Silicon Summit

ReviewsHello Pixelmator; Goodbye Photoshop!

by Skip MundyYou might logically ask what leaving Adobe in a huff and a podcast called This Week In Photography has to do with a Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry

software review. All of these concepts merged this month in a very serendipitous collision. Of course it’s the money (some have said greed). Adobe has been been rolling in that commodity ever since partnering with Apple in the early

days of Postscript. But lately, it’s the arrogance of offering only one choice - the “subscribe to my cloud or get out of town” mentality that pushed me to make the choice to move to another town.

I own 15 different Adobe products, and over lots of years have sent nearly $10K in initial product and upgrade fees to Adobe. Basically, their software tools have allowed me to learn and stretch and teach and succeed at a career-load of projects. I’ve been a fan. I’ve put off purchase of a new computer on occasion in order to buy upgrades to programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign (and before that, PageMaker), Acrobat, GoLive and others. I have no beef with their quality. They remain the gold standard.

The beef is about the unilateral decision to force me to subscribe at $25-50/month from now on to use each of these products I’ve owned. I am a very small player in the publishing/graphic arts world. My software costs represent a significant percentage of my annual business revenue (some years MORE than my business revenue). The subscription model forces me out of business as I’ve known it and forces me to find new tools from other companies that will still allow me to create publishing solutions.

I am not alone in my shock and disgust at the new Adobe direction. Read Nasim Mansurov’s excellent blog at http://photographylife.com/adobe-creative-cloud-fail#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adobe-creative-cloud-fail to see how a much bigger fish in this pond feels about the change of direction.

About the time Adobe’s announcement smacked me in the chops, I listened to a wonderful podcast on This Week In Photography in which several photographers I respect were talking about how good a cheap little product from a much lesser-known vendor offers large features to rival those of Photoshop. The T.W.I.P. regulars are all heavy users of Adobe products. Oh, they spar a bit about the merits of Aperture vs. Lightroom, much in the same way they spar about the virtues of Nikon vs. Canon. However, these heavy users of Photoshop have all mentioned how smooth and easy and useful Pixelmator is. At $14.99 through the Mac App Store, Pixelmator does most of what PhotoShop does for me, and in some cases actually surpasses the $700 gorilla.

Another thing that pushed me to take a look at this David vs. Goliath match-up was Gary Rosenzweig who came down from Denver to give us (Silicon Mountain Macintosh User’s Group) a very straight-up presentation and explanation of how he got started doing MacMost videos.

Gary actually has 7 very useful Pixelmator videos available through his site. (Isn’t it neat

Silicon Summitthat he joined us in May and is willing to come back in the future?) Here are links to a couple of said videos:

http://macmost.com/creating-transparent-images-with-pixelmator.htmlhttp://macmost.com/pixelmator-layers-and-masks.htmlAnyhow, I hope the decision-makers at Adobe are paying attention to “small-guy” reviews like this and are aware of Victor Hugo’s reference to

the “power of an idea which has come.”At first glance, the power of Pixelmator is hidden. For instance, features that are touted in the intro videos are things like Predrawn Shapes or

Custom Shapes. “Oooh, you can make cookie-cutter hearts and butterflies!” Or, if you are a photographer, you can add an effect to make your scene at the beach look like your camera has a light leak. “Ooooowow!”

Don’t be fooled by these simplistic examples in their marketing. You should dig a little deeper into the program, because it probably can do most if not all that Photoshop would do and do it easier, faster and a LOT cheaper. Oh, and you don’t have to initiate a monthly subscription to a CLOUD!

Here are some features that make this a killer app:1. The Convert Text to Shape feature WOULD be fun for the kids, but jumps way out in front of the steep learning curves in Illustrator and

Photoshop for individually modifying characters in a stylized graphic text field. This feature alone is a deal shaker.

Here I typed in some text and converted it to a shape.

Next, I selected the “S”, stretched control points and rotated.

Silicon SummitFinally, I selected a Quick Mask, brushed in a shape, changed transparency and colors. This was so easy, fast and intuitive.

2. Export for Web is the easiest method I’ve seen for reducing the size of an image without losing detail for web placement or to send as an email attachment.

3. Making an object or text have a realistic reflection has been something Apple has done well for years. Here is a short tutorial that shows how easy this can be done in Pixelmator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c-05tSsKN0

4. If you know the tools: sponge, smudge, dodge, burn, clone, etc. from PhotoShop, you will have no trouble using them the same way in Pixelmator.

5. The healing brush and clone stamp tools may even work better than PS at removing power lines and unwanted artifacts from your photos. Watch this cool 2 minute video on how effective Pixelmator uses this tool that PhotoShop pioneered: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-jD1uScVYo

To prove it’s as easy as falling out of bed, I took this image of a gate below:

The thin green and white fence post and the “No Dumping” sign intrude greatly.

Silicon SummitA couple of passes with the Healing Brush, and it’s like the intrusions never existed.

6. The Magic Wand tool combines a couple of PhotoShop operations and speeds up complex selections mightily.7. The extensive Layer features work mostly the same way as Photoshop, with some reservations (see below).

Is Pixelmator the perfect replacement for PhotoShop? Clearly not for everyone.• If you absolutely need CMYK support.• If you absolutely need adjustment layers.Some say Pixelmator STILL does not support 16-bit images for editing. Gary Rosenwzweig, however, talks about retouching 32-bit images

with ease, Pixelmator website claims it is built for 64-bit architecture. Check this out if you are printing VERY LARGE images.• If you need pen pressure support.Actually, if you go to http://support.pixelmator.com/viewforum.php?f=4 you will find 8 long pages of features people would like to see in

Pixelmator (don’t we all have lists of features we’d like to see in our other programs?). Pixelmator probably is not for the kind of user who now spends hours each day using PhotoShop, although the Pixelmator folks come out

with frequent updates with new features. They won the Apple Design Award and the Best Mac App Award in 2011 and it’s only gotten better since then.

As a Lightroom user (and so far, Adobe has not forced me to subscribe to their Cloud in order to use it) most of the 16-bit, non-destructive editing tools I need are built in. Occasionally, I need a healing brush or other features which Pixelmator clearly has.

e SkinnyEvaluation: Pixelmator works beautifully for me so far.

System Requirement: OSX 10.6.8 or later

Company: Pixelmator Team Ltd

Price: Mac App Store $14.99

Mac App Store Rating: 5-Stars

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