First look: Pixelmator for iPhone is a feature-packed mobile image editor
With its first iPhone app offering, Pixelmator stuffs in a dizzying array of photo editing tools normally restricted to more powerful devices like Mac and iPad, including full-featured image adjustment options, a wealth of paint brushes, layer support, effects, a polished design and much more.
According to Pixelmator cofounder Saulius Dailide, Pixelmator for iPhone when it launches on the iOS App Store later today will be the first mobile image editor to boast "all the tools" photographers, painters and graphic designers need to create great works. After testing out a progression of beta versions over the past couple weeks, we tend to agree.
Like other Pixelmator releases on Mac and iPad, Pixelmator for iPhone is brimming with promise. With a deep toolbox and desktop-class features, the app is not just one of the best image editors for iPhone, it ranks among the best in the category for iOS.
Perhaps most impressive is the app's powerful graphics engine that allows for quick color adjustments, effects application, stylized painting, text and object generation, multiple layer support and more. As an example, the screenshots above show various color adjustments, which can be applied via preset filters or manually. Slider controls dictate RGB and global levels, while more advanced users can modify a histogram-based curve with multiple anchor points.
Other color adjustments like temperature and tint are also controlled by sliders, but incorporate a color picker tool for setting base levels. The same pixel-level tool is also seen in the robust Color Picker, which samples colors from an image for painting.
The team at Pixelmator managed to squeeze in support for layers, an important tool available in desktop editors for years. Layers support opens the door to a flexible editing workflow. Importantly, the app offers non-destructive layer styles, which means adjustments like drop shadows and fills don't affect the original image.
To handle layer management, Pixelmator hides transparencies, fill layers and more in a slide-out drawer accessible with swipe. From here layers can be selected one at a time, nested in groups, merged, blended, rearranged, deleted, adjusted and more.
Distort tools are built on Apple's Metal graphics engine for extremely fast rendering. Pick a tool like Twirl, set size and intensity and paint over an image with your finger to instantly create eye-catching modifications. Impressively, applying Distort effects comes with no perceivable lag. Further, mistakes can be corrected with an undo button or selectively via a Restore tool.
The app features more than 100 brushes, from pencil tips to sponges to spray cans, each of which feature scaling and transparency adjustment options. Some of the best effects come from what Pixelmator calls wet-painting technology. Integrated into a handful of watercolor brushes, the feature generates lifelike water splotches and runs. Eraser selections are similarly diverse, allowing for fine tuning of multi-layer projects.
Combined with the Color Picker tool mentioned above, as well as an on-the-fly eyedropper tool and extensive color palette, Pixelmator's brush implementation is formidable.
As with Pixelmator's Mac app, the iPhone version comes with stellar retouching and repair tools, a variety of templates, support for iCloud syncing and Handoff compatibility. The app also sports an extension for Apple's Photos app that lets users tap Pixelmator effects in-app.
Pixelmator will be available later today for $4.99 on the iOS App Store. Current Pixelmator for iPad users will be able to download the universal app for free.
According to Pixelmator cofounder Saulius Dailide, Pixelmator for iPhone when it launches on the iOS App Store later today will be the first mobile image editor to boast "all the tools" photographers, painters and graphic designers need to create great works. After testing out a progression of beta versions over the past couple weeks, we tend to agree.
Like other Pixelmator releases on Mac and iPad, Pixelmator for iPhone is brimming with promise. With a deep toolbox and desktop-class features, the app is not just one of the best image editors for iPhone, it ranks among the best in the category for iOS.
Perhaps most impressive is the app's powerful graphics engine that allows for quick color adjustments, effects application, stylized painting, text and object generation, multiple layer support and more. As an example, the screenshots above show various color adjustments, which can be applied via preset filters or manually. Slider controls dictate RGB and global levels, while more advanced users can modify a histogram-based curve with multiple anchor points.
Other color adjustments like temperature and tint are also controlled by sliders, but incorporate a color picker tool for setting base levels. The same pixel-level tool is also seen in the robust Color Picker, which samples colors from an image for painting.
The team at Pixelmator managed to squeeze in support for layers, an important tool available in desktop editors for years. Layers support opens the door to a flexible editing workflow. Importantly, the app offers non-destructive layer styles, which means adjustments like drop shadows and fills don't affect the original image.
To handle layer management, Pixelmator hides transparencies, fill layers and more in a slide-out drawer accessible with swipe. From here layers can be selected one at a time, nested in groups, merged, blended, rearranged, deleted, adjusted and more.
Distort tools are built on Apple's Metal graphics engine for extremely fast rendering. Pick a tool like Twirl, set size and intensity and paint over an image with your finger to instantly create eye-catching modifications. Impressively, applying Distort effects comes with no perceivable lag. Further, mistakes can be corrected with an undo button or selectively via a Restore tool.
The app features more than 100 brushes, from pencil tips to sponges to spray cans, each of which feature scaling and transparency adjustment options. Some of the best effects come from what Pixelmator calls wet-painting technology. Integrated into a handful of watercolor brushes, the feature generates lifelike water splotches and runs. Eraser selections are similarly diverse, allowing for fine tuning of multi-layer projects.
Combined with the Color Picker tool mentioned above, as well as an on-the-fly eyedropper tool and extensive color palette, Pixelmator's brush implementation is formidable.
As with Pixelmator's Mac app, the iPhone version comes with stellar retouching and repair tools, a variety of templates, support for iCloud syncing and Handoff compatibility. The app also sports an extension for Apple's Photos app that lets users tap Pixelmator effects in-app.
Pixelmator will be available later today for $4.99 on the iOS App Store. Current Pixelmator for iPad users will be able to download the universal app for free.
Comments
For a more professional desktop solution and a worthy Photoshop replacement, download Affinity Photo Beta, which is very very promising.
This app has gone missing. No Longer Available in the App Store. And the update on the iPad delivers the same message. What gives?
The story says it will be available later today.
This looks pretty cool, but do/will people really do this type of work on a phone???
Thanks for link, will definitely try this out. I see it imports and exports .psd too. So I assume full layer support. I like that they have a vector and layout package in the works too, and that they are separate, I find apps that try to clunk all this into one are clumsy. I use Adobe CC daily and have used Photoshop and Illustrator (and Freehand) since they were all early beta but always looking for alternatives and supplemental applications. I wonder of they have considered a Muse (AKA son of iWeb) like app too?
EDIT:
Sorry OT kind of ... Check this out PS users! JEEEZ! :smokey:
For an app built by essentially two people, it's done a very good job for a long time. It has grown away from its roots as a Photoshop clone, and does many things well. Would I like to see Affinity Photo? Yes. Because the more alternatives to Adobe CC licensing and complexity there are, the happier I am.
I'm really looking forward to Affinity's Publisher program. Besides Adobe InDesign, what else is there? Quark? Scribus?
PageMaker of course ... Oh wait a minute ...
So good news for those who already purchased the iPad version. You can go downoad the iPhone versions to your phone with pout the additional cost of having to purchase anything.
It really highlights that functionality is only relevant if delivered via good design. Pixelmator team have it, Adobe really don't, you'd expect the opposite.
I want to see more/all of the features available as an extension though.
Pixelmator, remember, was started in 2006 and built on the lowliest of 13" white MacBooks, so that it would always run fast, where Photoshop was much more particular about needing faster hardware to avoid beachballs.
For an app built by essentially two people, it's done a very good job for a long time. It has grown away from its roots as a Photoshop clone, and does many things well. Would I like to see Affinity Photo? Yes. Because the more alternatives to Adobe CC licensing and complexity there are, the happier I am.
I'm really looking forward to Affinity's Publisher program. Besides Adobe InDesign, what else is there? Quark? Scribus?
Amen.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Pixelmator. Got to give them props for having an app that spans desktop, iPad and iPhone.
Now. Get Pix' to handle adjustment layers? And I'm happy.
It's more than good enough. It does 'everything' my Photoshop version 4 (with a few caveats perhaps...) could do and much faster.
Digital printing in RGB mode? Np. Between that, Affinity and Manga Studio Pro?
I'm good for all my comic book drawing and colouring needs. Photoshop? Don't need it. I bought two expensive copies and with the recent 'rental' mode, I'm done wanting it anymore.
It's called voting with your wallet. The competition is more than 'good enough.' I'm not entrenched in the Photoshop work flow. It's nice but it's not the 'final' solution.
Matchsticks and muddied water come to mind.
Lemon Bon Bon.