A whopping total of 500,000 downloads in just a single week have made Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry our most successful release ever. Again. Only this time, the number of downloads was double that of Pixelmator 2.1 Cherry, which had “only” 250,000 downloads in two weeks.

And as if that wasn’t enough already, you surprised us yet again. Thanks to you, Pixelmator is now the highest rated app on the Mac App Store—a complete five-star app.

Thank you so much for all of this!

This app is absolutely awesome, and there is a good chance you already have it right there on your Mac. Without even knowing it.

We have sneaked a totally wicked but secret feature into Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry. It’s a trick to convert your standard Pixelmator into a completely new drawing app. We call this new app (or more accurately this mode of an app) Vectormator.

Vectormator brings up and conveniently places all of the drawing tools and palettes on your screen. So you can create stunning shapes, illustrations, logos, and so much more, more easily than ever before. 

To switch to Vectormator, simply press the Command-Shift-V keyboard shortcut, and watch the tools and palettes instantly change to Vectormator. To switch back to your Pixelmator, press the same keyboard shortcut again. Watch that happen in our short Vectormator video or try it yourself now.

This is it. Pixelmator is now a fully featured vector graphics app.

Today the Pixelmator Team released Pixelmator 2.2, a major update of the world’s most innovative, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app. Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry features new, easy-to-use Smart Shape, Move and Paint Selection Tools, and a new Light Leak effect for creating retro-artistically illuminated images. Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry is available today as a free update from the Mac App Store.

“We’re excited to deliver even more, easy-to-use, advanced features to our Pixelmator fans and continue to create the best and most enjoyable image editing experience,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “With new state-of-the-art Smart Shape Tools, people can fully enhance their images, create logos, Web layouts, posters, and much more, all easier than ever before.”

Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry comes with more than 100 new features and improvements, including:

Smart Shapes Tools, which let you quickly adjust a shape’s outline with easy-to-use controls to get just the look you’re after;

Shapes palette packed with dozens of readily available shapes that are as easy to add as dragging and dropping;

Shape Style palette, so you can effortlessly create more polished and advanced shapes;

Convert Text into Shape feature, which allows you easily apply gradients, shadows, strokes, or even reshape individual letters;

Smart Move Tool, which knows when you are working with image or shape layers and gives you the options you need at that time;

Paint Selection Tool, which is the simplest and the fastest way to make the most challenging selections with a few brush strokes;

Light Leak effect, which makes it easy and fun to create stunning, retro-artistically illuminated images from any of your photos.

Additional features include the new Color Popovers for quicker access to color swatches, new gradient presets, improved drawing tools, an improved Type Tool, the ability to copy and paste shape styles, and major performance improvements.

Pixelmator 2.2 is available from the Mac App Store at a promotional price of $14.99. For existing Pixelmator customers who purchased the app from the Mac App Store, the new update is free.

P.S. In addition to this awesome new major update we are also introducing a completely revamped Pixelmator Tutorials web site.

Wednesday, 8 May 2013.

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