The Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman, a second significant update to the GPU-powered image editing tool, furnishing users with everything they need to create, edit, and enhance still images. Available today as a free software update, Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman features rulers, guides, grid, snap, color balance, auto enhance, curves, and polygonal lasso tools and much more.
“Pixelmator opened the door for all users to explore their imaginative side through image creation, editing, and enhancement,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team, in the press release. “Now with powerful, but easy-to-use rulers, guides, curves, auto enhance, color balance, and polygonal lasso tools, Pixelmator provides users with an even wider range of creative opportunities.”
Pixelmator 1.2 introduces a powerful rulers tool, which is helpful for the exact positioning of images or elements. Additionally, users can adjust the rulers origin to measure from a specific point on an image and change the units of measurement to pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, or percent. Guides appear as nonprinting lines that float over the image, which users can add, move, remove, and lock. They can also utilize the grid to lay out elements symmetrically and the snap feature to position selection edges precisely.
Powerful, yet user-friendly new adjustment options in Pixelmator 1.2 include a sophisticated curves tool for adjusting the entire tonal range or making precise adjustments to individual color channels in an image and a new color balance tool essential for controlling the overall color mixture in an image for color correction work. Pixelmator 1.2 also furnishes users with a new auto enhance tool, which can dramatically improve less-than-perfect images with one click, and a new polygonal lasso tool, useful for drawing straight-edged segments of a selection border.
In addition to a free transform tool, Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman features new and updated help documentation, enhanced Automator actions and transform tools, minor user interface and compatibility improvements, as well as bug fixes.
Pixelmator 1.2 is available to order for US$59. Pixelmator 1.2 is a free update to current Pixelmator customers. Pixelmator requires Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later, but 10.5 is recommended. More information, along with the 30-day Pixelmator trial, is available as a free download at the Pixelmator Web site.
More info here.
MacDailyNews Take: MacDailyNews has been using Pixelmator exclusively in place of Adobe Photoshop since December 2007 for online graphics. Obviously, we can recommend Pixelmator. It is “demoware,” so you can try it before you buy.
Think not thing!
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@A. Dumas I agree that would be a great comparison. Throw in a few others like Graphic Convertor, Lineform, Draw It, Swift Publisher, Pixen, 3D Maker, Paintbrush, Naked Light, Live Quartz, Google Sketchup, Art Text, etc. I know they don’t all match up but for the money with say 3 apps or whatever I would imagine you could not totally replace Adobe but do nearly everything it can on the cheap.
For what little I need or use Pixelmator, I’m all for it! If these guys can hang in there and not get bought out too soon I’d bet their 2.x or 3.x version would be kickin’! I was an early adopter and I’m happy to support them and at least they’re regularly updating unlike some devs that take forever to get out an update.
@ A. Dumas you might check out this article at Mac360. Not a head to head or a chart but not too bad.
http://mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/new_wave_of_cool_image_drawing_tools_on_the_mac/
Be sure to check out the Readers Talk Back at the end.
Hmm, I stumbled across this link and seen quite a few I’ve never heard of:
http://www.thriftmac.com/Graphics/
Thx, phantasmosxmagnum.
I’ve checked loads of info WRT my list — haven’t come across those links.
There’s an old saying: If you’re having trouble choosing, it’s because you haven’t got enough information.
I couldn’t choose between iWork and NeoOffice. So, I have both
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So, for raster and vector art — for now, I’ll choose everything!
@Mac-nugget:
PS7 and Illustrator10 survived the all those…up until Leopard. I view it as an Adobe issue — which has been become more sorry-assed as the years go buy.
…this is from some who has owned Illustrator since v1 (1987) and Photoshop since v1….and has seen numerous Adobe software “investments” die on the vine (Pagemaker, LiveMotion, Dimensions, Premiere, GoLive, etc)
Adobe investments?
So in a way you would rather have Pagemaker then InDesign?
Dimensions is inside Illustrator now, so you can get that functionality back with an upgrade.
LiveMotion is the only one that I will sourly miss (much better UI then Flash). GoLive was to buggy in the end, and Premiere is part of the CS3 video edition suite.
Really, if you have the CS3, you would benefit form having Universal Binary native code. If you have an Intel Mac, this is a good investment, if you don’t then re-install Tiger and be done with it.
@mac-nugget:
well, indesign will have to be upgraded to move to leopard as well.
I’ve designed and layed-out several 400+ paged highly formatted books with PM and didn’t have a problem. the improvements with indesign could have been incorporated inside PM, but in general, I’m OK with Indeisgn.
…but at the end of the day, it is close to $1000 in upgrades….photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, indesign, premiere and then all the upgrades to broken PS and ILL plug-ins and then reworking websites, existing docs to be compatible…and for what? specialized tools and functionality I don’t need, don’t always work well when brought outside the Adobe universe. (ex: You need a “special tool” to make GoLive sites work with Dreamweaver)It has all become like MS Word…..you can barely “word process” any more because all of the “helpful” features that get in the way.
….and then I get to part of the b*llsh*t Adobe “authorization” schema that treats me like a criminal even though I have supported and bought their products for over 20 years. (I haven’t even gone into the $$ in fonts, ATM, Acrobat, etc, etc)
ATM is no longer supported on OS X, basically, you don’t need it. Depending on how many fonts you own, you may or may not need a font manager. OS X has Font Book that lacks auto activation, but other then that works great.
Dreamweaver is far superior to GoLive, it’s the transition that my be a problem, but you are probably better off learning CSS and using a low cost Application like CSS Edit to format and style your web pages.
I started off with PageMaker back in the 80′. I moved to QuarkXpress later, now I am InDesign all the way. PageMaker was horrible, particularly at the end, unstable, unreliable output.
If I am not mistaken, if you have a valid license to Photoshop 7, you are entitled to upgrade to the entire CS3 Design Premium like for $600. It will not get you plugins or Premier, but you get Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, Bridge and Acrobat, not a bad deal at all. If you don’t need the web stuff you can do it for $399.
@ A. Dumas it’s kinda late but here’s a faceoff of low cost Vector apps over at TUAW. “Today, I’m going to review four leaner, lower-cost (or free) options from four high-powered indie Mac developers: DrawBerry, EazyDraw, Lineform, and VectorDesigner.” Hmm, I musta missed Drawberry yet another one I’ve never heard of. LOL
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http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/13/tuaw-faceoff-low-cost-vector-design-apps/
There are so many other apps too that I’ve never heard of and a good collection of them can be found at these links here:
http://www.thriftmac.com/Graphics
http://mac.majorgeeks.com/downloads37.html
http://www.freemacware.com/category/free-graphics-software-for-macs/
http://macapper.com/category/applications/graphics/
http://www.pure-mac.com/graphics.html