Fully Charged Batteries
Friday, 15 January 2010. Posted by Saulius.
Charge
All of the Pixelmator Team crew members (except for the support master, of course) just returned from a nearly three-month vacation. Yes, I realize that is an unusually long break. But if you take into account the considerable number and quality of recent Pixelmator releases(including Firestarter, Kitten, Draftsman, Tempo, Sprinkle, and finally, the glorious Spider), I hope that you can find it in your heart to grant us the time we took to slow down a bit so as to prepare ourselves for even greater accomplishments.
What’s more, our vacation was absolutely perfect for the following reasons:
- It was agreed that our vacation time would be unlimited, with each crew member taking as much time as needed before missing worktop such an extent that one cannot but resist returning.
- We visited Germany’s Munich, Alps, and some impressive Alpine castles, all of which contributed to making this a mentally refreshing and restorative trip.
- We set up our new office, which is turning out to be a much more well-suited place in which to work and for our company to grow:
- It looks as though Pixelmator is selling everywhere – from our tiny Web store to such giants as Apple Store, Amazon, and almost anywhere else you can think of.
- Not surprisingly, Pixelmator 1.5 Spider happened to be the most successful Pixelmator release ever. Spider is still selling like hotcakes, and your feedback regarding the current version is great.
- And because Spider has been so successful and other Pixelmator releases were also very strong, we have made lots of money.
- Since we have a bit of money, we are looking to put the majority of it into Pixelmator’s development, perhaps investing in some new technology, hiring some good developers to help us out, and so forth.
- With clearer heads from our vacation, we have also reviewed the Pixelmator flight plan, which looks better than ever. The plan is, in fact, so inspiring that the whole team cannot wait to reveal it to you in future Pixelmator updates.
Power-Up
Currently, the Pixelmator Team is working on the 1.5.1 update, which will provide numerous improvements and enhancements. It is to be released at the end of this month or sometime in early February. If you happen to have any problems with Spider, now is the perfect time to let us know about them; we might be able to add the change or improvement into 1.5.1.
Run
For those of you wondering whether or not the Pixelmator Team is working on version 2.0, I can assure you that we are, in fact, doing so! And working very hard at it, too. To be more precise, we have been working on it (UI, features, foundation) for almost a year now, but it is still months, maybe even years away from release – it certainly won’t happen in 2010.Reasons for this delay include:
a) Pixelmator 1.X is the foundation for 2.0 and, by our standards, still needs a lot of improvements;
b) Since 2.0 has more than enough features, some of them should really be introduced in the 1.X era;
c) We would like to polish up certain important features in 1.X before adding new features;
d) Lastly, it really does take time to develop impressive stuff.
Thus, there will be no less than two or three major updates for Pixelmator 1.X. The newest one to be released once it is finished is called Pixelmator 1.6 Nucleus.
I am more than happy to confirm that after such a long vacation and such great news about Pixelmator, the Pixelmator Team’s batteries are once more fully charged and ready for a triumphant Pixelmator journey into the future.
Stay tuned.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Wow, nice office! Good to hear that more updates are on the way.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
I just love reading about what’s happening with Pixelmator. Thanks for the really long post! I hope there are more to come!
January 15th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Great!! Well done! Developers should learn to take long vacation. All the best for your company and your wonderful software!
January 15th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Looking Great. Can’t wait for future releases.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Welcome back! This certainly explains the long silence since the release of 1.5. I was beginning to think that maybe Pixelmator was somehow being abandoned or losing interest with the developers. I had hoped that wasn’t the case, however, because it is a program that I like and admire. I am glad you all took a long vacation, cleared your heads and are now recharged and ready to push pixelmator to the next level.
I am eagerly anticipating future releases!
January 15th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
This is awesome news. Congratulations on the success, and the long vacation. I really hope we see Snow Leopard enhancements (like 64-bit and OpenCL) before 2.0…
January 15th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
[...] erfuhr ich, warum niemand auf meine Fragen (und auf die Anderer) reagiert hat. Das Pixelmator-Team schreibt in seinem Blog:All of the Pixelmator Team crew members just returned from a nearly three-month vacation.Na das ist [...]
January 15th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Nice to see that the Pixelmator Team is in fact alive! Amazing office you guys have ( very jealous ).
1 of the fixes I would really like to see in 1.5.1 is the gradient issue where there is banding ( there are is a forum post about it ).
Heads up guys! Really anticipating 1.6
p.s. It would be really great if the team could give us more updates via the blog, twitter or something. It’s always nice to see what you guys are up to!
January 16th, 2010 at 12:26 am
You deserved a break. Can’t wait to hear what’s next!
January 16th, 2010 at 12:29 am
Please post pics of the Alpine Castles!
Oh and welcome back.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:35 am
My 1.5.1 wish is… Layer Folders!
January 16th, 2010 at 2:57 am
Welcome back.
January 16th, 2010 at 6:39 am
Ability to import photoshop layer effects and text layers without rasterizing. Layers window can’t be resized when switching monitors. Export > color palette > Esc should close color palette only. Do something amazing with web export.
Keep up the great work. Glad you’re back.
January 16th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Hi there,
Welcome back guys! I’m glad you had a good time and a new office
Keep up the good work guys!!
January 16th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Want to hire a good developer ?
I think Pieter Omvlee could be the best.
The best of Pixelmator + the best of Drawit + the best of Sketch = The best piece of software of course !!!
And what about Nucleus ?
Guys, any idea ?
January 16th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Hey! Good to hear you didn’t disappear somewhere.
A really cool office you have there
As for the urgent stuff putting things into folders is a must :
I.e. layer folders and most importantly brush folders since we can’t scroll the brush palette and it’s terribly hard to organize it…
January 17th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
As long as we are offering suggestions in this thread, I would really like to see the ability to select the default file format. The Pixelmator format is not compatible with any other programs I use and it is a lot of extra steps to do a “Save As” to save a file instead of just a command S.
If I open a photoshop file, I should be able to just do a command S to save back to that file (or another photoshop file that I initially create from a Save As. Same with a jpeg. Or any other file type.
Thank you, keep up the good work.
January 17th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Thanks for keeping in touch with your customers. All you’ve written sounds great – from charging batteries at the alps (I’m living in Switzerland) to the next steps in developing Pixelmator. I can hardly wait…
January 17th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
To clarify my previous post with some examples:
If I open a jpeg file, make a few tweaks and then hit Command S, that should save back to that jpeg file as a jpeg. It should also meet the requirement of the file being saved and I should be able to do a Command Q to quit Pixelmator without getting the file not saved dialogue.
If I open a jpeg file, do more extensive changes, like using layers, and I do a Save As to create a new file name with the PSD extension, then from that point on I should be able to do a Command S to save to that new file and at the end do a Command Q to quit. Again, without the file not saved until I save as a Pixelmator file routine.
I admire your initiative to create a new file format. Reality is, however, that the world uses the PSD format as a standard and even if Pixelmator ultimately slays the Photoshop dragon, the file format will remain with the millions (billions?) of images already created in that format. As such, all the other programs that uses those files.
MS Word is an example of that. The .doc file format is that world standard. As much as I hate using MS products, (and I don’t anymore), I still have to be able to read and write to the .doc format. That is my biggest complaint with Apple’s Pages program. It’s native file format is .pages. Something that no other program can use. The same scenario exists with Pages as with Pixelmator in regards to opening and saving files. But that is another story for another company (Apple) to deal with.
The bottom line is, make it easier to use industry standard file types and it will only enhance the attractiveness of Pixelmator.
thank you.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Glad to hear you were all doing something sensible, like others I was a little worried some of the spark had gone.. However, that not being the case I wish you guys a happy new year and look forward to what comes next!
January 17th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Hi guys,
I just updated to Mac OS X 10.6.2 (and Java and so on also) and got some problems with Spider: it crashes very very often and slows down the whole system. It doesn’t seem that there’s a typical reason – it crashes when resizing the window, another time when picking a color or when undoing.
Greetings from Germany!
January 18th, 2010 at 2:26 am
Robert, I’m using Pixelmator on 10.6.2 and haven’t experienced those problems. Try booting up in safe mode. If the problems disappear when using Pixelmator then something is conflicting with it.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:44 am
Pixelmator es simplemente genial.
Una de las mejores aplicaciones para MAC
January 18th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Great to see that work is continuing on Pixelmator. I absolutely love it and use it for all my design work. Guys, now if you could only include a small information pane to show image and cursor info that would be great!
January 18th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Come on , make the brush system extensible….
January 18th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
[...] erfolgte dann im Sommer 2009: Pixelmator 1.5 “verkauft sich überall”, schreibt das Unternehmen in seinem Blog: “ob unser eigener, kleiner Webshop oder solche Giganten wie Apple oder Amazon… Version [...]
January 18th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Welcome back team pix
and glad to hear you’ve managed to have a break.
Roll on all updates, always happy to see new stuff. Where do you want to see 1.5.1 suggestions? Here or the forum?
January 18th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Kercal, you are fashionably late.
January 18th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Ain’t no post like a number 27 post…..
January 19th, 2010 at 1:02 am
Word on the street is Apple is gonna buy Pixelmator for inclusion into ilife 2010
January 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Great to see you back and working hard.
I hope to see Pixelmator become a hardened Competitor for Adobe Photoshop.
I’m already stopped using Photoshop, but the temptation is still very great because Pixelmator is lacking in basic vector tools.
I hope to see vectors soon…
January 19th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Po velniais lietuvaičiai duodat kaip reikiant! Sekmes darbuose!
January 19th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Is it true that you spent your 3 months vacation in Cupertino, because Apple bought your company to bring Pixelmator into iLife?
January 19th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
They were helping to design the new apple tablet. It has Pixelmator built into it.
January 19th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Hey those pictures are inside of the Apple Cupertino office!! Thats room 352!! So fess up.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:15 am
[...] Fully Charged Batteries [...]
January 20th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Glad to hear, you’ve earned your success, guys. I’m looking forward to new releases and I hope you will be able to incorporate some new Apple technologies into 2.0 (e. g. Grand Central and OpenCL).
January 20th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Like the framed retro apple logo.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
If I got to pick 3 things for upcoming releases, I’d love to see Layer Folders/Groups, the gradient banding issue resolved, and more granular control of text (kerning, line-height, etc).
Glad to hear you guys took some time off, and it sounds like you spent the time well! Can’t wait to see what’s coming down the pike.
January 20th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
CMYK please.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:25 am
Hey folks! If you want to give suggestions to the PM team, why not use their Support forum set up for that purpose? It’s right here: http://www.pixelmator.com/support/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=765ded3faad91bbe54c123404cb0ee7f
And welcome back guys! I assumed you were either bought out by Apple and forced into silence or else had all been kidnapped. It would have been nice to at least leave a blog post saying “bye, back in three months.” Maybe next time, eh?
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:28 am
Yes, but it still can’t show the same image in two windows at the same time, with different magnification factors, for detail work without losign sight of the whole picture.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:32 pm
You can’t even imagine how happy i am
Now i’m waiting for effects of this 3 months vacations. I hope that some important features from “features and requests” topics will be implemented.
Cheers!
January 23rd, 2010 at 4:40 am
Woooo… sweet office.
Just bought a Pixelmator license (I had a coupon code), and wow, nice app. Impressive what 2 people can do… other apps get many more developers, but are in no way polished as this.
Definitely worth the price, best cost/benefit ratio even than free alternatives.
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:47 am
Guys great! Nice to hear from you! And really next time you come to Munich let me know! Its called beer halls and I know all of them, this is what happens when you put a Canadian in Munich!
Cheers
January 24th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Great to see you are back in action! Hope to see more awesome updates in the near future. In the meantime I will gladly recommend Pixelmator to all my family and friends who use Macs.
Keep on rocking!
January 26th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Glad to see you back!
I’m now waiting for your improvements of PXM.
In my opinion, the most important thing is to make Pixelmator working with big files.
Good luck, guys!
January 26th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Welcome back! If you want to make a great piece of software even better, please think about
a) text tool improvements (line spacing, etc.)
b) brush palette improvements (brush folders, etc.)
c) selection tool improvements (bézier paths, etc.)
d) unified palettes (color picker, text styles, which match the black theme, etc.)
e) layer styles (drop shadow, etc.), layer groups
f) pdf to pixel calculation improvements
g) vector shapes
Thanks!
January 27th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Whwn 2.0 comes, what will happen for boxed/retail version users? Will they need to buy a new version of Pixelmator at the Apple store again?
January 27th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Wishes for 1.5.1:
•+1 for layer folders, I am desperate.
•Currently, if you hit Command-Space in fullscreen mode, it does NOT bring up Spotlight (the system wide shortcut key). You have to either switch out of PM, or mouse up to the menu bar, or switch out of fullscreen mode. Please fix this, I would love to be able to Command-Space-filename-enter to open images in PM while I am working.
•Biggest issue I would like to see fixed: when using the brush tool, individual strokes of the same color do not blend together. You can see the antialiased edge of one stroke when layered on top of another one of the same color:
http://www.whitespacecg.com/Images/Strokes.png
This is 4 separate strokes, one on top of the other. The right side of the image has the contrast and brightness adjusted to make the aliasing artifacts where the strokes overlap more apparent.
Please fix this, if it was the ONLY fix in 1.5.1 I would be pleased as pie!
January 27th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Welcome back, folks! Glad to hear you all got your batteries recharged over the break.
After seeing the iPad introduction today, my first thought was “Pixelmator”. I think it’d be a PHENOMENAL app on the new tablet, and I’ll be first in line to purchase it if it’s made available — I absolutely LOVE the OS X version!
January 28th, 2010 at 11:06 am
I thought exactly the same thing as John C. iPad. I don;t mind if it has no new features. Just to see it as it is now on the iPad or iPhone for that matter would be awesome.
Office is looking good by the way.
D ^_^
P.S. I wish I could have three month vacations. Sigh!
January 28th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
I dunno – the iPad specs don’t really support heavy-duty image editing.
January 28th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Is CoreImage/Quartz and its filters even available on the iPhone?
January 28th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Glad to hear that you guys haven’t disappeared!
One of my god damn palettes somehow fell off the screen. Now pixelmator is useless for me. Why is there no reset palettes menu item? Ugh. Can we get more frequent updates? Even if you only added one thing, it may be one thing that we need right away.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Keil Miller: have you tried to set the monitor resolution to a different value and then set it back to the original reolution again? sometimes this resets window positions and maybe brings the palette back.
you might have to try different resolutions with and without restarting of pixelmator and rebooting of your mac.
January 31st, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Hi,
Could we finally have Layer Styles please? I’m a total noob, and I just can’t get anything worthwhile done without them. Please, won’t you think of the Noobs!
But seriously.. If I needed to do graphics for even one of my software projects _right now_, I’d just have to buy Photoshop, and I’d much rather pay for Pixelmator than Adobe’s Steaming Pile Of Bloat.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:38 pm
LAYER STYLES !!!! IS needed It is the number one feature missing add it in so I can buy your software I hate Photoshop It is waaaay to bloated these days !
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:52 pm
@Wooster – Quartz 2D is definitely in the iPhone SDK. Supposedly CoreImage is also in the iPhone libraries, but it’s a private API so Apple won’t let apps that go into the App Store use it.
@John_C & @Joy_Inc – Absolutely… Pixelmator on the iPad would be another game changing App. I don’t think people fully appreciate how game changing the iPad is just yet. The iPhone was just a test, the iPad is the real game changer. Look up the Steve Jobs & Bill Gates interview from 2007 on iTunes. Jobs eludes then to the future containing many ‘Post Computer’ devices… and that real innovation will happen with those.
@Anon_Cowherd & MrNick – I couldn’t agree more… as a decently skilled Photoshop user, I keep running into this problem when using Pixelmator.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Hello folks, Pixelmator is just great. Feature request: make the Image size visible in the document window status bar. Keep it up!
February 7th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Cool site and software. Maybe a version to iPad?
Luis
from Amazon Rain Forest
March 1st, 2010 at 5:27 pm
As a web designer I would very much like to move to PixelMator but can’t until you provide better image optimisation options, Layer Styles and Vector Drawing Tools. Add these features and then you will have a hugely desirable product. iPad support? I’m not sure that would give you a suitable return on investment. If you target web designers currently relying on Photoshop because there isn’t a suitable altenative, there will be many more compared to potential iPad owners.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I definitely agree with James Brocklehurst. Please, think about the potential of the webdesigners audience. We are all waiting for a Photoshop alternative since Photoshop keeps on adding useless feature for us.
April 6th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
You could try & Preserve your iPad for Cost free! -> http://bit.ly/cFBuis