5 Ways Pixelmator Is The Photoshop For The Rest Of Us

Value is my middle name. I’m not Mac360’s Value Vixen™ for no reason. I have a reputation to uphold. Mac software can be expensive so I look for what works; sometimes free, sometimes not.

By reputation and features and longevity, Photoshop is the undisputed king of Mac or Windows graphic applications. Including the high price tag king. Is there a Mac alternative that sets my hair on fire (figuratively speaking, you know)? Sure. GIMP. Nah, just kidding. We all need a good laugh.

Expensive Beast

Photoshop is a beast, a behemoth so complex and contrived that you need book after book to make it work for you, as well as a second mortgage to pay for the luxury of ownership. Is there a more affordable alternative?

Yes. No, it’s not GIMP. Please. Yes, GIMP is free, but it’s not the general image manipulation program for the rest of us, despite what our geekier Mac and Windows friends may imply.

What about Photoshop Elements 7? After all, it looks and feels like Photoshop, sans a few features you won’t miss, and it’s a lot less money; $150 for Windows users. What about Mac users?

Elementary School

We all know how much Adobe loves Mac users. Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac hasn’t been upgraded for a couple of years, and is known to be buggy on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. So much for that attractive $59 price tag on Amazon.

Actually, $59 sounds about right for a competent, attractive Photoshop workalike. Amazingly, that’s the price tag for Pixelmator, which bills itself as image editing for the rest us. The implication is that the rest of us can’t afford or can’t learn the increasing complexities of Photoshop.

Since Adobe has seen fit to stiff Mac users yet again, let’s take a long, hard look at a very attractive Photoshop alternative.

Loaded and Light

Pixelmator has been around a few years and continues to improve. Now at version 1.5, Pixelmator Spider adds a number of features not found in Photoshop. If you’ve used any version of Photoshop or Elements you’ll be right at home in Pixelmator.

This is especially so if you’re prone to a fetish for floating palettes of tools and Apple’s new found fetish for black and charcoal. Pixelmator opens to an elegant window—Create New Image, Open Existing Image, Start Using Pixelmator.

Tools

Pixelmator installs with a drag and drop (try that, Adobe). Double click and you’re ready to go with a bunch of floating palettes and a click away from tools of the trade.

With Pixelmator’s powerful, pixel-accurate collection of selection tools you can quickly and easily select any part of your images. That means you can edit and apply special effects to portions of your pictures, remove unwanted objects or even cut out objects from one picture to put on another.

That’s advertising talk for the basic selection tools. Wait. There’s more. Painting tools.

The real greatness of these tools is the ability to use different brush sizes, shapes, hardness, even blending modes when painting. You can paint with Pixelmator as you would traditionally, play with beautiful gradients or even fill colors with other ones.

More advertising copy to get you excited about finally dumping Photoshop and GIMP with an affordable alternative. Pixelmator’s Retouching Tools are familiar, ala Photoshop style, including text, color analysis and manipulation, cropping, transforming, and much more.

Layers

Photoshop and Pixelmator share the world of image editing via layers. If you’re familiar with the former, you’ll love the latter. But Pixelmator lets you play amateur by incorporating your Mac’s iSight camera directly to a layer.

I’m not sure how much professional value there is in that feature but it’s there, just in case, you know, you were searching for a professional graphic tool that uses iSight images.

Color

Pixelmator calls their color correction tools simple, elegant, and intuitive. That’s short for not too many features, but enough to make it useful.

There’s curves, color balance, exposure, hue, luminance, saturation, as well as a channel mixer. It’s not Photoshop but it doesn’t have to be because it’s for the rest of us. Still, color tools are easy to use with sliders and pull down selections. Not as precise, but twice as nice.

Considering the $59 price tag, you might think of Pixelmator as Photoshop Jr. Click to Page 2 for five more features that will make it easy to seal the deal and say goodbye to Photoshop. Go to Page 2...