New Wave Of Cool Image, Drawing Tools On The Mac.

The Mac does graphics and media very well, right? Everyone knows that, including Windows PC users.

What is happening on the Mac is a revolution in new graphic and image tools. Fast, sassy, easy-to-use, loaded with features, and much less expensive than anything from the Photoshop maker. Adobe should worry. Revolutions from little trends grow.

Sorry, this won’t be an in-depth review of the latest Mac graphic and image applications. That takes some time and I’m backed up with work but you need a heads-up on these ultra cool new tools because they represent what you will see more of on the Mac.

I’ve been a Photoshop user for at least 15 years, but the expense and the complexity of a tool I don’t use eight hours a day has caused me to stray. I confess. I don’t upgrade every Photoshop Creative Suite version.

For web work, Fireworks is where it’s at. Now that Adobe owns Fireworks and other Macromedia applications, buying, upgrading, maintaining same has become even more expensive. Worse, all those graphic and image tools are highly complex.

What’s a Mac user to do? If all you want is to create simple graphics, modify digital images, and not take a college course to learn how, what are your choices? Remarkably, the choices have increased on the Mac since Adobe requires access to your 401K and garnishment of your Social Security check just to pay their rent.

The Photoshop folks are leaving a huge number of Mac users on the table who can’t afford their products. In Adobe’s place are a new breed of graphic tools worth taking a long, close look at for their features and ease-of-use (something Adobe forgot about a decade ago).

Acorn
Flying Meat Software does all kinds of little graphic and image utilities for the Mac. Acorn is new, useful, affordable, and easy to master.

$40 gets you many tools you’ll find in Photoshop; tools you can actually use right away. Layers. iSight camera connection. Vector shapes. Text layers. Gradients (that are actually easy to create). Wait. There’s more.

Control opacity for each layer, and blend modes, too. Chain image filters to create unique effects (that is soooooo logical). No, Acorn is not Photoshop. It doesn’t have to be. It does provide the average Mac graphics user with the most used tools in a very straightforward setting. Nicely done and a nice blend of bit map tools and vector tools.

Pixelmator
Seldom will you find a new Mac graphic tool that looks sexier than Pixelmator. I think of it as a poor man’s Photoshop, or a rich man’s Acorn.

Layers and tools. Painting and image enhancing. If you love GraphicConverter but find the interface daunting and the number of tools frightening, Pixelmator could be your new digital photo friend.

Pixelmator is compatible with over 100 different file formats, some of which I didn’t even know exist, and I’ve been doing graphics for 20 years. There are tools for all the basics and layers, plus 20 tools for selection, retouching, typing, 15 color correction tools, over 50 filters which can be applied to each layer.

There’s a host of transformation tools, blending tools, and drag and drop done right. Drag a layer right to the Mac OS X desktop to export as a PNG file.

What sets Pixelmator apart, besides the plethora of graphics tools, features, is the sexy look. It’s a very inviting application and is so well laid out that you are drawn to try out features, rather than get frustrated trying to find them.

DrawIt
Drawing and illustration on the Mac was once the domain of Adobe Illustrator. These days you need a relative working in a bank to afford Adobe’s products, and you need a degree in graphic arts to be able to use them.

DrawIt is a drawing and illustrating tool for the Mac that takes a somewhat unique approach to tools. Gone are the palettes. No palettes. All the tools are right on the window with your image. Context changes as needed.

What I like about DrawIt is the familiarity. All the tools are easy to find, which makes them easier to use. There’s a tool bar across the top, familiar to most Mac users. But there are tools to the right and left of the image you’re working on.

Again, this is an application that won’t compete with Photoshop or Illustrator, but it brings some of the same capability to the Mac with even more usability, because all tools are visible but not complicated.

Images on all layers are non-destructive. That’s right. Non-destructive. That’s even better than 99 levels of un-do. Mac OS X comes with Core Image built-in and DrawIt takes advantage with over 50 image filters (hence the new wave of graphic and image tools). Masks include 20 blending tools.

If you’re a graphics or digital image professional, you may not be overly impressed with this trio. If you don’t use Photoshop or Illustrator at all because they’re both too expensive or too complicated, then take a look at each because the value is in the capability and ease-of-use.

Pixelmator is a fine substitute for users intimidated by Photoshop. Acorn and DrawIt have their place, too, and rely on the graphic and image manipulation tools built-in to Mac OS X.

With even more enhancements due in OS X Leopard, the next few years will be good for Mac users, perhaps less so for Photoshop or Illustrator upgrades. We’ll do a more in-depth review of each later this month.