Technical Specifications

Tools

• Use more than 40 tools for selecting, cropping, drawing, painting, retouching, typing, measuring and navigating, and two powerful editing extensions for the Photos app
• Basic tools:
  • Move, Zoom, Hand, Eyedropper, Type, Crop, Slice
• Selection tools:
  • Elliptical Marquee, Rectangular Marquee, Column Marquee, Row Marquee, Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Selection, Quick Selection, Color Selection
• Painting tools:
  • Brush, Pencil, Pixel, Eraser, Paint Bucket, Gradient—Choose from a range of blending modes, set the opacity, and type of brush
• Retouching tools:
  • Warp, Bump, Pinch, Twirl, Smudge, Clone Stamp, Healing, Sponge, Blur, Sharpen, Burn, Dodge, Magic Eraser, Red-Eye—Specify the strength, and type of brush for most of the retouching tools
• Drawing tools:
  • Pen, Freeform Pen, Rectangular Shape, Rounded Rectangle Shape, Ellipse Shape, Triangle Shape, Polygon Shape, Star Shape, Line Shape, Custom Shape

Layers

• Layer-based image editing
• Create new, duplicate, delete, rename, load as selection or hide layers
• Create editable text and shape layers
• Use the New Layer from FaceTime feature to add pictures as layers from FaceTime camera

  

• Change blending mode for layer:
  • Normal, Dissolve, Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Linear Burn, Darker Color, Lighten, Screen, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge, Lighter Color, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Hard Mix, Difference, Exclusion, Subtract, Divide, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity
• Adjust layer opacity
• Preserve layer transparency
• Create clipping masks
• Add, remove, edit, show or hide layer masks
• Link, unlink or select linked layers
• Convert Text/Shape layers to pixels
• Convert Text layers to Shape layers
• Merge layers
• Merge all layers
• Group layers
• Arrange layers
• Drag and drop layers onto your macOS Desktop to export as PNG
• Drag and drop images into the layers palette or a Pixelmator document to add them as separate layers

Layer Styles

• Fill layers with solid colors or gradients
• Apply solid color or gradient strokes
• Choose stroke style and position, adjust stroke width
• Apply shadows, inner shadows, choose their color, adjust offset, blur, and opacity
• Apply reflections and choose their opacity
• Create and save your own layer style presets

Image Processing

• Layer-based image editing
• Image processing is powered by Core Image technology
• 64-bit architecture
• Import images directly from cameras, scanners, multifunction devices, and devices such as iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
• Use more than 40 tools for selecting, cropping, slicing, painting, retouching, drawing, typing, measuring and navigating
• Use more than 15 color correction tools
• Use more than 100 effects
• Change image size and resolution
• Specify canvas size
• Trim images
• Rotate canvas
• Export images for the Web
• Transform images, layers or selections using the transform tools:
  • Free Transform, Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, Perspective, Flip (vertical or horizontal)
• Fill images, layers or selections
• Stroke images, layers or selections
• Graphics tablet support

Color Correction Tools

• Use more than 13 color correction tools:
  • Levels, Auto Enhance, Curves, Color Balance, Brightness, Hue, Desaturate, Colorize, Replace Color, Channels, Exposure, Invert, Light & Dark

Effects

• Use more than 100 Core Image-powered effects
• Blur:
  • Gaussian, Motion, Zoom, Median, Soften, Miniaturize
• Distortion:
  • Bump, Linear Bump, Pinch, Hole, Ripple, Page Curl, Capsule, Glass Ring, Circle Splash, Displacement, Glass, Bar Swipe, Twirl, Vortex, Circular Wrap
• Sharpen:
  • Sharpen, Edges, Unsharp
• Tile:
  • Kaleidoscope, Triangle, Brickwork, Hexagon, Pinwheel, Bug Eye, Shutters, Windmill, Snowflake, Funhouse, Tessera, Perspective, Affine Clamp, Affine, Mirror
• Stylize:
  • Crystallize, Honeycomb, Pixelate, Pointillize, Noise, Rain, Snow, Vintage, Light Leak, Twilight, Fog, Gloom, Spotlight, Coating, Edge Work, Sketch, Edges, Comics, Threshold
• Halftone:
  • Circular, Hatched, Line, Dot, CMYK
• Generator:
  • Chess, Bars, Stroke, Halo, Sunbeams, Star Shine, Fill, Clouds, Random
• Other:
  • Black and White, Sepia Tone, Gamma, Swipe, Vibrance False Color, Mask to Alpha, Mosaic Flip, Fall, Wall, Defocus, Image Hose, Grid, Floor, Gradient, Forms, Projectile, Photocopy, Cube, Dissolve, Mask, Mod, Push, Swing.
• Use the rope to control center of the effect
• Use custom Core Image units

Painting Engine

• Advanced brush settings
  • Size, hardness, spacing, scatter, flow, follow angle, stroke jitter, size jitter, angle jitter, opacity jitter, hue jitter, saturation jitter, lightness jitter, graphics tablet sensitivity and control by mouse speed settings
• Adobe Photoshop brushes support

User Interface

• Interface designed for working with images
• Tools palette customization
• Touch Bar support
• Transparent HUD (heads-up display) palettes:
  • Tools, Layers, Brushes, Gradients, Shapes, Styles, Effects Browser and Photo Browser palettes
• Tool Options bar
• Info bar
• Info labels
• Full-screen mode
• Vectormator mode
• Quick Mask mode
• Use rulers, guides, alignment guides and grid
• Adding layer from the FaceTime dialog shows a preview
• Action tooltips

File Formats

• Compatible with all popular file formats:
  • PSD, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WebP, PDF, GIF, BMP, TGA, JPG-2000
  • Supports Photoshop images with layers.
• Optimize and save images for the web in JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP

Metadata

• View image metadata
• Add, remove or edit keywords
• Use Spotlight to find images according to metadata info
• More than 50 metadata tags available

macOS Integration

Pixelmator Photo Browser offers quick access to your Photos library, including any Albums, Moments, Collections, and more, as well as your Photo Booth library, Pictures folder or any custom folder

• Versions
• Tabs
• Autosave
• Fullscreen
• Split View
• Use your FaceTime camera to add pictures to your compositions
• Automator actions
• Spotlight support
• Image Capture
• Drag and drop support
• In-App Help
• Apple Fonts and Apple Colors windows
• Share images via Mail, Message, AirDrop, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Aperture and Photos
• Built-in Quick Look plug-in

Technologies

• Pixelmator is built using Cocoa
• Image processing is powered by Core Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, and Grand Central Dispatch
• Pixelmator Retouch and Pixelmator Distort editing extensions are built with Swift 2 and powered by Metal
• ColorSync color management
• Quick Look support
• Core Animation
• Spotlight support
• QuickTime

Colors

• ColorSync support
• Soft-proofing feature for previewing images with different color profiles
• Select colors using the Apple Colors window
• Web Color plug-in for the Apple Colors window for quickly copying hexadecimal colors to HTML or CSS applications
• Eyedropper for picking colors from images

Automator Actions

• Change Type of Image action allows conversion to JPEG, PSD, PNG, TIFF, and Pixelmator native file format—PXM
• Crop Images action allows the expansion or reduction of the canvas size to the desired dimensions
• Fit Images
• Trim Images
• Watermark Images

Pixelmator Retouch Extension for Photos

• Powerful retouching tools to perfect images inside the Photos app: Repair, Clone, Light, Color, Soften, Sharpen tools
• Adjustable stroke size, strength and hardness
• Commonly used keyboard shortcuts
• Built with Swift 2
• Force Touch Support

Pixelmator Distort Extension for Photos

• 6 Distort tools to reshape areas of an image
• Intuitive two-finger gestures
• Adjustable stroke size and strength
• Commonly used keyboard shortcuts
• Built with Swift 2
• Force Touch Support
• All Distort tools are powered by Metal

Languages

• English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian