![]() Presumably Pixelmator Pro will improve over time, but the closest match to the photo of dice was “game controller,” which is still pretty funny. You can also Control-click the layer to bring up other possible names. Your mileage may vary, but it’s a starting point. It managed to detect a cat, tree, food, and car-but hilariously labeled a pair of dice as “food” and a traffic cone as a bottle. Does it work? About as reliably as any AI works these days, which is to say it does a pretty decent job. This auto-naming of layers is a nifty time saver if you’re bringing in a bunch of photos as layers all at once and want to avoid that “Layer 1” through “Layer 9999” problem. However, Pixelmator Pro does have a few layer tricks of its own, like naming layers with machine learning. For the rest of us, those options are likely overkill. If you’re doing Bert Monroy-level work, Photoshop options like giving layers colors or putting them in folders is an absolute must. Photoshop is an F-15 compared to Pixelmator Pro’s commuter jet here. (I should note that version 1.3 of Pixelmator Pro just added clipping masks to the contextual menu above-a welcome addition.) Compare what I get when I right-click a layer in Pixelmator Pro against the same in Photoshop: Overall, Pixelmator Pro has many fewer layer options. Pixelmator Pro offers the option of no visible layers (the default), a thumbnail view, and a list view. This interface has been around since the early days of Photoshop. Photoshop presents layers with thumbnails in various sizes and adds masks or clipping layers visually. I won’t go into why eye strain can be a problem with a “dark” interface as you can read more about that here. Luckily, Pixelmator 1.2 added a “light appearance,” but it’s available only in Mojave. In Photoshop, you can change the default dark grey to black, white, or the more eyeball-friendly medium grey. (The most notable exception is Apple’s system-wide color picker, which looks ancient these days and stubbornly appeared in the lower left of my gigantic screen every time I opened it.)Ī number of pro photographers initially groused about Pixelmator Pro’s lack of interface customization. There are a few palettes that float above the interface, but this is a relatively minor gripe. This attention to detail is a testament to Pixelmator Pro’s Apple-esque design, and that carries through into the engineering, which we’ll get to in a moment. This polish continues throughout, as fades and physics create a more tactile experience than things simply appearing. ![]() If you move your mouse to the right, the tool palette appears with a lovely fade. No layers, no apparent tools, just a big rectangle of workspace. In fact, Pixelmator Pro begins perhaps too minimally, offering little more than a big, dark grey blank slate for your work. You find that trade-off throughout the software, and as you might expect it’s often a balance between capability and simplicity. ![]() This is an overarching theme: Photoshop has so many features that they overwhelm the interface, while Pixelmator Pro sacrifices obscure features for ease of use. Let’s begin with Photoshop’s interface for starting a new document.Īs you can see, Pixelmator Pro is more streamlined. However, if you simply need to work with photos and manipulate them for the Web-which is likely a lot of Photoshop users out there-then Pixelmator Pro offers some advantages for a lot less money. Adobe offers a decent deal for subscribers: between online storage, fonts, and other workflow niceties, you won’t easily replicate that with a single application. If you do heavy print work, you rely on other Creative Cloud apps, or if you’re plugged into a workflow reliant upon some of the connected features available in Creative Cloud, I can save you some time: forget it. But can the $59.99 Pixelmator Pro replace Photoshop, which will set you back at least $9.99 per month and as much as $52.99 per month? In 2018, the Pixelmator Team released Pixelmator Pro, aimed squarely at professional Photoshop users. ![]() Photoshop is the undisputed king of photo editors, but for years the developers of Pixelmator have been challenging that throne, especially for amateurs and part-time professionals. #1668: Updated Rapid Security Responses, OS public betas, screen saver bug fixed, “Red Team Blues” book review.#1669: OS security updates, ambiguity of emoji, small business payments with Melio, Twitter now X.#1670: Arc Web browser hits 1.0 release, “Do You Use It?” polls about Apple features.#1671: Apple Q3 2023 earnings, new Beats headphones and earbuds, Stage Manager adoption rate, do you use Spotlight?.1672: The hidden power of Google Sheets, Launchpad usage levels, Emergency SOS via satellite in the Maui fires, do you use proxy icons?. ![]()
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