Pixelmator is a wonderful little $60 pixel editor for Macintosh. I mentioned Pixelmator briefly some time ago when it was in version 1.2 and I thought I should spend a little more time discussing it now (its at version 1.6, today). In particular I wanted to attempt to answer a question—is Pixelmator ready to be your photo editor? Many photographers are using Aperture or Lightroom (I use Aperture) and have access to many image adjustment tools, but for those times that a pixel editor is necessary, could it be Pixelmator? Or do we need to stay with the tried and true, and expensive, Photoshop?
The Case For “Yes”
I can certainly be a discussion point as to just what tools are necessary for a pixel editor to be used as an adjunct to a photo workflow application such as Aperture. From my perspective, Pixelmator has a great many of what I consider to be necessary.
Let’s make a laundry list of the primary photographic tools in Pixelmator:
- The basics: exposure, levels, curves, hue. saturation, brightness, contrast
- Brushes with lots of options
- Full 64-bit archetecture
- Layers with blending modes, opacity, masks and layer groups
- Plenty of filters such as Gaussian Blur, Unsharp Mask and Halftone Screens
- Powerful selection tools including the Magic Wand
- Selection modification tools such as feather, expand and contract
- Support for pressure sensitive graphics tablets
- Open and saves over 100 image formats
- There’s even a Quick Mask mode!
As a bonus, Pixelmator has a modern Macintosh interface that leverages many of the Mac OS’s core tools such that it blends right in and looks and works like a first class Macintosh citizen. That may be a bit subjective, but the “feel” of one’s tools is important, too.
The Case For “No”
But make no mistake, Pixelmator is not Photoshop. And in a few areas, its not even Photoshop Elements, its prime competition for photographers looking for something less expensive and less intimating than Photoshop.
There are a few key things missing for photographers:
- High pass filter
- Healing brush or patch tool
- Adjustment layers
- 16-bit image processing
- There is only rudimentary localized sharpening
- Huge support community and resources
Enough?
At $60 dollars Pixelmator needs to make a very strong case against the $78 Photoshop Elements. After all, Photoshop Elements is the scaled down version of Photoshop and is Adobe’s pitch to photographers not ready for the expense and complexity of Photoshop. Photoshop Elements does not handle 16-bit image processing, but it covers the other missing tools in Pixelmator.
My verdict? Pixelmator is not yet ready; as smooth and Mac-like as it is. Photoshop Elements makes a better buy for its features, even at a few dollars more. Pixelmator is still in active development and new versions are released with some regularity, so its a little hard to guess what version 1.7 Geneva or even 2.0 (both now in process) will be bringing for photographers. If it could pick up the missing items I highlighted, it will make a great pixel editor for photographers.
