

Pixelmator's selection tools are extremely rudimentary. Magnetic-lasso? No. Quick selection tool? No. Magic wand tool? No. Refine edge tool? No. Color range tool? No. Transform selection tool? No. You're pretty much limited to drawing your own selection by hand.

For entertainment purposes Pixelmator looks like fun - but if you need to do something serious I think it would very quickly prove frustrating.

 

[wikus]

A lot of people are against you on this one but obviously they are just hobbyists

And thats exactly why they dont understand the difference between photoshop and pixelmator. To some I may come off as a snob, but id prefer to be completely blunt. Once these kids on macrumors put themselves into the real world and start receiving files from all their clients in PSD format, they'd quickly realize how ignorant they sound(ed).

 

[firestarter]

And thats exactly why they dont understand the difference between photoshop and pixelmator. To some I may come off as a snob, but id prefer to be completely blunt. Once these kids on macrumors put themselves into the real world and start receiving files from all their clients in PSD format, they'd quickly realize how ignorant they sound(ed).

It's the same sort of person who's been saying "OMG, the Gimp blows Photoshop away" for the last 5 years.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

It's the same sort of person who's been saying "OMG, the Gimp blows Photoshop away" for the last 5 years.

Again for what Pixelmator is it's an excellent product, but the Photoshop comparison I don't consider to be a fair argument... Elements, GIMP and Paintshop Pro more like it.

I would never expect the $30 to out perform a $1K+ graphics suite, however for the basics Pixelmator does fill that "prosumer" niche nicely. For the price and features it's good but I'm not going to throw in Photoshop from a Professional POV... the RAW support, unable to edit larger TIFFs/JPEG, filtering, laggy draw on a graphics tablet to name a few are reasons to keep me using Photoshop.

I've used it a few times in professional projects, but it's by far too limiting to use and ditch Photoshop, this is the same for the GIMP argument.

For the home user, it's brilliant.. That's where it sits and will give Elements a very good run for its money. As for me I've bought it for my home Mac Mini and have given it 5/5 on the Appstore, it's good but not a Photoshop killer.

 

[Phil A.]

I agree with comments above that Pixelmator is aimed at the PSE market, not Photoshop. For what I need to do with images (which is basically photo retouching purely from a hobbyist perspective), Pixelmator is fine and the small footprint, low resource requirements (and, most importantly - low cost!) make it ideal for my use

However, I wouldn't kid myself that if you make money using Photoshop you can save yourself a grand a year by dumping it in favour of Pixelmator

 

[NickFalk]

Pixelmator's selection tools are extremely rudimentary. Magnetic-lasso? No. Quick selection tool? No. Magic wand tool? No. Refine edge tool? No. Color range tool? No. Transform selection tool? No. You're pretty much limited to drawing your own selection by hand.

Pixelmator HAS magic wand, and quite a few ways to refine the selection. Magnetic Lasso is sorely missed though.

 

[maflynn]

If you can get Photoshop for cheap, I'd definitely recommend it. Once you have it, you can just keep upgrading (usually I upgrade every second release) and it's pretty cheap to run.

Bit the bullet and picked up CS5 and I'm happy I did. Its way more powerful then pixelmator. Pixelmator is not a bad product, but for me, PS fits my needs better.

Thanks for the advise.