Today we’re looking at a brand new application for the Mac called Pixelmator. As the makers of Pixelmator say, it is an image editing program “for the rest of us”. This is the stripped down version of Photoshop that anyone can use, especially that the price tag is only $59 dollars and not the colossal $600+ that Photoshop may cost you.When you first launch Pixelmator you will be met with a familiar interface to those who are used to Photoshop. The toolbars are not connected to the screen edges, but are instead floating around in a Mac app fashion. You also notice the subtle but nice animations that are embedded throughout the app—simple things like the little tool buttons popping out when you select them—these things make the experience very pleasant and refreshing. The overall collection of tools is what you would expect. You have your main tool selection in its own window, a layers window, a swatch selector, a brush tool and a context sensitive tool window as well. You can move these tool palettes around your screen and arrange them in a familiar order and location.The selections in the top menu bar are also familiar to Photoshop users. You have your Edit menu, where you can transform and adjust different things on your image, you have the Layers menu where you can move and customize your layers, you have your Filters menu where you can apply different visual effects to your image and so on. If you do any graphics work, you’ll be right at home with Pixelmator—indeed, even many of the Photoshop shortcuts will work. If you’re new, the interface may be a little daunting, though it is difficult for me to say what a newcomer will feel about it given my prior graphics design experience, however I still think there are a lot of tools and windows floating around and someone who’s never used an image editing program in their life will probably be a little overwhelmed. They are all however clearly labeled, and I think the program will be more accessible than something like Photoshop.

Pixelmator’s bloom filter

One of the things I love about Pixelmator is the fact that it uses the GPU chip to do much of its heavy lifting work—that’s the chip sitting on your graphics card. This means that it leaves your main processor to focus on other things and makes the program run much faster. Indeed, Photoshop feels very bloated and slow compared to Pixelmator—all that legacy code and all those thousands of features are slowing the program down. Pixelmator has fresh new code, with no old baggage lying around, and so runs quickly and efficiently. When you apply the filters for example, you can literally drag the scales left and right and have the effect previewed live on the canvas, with almost no delay at all.

Rope effect in the Pixelmator UI

Another thing I love about the program is the elegant interface. Unlike the old grey tool windows in Photoshop, Pixelmator features transparent black windows. This gives the whole application a very sleek and modern style. Function is of course most important, but I cannot review this application without mentioning its looks. Just take a look at the screenshots to get the idea—the developers have done a great job at making their app very visually appealing, and so I think the user experience is also enhanced. Indeed, it feels wrong going back to Photoshop after using Pixelmator—you feel like you’re going back to using something old and outdated, rather something fresh and modern. Other interesting touches are little “ropes” that hang out from the filter windows and link to a location on the canvas. These ropes show you what filter applies to which area of the picture, and you can move that location around by dragging the mouse—a very unique and fun interface feature.

Pixelmator uses the OS X font and color palettes

Because Pixelmator is built only for the Mac, it makes use of some inbuilt OS X services. These include the color palette and the font picker, and you will be instantly familiar with them as they are used in many other Mac applications. Certain Photoshop shortcuts also seem to work in Pixelmator—for example, tapping Command+U brings up the familiar Hue and Saturation window, which behaves and performs similarly to that of Photoshop. The familiarity of the interface is great, and lets you use the app without having to read the manual. Even when some UI features were new, I found that I could easily work out how to use them in Pixelmator.

Pixelmator tool windows

Does Pixelmator lack anything? Being such a young application and an early release, the feature set isn’t particularly extensive—that is if you’re comparing it with Photoshop or other established graphics editing packages. On its own, Pixelmator really is a complete app. If you’re new to graphics design or just need something simple to edit your photos, then Pixelmator is a great choice for you. If you want more, then you may prefer something like Photoshop. Pixelmator currently lacks things like vector editing, layer styles, some tools (like healing and dodge/burn), advanced brush customization and certain workflow shortcuts. This is only a first release, and what’s included is very good however. It has a lot of the stuff you would expect: it has pretty much all the tools you need (brushes, pens, pencils, cloning, blurs, lasso etc etc.) and has many adjustment features and filters. Because everyone has different needs, the best thing to do would be to check out the application for yourself, as there is a free trial available, and see if its right for you.

Pixelmator’s simple brush customizer

Conclusion

Well… in its current state, Pixelmator is certainly no Photoshop killer—but then again, the developers never said it was—it is exactly what they say it is, an image editing program “for the rest of us”. If you’re a professional designer, the lack of many layer styles, filters, tools and certain shortcuts (e.g. I couldn’t find an easy way to rotate and scale layers, so had to call up the transform functions from the menu) means that Pixelmator will not replace Photoshop… not yet that is. What I think though is that Pixelmator has huge potential, even to maybe one day become the tool of choice for many professionals—that is when the developers update it with new features and upgrades, the young Pixelmator has a very good chance to mature into a very strong and powerful application. Photoshop is bloated with legacy code—it is the past. Pixelmator is fresh and new. The use of the GPU chip together with the lack of old baggage means that Pixelmator starts up quickly and runs fast. This is certainly an application to watch, it’s only $40 from Amazon (see here) and you can even try it out today by downloading a free trial and see what you think.