While Adobe has just made their big announcement for the CS4 package, the Pixelmator Team has been working on a new beta of their Photoshop alternative, Pixelmator 1.3 “Tempo”. Yes, they have a habit of christening their releases with code names. Gives it a little more appeal, don’t you think?
Now, I’m not sure whether it is the placebo effect but the guys have really got the tempo going with this release. No, it’s not an official release yet. Even a public beta hasn’t been made available yet, so there’s no point looking around for it. The good folks at Pixelmator let us in on their little secret in advance so that we can share a quick review with you, our dear readers.
While definitely not a Photoshop competitor in the absolute sense—the comparison to Photoshop being unavoidable—Pixelmator is definitely a very capable image editor, with a full set of tools and controls that should please even some of the more advanced users. Moreover, Pixelmator has incorporated some very innovative features, some of which Adobe themselves could take a hint or two from. I come from a Photoshop background and had used Pixelmator very sparingly so far. Therefore, it’s as new to me as it might be for some of you. Let’s take it for a spin now, shall we?
On first look, Pixelmator looks like a sexed up Photoshop. There are dark palettes with light accents borrowed from the default Leopard HUD (or did they have this before Leopard?); the toolbar icons are just gorgeous with the popping animations and all; and the contrast provided by the dark interface makes a colourful canvas just pop. The palettes, however, are of the old school floating variety, which I think should’ve been done away with. An interface like Iris would have been a better implementation, but the current one is not bad in any way.
One of the best Photoshop-trumping features of Pixelmator is that it is a Cocoa application. This means that you have access to the iLife media browser (limited to Photos), the systemwide Color Picker and the Fonts panel. Being a Cocoa application also enables Pixelmator to access a whole bunch of quartz composer effects, which I will go over shortly.
This latest version of Pixelmator is souped up with little UI enhancements that give you the reassuring feeling that you are working on a Mac application. For instance, if I have the move tool selected, the layer is automatically ready for Free Transform (with which I reduced the size). This totally cuts down on a whole step of hitting the Free Transform shortcut. Also, whenever you invoke any dialog box or palette, the floating palettes fade away so that you can concentrate on your artwork. These are the kind of UI enhancements we look for in Mac OS X, but can never be found in something as Windowsy as Photoshop.
Adjusting Colour
Pixelmator’s Hue/Saturation dialog box brings up the most innovative colour wheel I have ever come across. Though seemingly complex, it’s actually based on a very simple concept. Anyone with a colour background will be able to grasp it instantly. There are six designated areas for Red, Green, and Blue, as well as Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. Yes, they have combined the two colour modes in a single dialog box. You don’t even need to understand colour to be able to use the wheel. Just spin it and watch your document change! It kinda has that make me rich feeling of being in colourful Las Vegas. Directly below it lie controls for brightness and saturation. Switching between tabs at the top allows you to edit only a certain colour, which actually helps you learn how colours work in a graphic.
The range of tools is very adequate. From simple ones like Hue/Saturation and Colour Balance to the more advanced tools like Curves and Levels, they should be enough to satisfy any colour adjustment need that you may have.
Unfortunately, all of the adjustments you make, including Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Color Balance, are permanent. You can Command+Z your way back to the previous state but you cannot fine tune your adjustment once it is made. Non-destructive editing is actually a feature of Cocoa and should have been implemented.
Selection tools
Pixelmator comes with all of the common selection options like the Lasso, Rectangle, and Magic Wand tools. Much like the Instant Alpha feature in iWork or Quick Selection in Photoshop, the Magic Wand tool will grab similar colours based on the how far you drag the mouse. You can make it select contiguous or non-contigous or even use modifier keys like Option-Drag to minus the selection. The tool uses Pixelmator’s own algorithm and, by the looks of it, it works pretty well. I was able to separate colours in a fairly complex painting and removing the sky from an image was a piece of cake. The Magic Wand tool carries over into the Paint Bucket tool as well, so you can instantly fill out a certain piece without worrying about having to select it first. Check out the before and after shots of using the Magic Wand tool below.
I was, however, disappointed to find that Pixelmator lacks the Pen tool, as well as any support for paths or shape layers. This will come as a big downer for many professionals. But since the average user doesn’t know squat about paths, the lack of this feature may not be quite so big a deal, depending on your proficiency with Photoshop.
From the Toolbox
Pixelmator includes the popular Rubber Stamp tool, as well as Blur and Sharpen. Absence of the Dodge and Burn tools will not be well received by graphics professionals. There are also buttons for Quick Mask and Standard mode, which often come in handy. For more complex masks and saving selections, a special Masks palette can be accessed from the toolbar.
In my pre-beta, the Text tool refused to work but I’m pretty sure it will in the final version. The OS X Fonts panel controls all of the text attributes, which should be a welcome change for many Mac users. This gives you standardised font control as well as access to all your font categories.
Layer management
With any serious image editing software comes the layers functionality. And while Pixelmator doesn’t offer a full array of features, it gives an adequate set of tools for layering up your editing process. First and foremost, the user interface touches to the layers palette are really good. Simple checkboxes to turn layers on/off and double click to rename. Even the previews of the image look great against the dark background. Standard features of locking or linking layers and opacity control are available, along with a full set of blending options.
It is sad, however, that there are no layer styles whatsoever. I, for one, am not sure how one creates a drop shadow without a layer style, specially someone like me, who’s been spoilt with all the object styles in Photoshop. You can, however, create masks, clipping masks, and create and edit transparent layers. One innovative feature is “New layer via iSight”, which instantly grabs a frame from your iSight camera and allows you to use it in your document.
Effects and Filters
This is where Pixelmator really shines. It uses Mac OS X’s OpenGL engine and features startling effects that are easy to create—a little too easy, perhaps. Standard filters like blur, sharpen, distortion effects, stylize, etc. are all there and work just fine. There are also some advanced effects like Pagecurl, which would take you plenty of time and expertise to create in Photoshop.
The UI of the controllers for each filter is really well designed. If your effect needs to begin from any particular spot on your document, the dialog box will come attached with an animated string. You can move the reference point on your document with which the string will animate further. This is a fairly useless but super cool feature nevertheless. And don’t tell me you don’t long for super cool effects. We all know how much time you spend going back and forth in the Time Machine browser for no reason whatsoever. The effects are also rendered live as you drag the sliders across, instead of waiting for you to leave the scrubber. So, in effect, you can animate that entire page curl I mentioned above.
The Filters menu also includes Quartz Composer effects, which are rendered live by your graphics card. So all the desktop effects you might have seen throughout the Mac OS X experience (the ones in Photo Booth, for instance) are fully operational in Pixelmator as well.
Performance
Pixelmator starts up really quick, which is handy when you want to do some quick editing. The program’s performance, however, suffers when it comes to large images. Applying the magic wand on a 6 megapixel JPEG (with a bunch of other apps and documents open) kind of put a strain on the system. It is not unbearable and, of course, will vary from system to system, but don’t expect super fast performance on heavy images.
This is partly due to the way Pixelmator renders images. Photoshop will not show you a good onscreen image, which many a times includes jagged edges and pixelation. It also waits for you to release any scrubber before rendering that effect. Pixelmator, on the other hand, renders everything live, which must be adding a toll on the resources.
However, users of previous versions of Pixelmator will be happy with this upcoming release. I tested this version against the 1.2 version and I’m certainly seeing a lot of performance improvements.
Help and support
The Help menu is very neatly organised and features a full list of keyboard shortcuts. The shortcuts are very similar to the ones used by Photoshop so you won’t get confused. Of course, you can customise any of the menu bar shortcuts by means of the OS X Keyboard Shortcuts preference pane.
If you can’t find what you need in the Help section, Pixelmator forums are an excellent resource and that’s where you should head to. The developers themselves participate in the forum and are very helpful. You will also find a lot of tutorials to achieve different effects on their blog.
Miscellaneous notables
Pixelmator supports Automator actions. I didn’t quite understand how this feature works, but from what I can tell, it allows batch processing, resizing, or adding quick filters to a bunch of images.
Photoshop support, along with a lot of different file formats, is included by default. So if you have a PSD, even with layers, Pixelmator will read it as you’d expect it to. I couldn’t get any PSDs to open up though, probably due to the software being in pre-beta stage, so I can’t tell how well it handles them. It is also extensible by plugins, which is a bit beyond the scope of this review.
In conclusion
So, what does this mean for you? If you work on large documents, with complex layer compositions and styles, then Pixelmator might not cut it. But if your goal is to create web graphics for your blog or even some general purpose home or small business print material, you will find Pixelmator a joy to use. The easy to use filters produce great results, the wand feature is very effective for cutting selections, and it provides most of the advanced functionality should you need it. With a gorgeous interface, nippy animations, and helpful UI enhancements, Pixelmator may just be the ‘Photoshop for the rest of us’.
Pixelmator, currently in version 1.2, comes at a very affordable $59. Existing users are eligible for free updates to all 1.x releases, so 1.3 will be a free update as well. A public beta is scheduled to be released in a day or two, followed by the final release a couple of weeks later. I highly recommend that you grab the free demo and check it out for yourself.
