Pixelmator Team, Pixelmator itself, and Leopard
I am so sorry if I am late with this article. I know you’ve missed us a lot and we missed you too. Anyway, let me explain what is going on here.
First of all, Pixelmator is doing amazingly well. We are growing very fast in all respects, and this not only brings us happiness, excitement and motivation, it also brings more problems that we have to solve.
October was a very interesting, but difficult month for us. We’ve been traveling around the world for a few weeks now and have been working out of hotels and fast food restaurants. This is not a vacation, however. Not even close! We had about 20 meetings with some huge companies, distributors and others that want Pixelmator to become even more popular. I would love to tell you more details about what we are up to, but I think it would be better if you see the results for yourself.
The big problem for us is that we’ve tried to do everything by ourselves: fix bugs in Pixelmator, meet with people who want to help us, and keep our support alive. It seems to me that we haven’t been very successful at some of these things, as Pixelmator development and support was not good enough in October.
In any case, there is no reason to be sad. Everything is going to be better starting tomorrow. We are finally releasing the Leopard-friendly version of Pixelmator. It is not that major update (1.1 Kitten); it is just a pack of bug fixes (it’s 1.0.2) and small improvements that have mostly to do with Leopard.
The real-Leopard version of Pixelmator will be available later this month, and we are on track to ship it on time. I am sure you’ll love it.
Other news from the Pixelmator Team is that we are looking for a friendly person to help us handle all the Pixelmator support details. We have some ideas to dramatically improve Pixelmator’s help and support engine. I am doing my best to make sure that no one is left without help.
We have also moved to our new office, which is very cool. I promise to add some photos to Flickr as soon as I am done with the release.
For now, if you would like to get a detailed update of Pixelmator’s development, Aidas has set-up a Twitter account. To check out Pixelmator’s current status, just click here.
Good to see you are thinking about getting support on track. I’m interested to know what your plans are on improving the help / support. I hope Jabber is involved though, now you are on twitter as well. Notice that there is allready a pixelmator Jabber chatroom for help and support on pixelmator@conference.jabber.jabberlive.org
Anyway I already volunteered for offering support earlier, but I don’t know if I’m friendly enough. ;-)
Seraphiel
I am very happy that you guys are doing well. You should seriously think about hiring a business manager/suit-type person. It will probably help you in the long run. Good luck and I am eagerly awaiting the releases. :-)
Cheers.
Great news, if all major bugs are solved in this next release then I’ll buy.
i am sure your software should be very popular in mac world, BUT you need a team instead of two. Most of us don’t really need PS but the software likes pixelmater (reasonable pricing and not so complex features).
i did mention in your forum that you can refer to the supporting model in “parallels”. every posts are getting response and this should make your customer happy.
This is good news! The 1.0.2 “kitten” is more than essential for now but you guys know how to put us on suspense with your “real-Leopard version of Pixelmator”!
Keep on the great job!
Hi, I just bought a license for this great product. It caters for almost all I need when editing and retouching my photos. There are just two feature I’d love to see added:
- A red-eye tool (or do you have any tips how to do that with the current tools?)
- A smarter magic selection tool, that allows dragging around a starting point to change the selection. Now with the magic wand it’s kind of trial-and-error to make the right selection. Using CoreImage should not make it too difficult to make the magic wand easier to use.
Gook luck with the next release and looking forward to the new features!
@ DeeGee: Good ideas but you should write them on the Pixelmator Features Request forum
http://pixelmator.com/support/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=af32b5061ea124368b43b555cd917b58
;)
UPDATE:
The new 1.0.2 update is released! I just done the installation and wanted to thanks the Pixelmator team for this work. All major Leopard’s bugs are solved and I can now breathe and work with this great app again!
Thanks
I meant “… All major Leopard’s integration bugs are solved…”
Well, I’ve decided to buy it anyway so that you you chaps can continue your good work and I shall be able to bin PS CS3 :-)
Chris
i have been looking for a substitute for CS3…could this be the one? If so, I would be willing to do workshops showing how to use it once I have it under control. Currently teaching Photoshop…hope your program can replace my notes with a new workflow and less contact with the arrogance of Adobe.
I have been trying to get some support what so ever for quite some time now. I’m getting database and MySQL errors. I wish there were just an email to contact someone in the case of your site being down.
I been using Photoshop for years as a designer. I bought the Mac Heist bundle and thought it was sort of a waste of software that it comes with image editing software. I tried it anyways and the instant I opened it I fell in love with the minimalistic design. All black and transparent and movable windows everywhere. It’s just perfect. Comes with even more effects that are more useful than Photoshop’s even.
I hit a huge problem though. I am on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 Intel and when ever I use the rubber stamp tool it works for about 5 seconds then I get the spinning color wheel of death. I have to wait like 30 seconds for it to come back online, work with the tool for like 5 seconds and then it repeats.
Everything works fine, and I really REALLY would like to switch to this but it’s missing that rubber stamp tool that I use very often. I was hoping there was a fix or maybe a setting or just anything that will fix this.
There is no support up as I said previously, but if I don’t get a reply to this then I will keep checking the support.
Thanks,
Oscar