The team behind Mac image editor Pixelmator plays David to Adobe's Goliath

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  • Reply 81 of 101

    I used PhotoShop for many years, it was my own personal and fairly light use, so the several hundred dollar price tag was high for me. After a few years of upgrades to my Mac, the software I thought I "owned" stopped working. In other words, I had in effect "rented" it for as many years as Adobe chose to support. Which was not many.

     

    The cost of a new CS for my limited use was too high, there was no viable "free" alternative, and "Acorn vs. Pixelmator" seemed to be the best low-cost choice. I tried both and eventually decided on Acorn, I can't remember why. This was a couple of years ago, and looking at the recent versions, if Acorn asks me again for money I might check out Pixelmator again.

     

    Meanwhile, I have been very happily using Acorn. I was surprised by how much it seems like a PhotoShop clone. On one hand, this makes it easier to use, with all those keyboard shortcuts, but on the other you would think that they could have found easier ways of doing things than Adobe's original version.

     

    So, good luck "Acorn vs. Pixelmator", may the best team win .....

  • Reply 82 of 101
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tonkin View Post

     

    The recent security breach at adobe has resulted in a review of options.


    So when Apple was hacked a couple months earlier resulting in user identity compromises, did  you review your options then?

  • Reply 83 of 101
    My gut tells me Apple will buy this app eventually. It just seems so right. It will be a big PS competitor down the road for sure.
  • Reply 84 of 101
    jlanddjlandd Posts: 873member
    hypoluxa wrote: »
    My gut tells me Apple will buy this app eventually. It just seems so right. It will be a big PS competitor down the road for sure.


    One reason I don't think this is inevitable is because Pixelmator relies so heavily on hooking into Apple's Core Image that I'm not sure that they have any code of value to Apple. This is in no way a criticism of what they've put out, but if Apple saw fit to have another image program situated between iPhoto and Aperture they could do it with the same existing system hooks they make available to developers rather than buying any product to obtain it's abilities.
  • Reply 85 of 101
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by hypoluxa View Post



    My gut tells me Apple will buy this app eventually. It just seems so right. It will be a big PS competitor down the road for sure.

     

    Bleh. It's cheaper to the point of being almost free. There's nothing particularly interesting about the application. It would be interesting to me if someone with zero experience in either and no pricing knowledge was offered a free license of one or the other. At that point you start to pick up interesting comparisons. I am a bit surprised they had to drop the price to $15 from the prior $30 or whatever it was. That's usually a sign of poor differentiation. I don't really hate the application or anything. I admire some aspects. They used existing libraries wherever possible and don't backdate OSX support very far when an update is made. This allows them to maintain a small staff. Compare that to Adobe where features have to work across platforms in the most similar manner possible. The last time the two looked drastically different was OS 8 or maybe 9. Because of the cross platform issues and probably a desire to maintain stability, they use many of their own proprietary features and algorithms. I absolutely abhor some of them, but it's important to realize the only reason they come up as a PS competitor is due to price. It's far cheaper than elements and falls somewhere between elements and PS on overall features.

  • Reply 86 of 101
    cabassi wrote: »
    I'm surprised no one has mentioned image editing app Acorn in the comments. When I Google "Acorn vs. Pixelmator," I find lots of comparisons, but none that crowns either the definitive winner.
    Yes, you are right! Acorn is worth mentioning. I use it and like it.
  • Reply 87 of 101
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheMacMan View Post



    "Pixelmator was born in 2007 when brothers Saulius and Aidas Dailide went searching for an OS X-native image editor and came up empty handed."



    What does that mean? PS was born decades ago. Am I missing something?

    Photoshop was not released as a fully OS X-native/Intel-compatible programme until sometime after Apr 2007. Prior to that, it was a 'legacy' programme which ran PowerPC and OS 9 code under Rosetta.

     

    Cheers

  • Reply 88 of 101

    Die Adobe, DIE!

     

    Lemon Bon Bon.

  • Reply 89 of 101

    Pixelmator 3.  Excellent release.

     

    Adjustment Layers (hopefully) for the next release...

     

    These guys are 100% Mac developers supporting the latest Apple tech'.  It's fast.  Just got even faster.  Great  'gpu' accelerated filters.

     

    It's getting better and better.

     

    A steal for the £20 price.  What's more, they give so many point releases away for free.  BARGAIN!  Now...

     

    ...THAT's how to look after your user base.

     

    As for Adobe.  I hope Karma forces them to eat their hubris.

     

    I have the excellent Manga Studio 5EX (Which SPANKS PS for Comic Art work...), Pixelmator 3.  The price of both cost me £120 for Manga Studio 5 EX because I got Pixelmator 3 for £0!!!  I also have the superb Procreate painting app' on iPad.  A holy trinity of draw, image manipulations and painting apps if EVER there was such a holy three.

     

    Vs the stratospheric greed price for PS '6'.  Screw Adobe.

     

    Lemon Bon Bon.

  • Reply 90 of 101

    I payed the best part of £2000 on Adobe's greed machine only for incompatibility rear it's ugly head.

     

    Stuff that.

     

    Lemon Bon Bon.

  • Reply 91 of 101
    Great coverage AI. Articles like these helps so many small development teams around the world. Moreover I was always curious to know the guys behind such an amazing product like pixelmator. Please do the same coverage if possible for Scrivener, another software that I absolutely love.
  • Reply 92 of 101
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tardis View Post

     

    I used PhotoShop for many years, it was my own personal and fairly light use, so the several hundred dollar price tag was high for me. After a few years of upgrades to my Mac, the software I thought I "owned" stopped working. In other words, I had in effect "rented" it for as many years as Adobe chose to support. Which was not many.

     

    The cost of a new CS for my limited use was too high, there was no viable "free" alternative, and "Acorn vs. Pixelmator" seemed to be the best low-cost choice. I tried both and eventually decided on Acorn, I can't remember why. This was a couple of years ago, and looking at the recent versions, if Acorn asks me again for money I might check out Pixelmator again.

     

    Meanwhile, I have been very happily using Acorn. I was surprised by how much it seems like a PhotoShop clone. On one hand, this makes it easier to use, with all those keyboard shortcuts, but on the other you would think that they could have found easier ways of doing things than Adobe's original version.

     

    So, good luck "Acorn vs. Pixelmator", may the best team win .....


     

    Both Pixelmator and Acorn are quite limited in terms of 16/32 bit per channel support. And Acorn's levels and curve dialogs are an absolute joke. Acorn might sport a nice GUI, but the actual functionality is quite shallow indeed. Not even comparable to Gimp for real image editing.

  • Reply 93 of 101
    @feynman : Sketch is not bad for now, still ahs a way to go, but the team is pretty friendly and working hard.
    I like their tool ^^
  • Reply 94 of 101
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheMacMan View Post



    "Pixelmator was born in 2007 when brothers Saulius and Aidas Dailide went searching for an OS X-native image editor and came up empty handed."



    What does that mean? PS was born decades ago. Am I missing something?



    The word "native".

  • Reply 95 of 101
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. View Post

     

     

    These guys are 100% Mac developers supporting the latest Apple tech'.  It's fast.  Just got even faster.  Great  'gpu' accelerated filters.

     


     

    How well does Pixelmator work on older Macs (more than 3 years old) that do not have the latest gpu's?  For example, the tools which attempt to perform live adjustments to an image as you move a slider?  How is the speed compared to Photoshop running on that same Mac?

  • Reply 96 of 101
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Haggar View Post

     

     

    How well does Pixelmator work on older Macs (more than 3 years old) that do not have the latest gpu's?  For example, the tools which attempt to perform live adjustments to an image as you move a slider?  How is the speed compared to Photoshop running on that same Mac?


     

      The latest version requires ML, so that limits how far back you can go.  My experience on older Macs with previous versions using a SL version (haven't tried 3.0) was that it was nicely responsive, faster than PS.  But that was on files less than 3500 pixels or so.  On larger files it would do worse and on very large files it misbehaved pretty consistently (wrong filter results, deleting half the image, quitting, etc).  I hope they've taken care of that in 3.0.    I couldn't get to first base with 6,000 x 4750.  I forget which file size I found it hitting it's wall.  Around 60 - 65 meg, which is far from asking too much of it if it's your main pixel editor.

  • Reply 97 of 101
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member

    For all the people trashing Adobe, I'm curious to see how well Pixelmator can replace Photoshop in medium to large design shops that are cross platform, and which need to collaborate with outside firms that use Adobe.  In these use cases, is Pixelmator a drop-in replacement for Photoshop?

  • Reply 98 of 101
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    haggar wrote: »
    For all the people trashing Adobe, I'm curious to see how well Pixelmator can replace Photoshop in medium to large design shops that are cross platform, and which need to collaborate with outside firms that use Adobe.  In these use cases, is Pixelmator a drop-in replacement for Photoshop?

    That is not Pixelmator's market.

    Pixelmator's market is the home user up to prosumer level.
  • Reply 99 of 101

    Of course you're correct about the Apple login/birthdate/flaw, as well as the plentiful Windows missteps. The Adobe 'breach' was interesting for the verified volume of customer data acquired and posted. Using a breadth of OS's and software does involve re-evaluating uses and security. 

  • Reply 100 of 101

    I just got around to this post… it’s funny because I just used Pixelmator a couple of days!  I really appreciate Pixelmator, a beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast, and powerful image editor for OS X. It has everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images.

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