Adobe Photoshop or Pixelmator?


I've been looking for a Mac based image editor and was agonizing about what to do. I had been a long time Photoshop user and was quite comfortable with that product but the price was so steep and my use now so casual. I really only need it for basic photo retouching and simple graphic cuts for web sites. Given that, Photoshop's price seemed really high at a retail price of $649. The lowest price I found for CS3 was $289 and I would need my wife to use her teacher discount in order to get it and the site looked a little shaky. I decided instead I would look around.

My friend Bradley mentioned I should take a look at Pixelmator.  I pulled it down and installed it and was immediately comfortable with it. It's effectively a nice light version of Photoshop. It's got layers and most of the tools and if you are a Photoshop user you will be immediately comfortable with it.

It's not without a couple of quirks - at times I find myself having to click several times to activate items but there are a number of possible reasons for it - since the UI is a series of palettes that sit on your desktop that may be my problem; I'm used to the Windows version of Photoshop where everything is contained within a master window.

That minor complaint aside, Pixelmator is excellent. I'll keep playing with the trial for now but at $59 it's hard not to see buying this.

Comments

Andrew Schultz said…
FYI

Adobe is releasing Photoshop Elements 6.0 for the Mac sometime in April for $99

For lightweight Photoshop work it will be fine.
randynobx said…
Pixelmaker sounds like GIMP, a similar photo editing tool. But I found GIMP not as intutative as Photoshop, but GIMP is completely free!
Lux said…
@randyn (but also for your benefit, David):
There's a program called GIMPshop that mimics the Photoshop interface with a GIMP core. I haven't used it much myself (I'm a pretty heavy Photoshop user), but I hear it's just the ticket for the Photoshop experience without the cost.
Viswakarma said…
You may want try using NIH's ImageJ. It is free, muti-platform, very powerful, has various filters and plugins, and is regularly updated. You can get it at http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/.
Anonymous said…
Some people find graphics converter very useful. Haven't tried it myself, but saw it on MacRumors.com

http://www.lemkesoft.com/xd/public/content/index._cGlkPTE5Mw_.html
Unknown said…
It is so perfectly designed, it just makes you want to pay for it. Even if gimp could do everything this does, Pixelmator is still way better.

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