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.

The Pixelmator Team released Pixelmator 1.5 today, an update to the revolutionary GPU-powered image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images. Available as a free software update, Pixelmator 1.5, codenamed Spider, features Save for Web, a Slice tool, a Trim tool, Info Labels, and more.

“Pixelmator is a perfect fit for anyone who is passionate about image editing,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “And now with the breakthrough version 1.5 Spider features, Pixelmator becomes one of the world’s best tools for exporting images for the Web.”

The new Web tools in Pixelmator allow users to prepare and export images for the Web with minimal effort, whether it is an individual image or a complex page layout. Images can be optimized and saved in Web-standard JPEG, PNG, or GIF file formats with different quality settings.

The new powerful Slice tool in Pixelmator can be used to slice an image into pieces, allowing each piece of an image to be optimized and saved using its own optimization settings. Saving an optimized part of an image is as easy as dragging and dropping it onto the desktop. The file size and preview of optimized slices or images are available in nearly real-time in the Pixelmator window.

Pixelmator also comes with a useful Web Color plug-in for the Apple Color Palette, allowing Web designers to select and copy hexadecimal colors quickly to the HTML or CSS application.

The new Info Labels feature unobtrusively shows useful information depending on the tool in use such as selection, crop and slice sizes, tolerance levels for Magic Wand, Paint Bucket, and Magic Eraser, gradient angle and radius, transform dimensions, and more.

The new Trim feature allows quick and easy cropping of an image by trimming surrounding transparent pixels or background pixels in a specified color.

Other new features in Pixelmator 1.5 Spider include support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Italian language, the Reveal All feature, and the Send To feature that allows the user to send images quickly to the Mail and iPhoto applications; improved Export, Image Size, Canvas Size, and File Info features; minor user interface changes; compatibility and performance improvements; and several bug fixes.

Pixelmator 1.5 Spider is a free update for current Pixelmator users. Download now!

Anyway, the good news is that Spider will be released on Tuesday, September 8th, and because I don’t want you to be depressed until Spider is available, here are some 1.5 screenshots for you:

Talk to you on Tuesday. Cheers.

I am not able to provide any details yet due to competition and our desire to surprise you, but I can say that Spider is the largest and, based on your feedback, requests, and comments on our website and our neighbor websites as well as Twitter comments, probably the most welcome Pixelmator update since 1.0.

Pixelmator 1.5 Spider is coming in a few weeks and will be available as a free update to existing Pixelmator users.

Update: (2009/07/29) it seems it takes longer then expected to release the new version – stay tuned as we’re working hard to bring 1.5 release to life.

Jim Dalrymple

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The Pixelmator Team released Pixelmator 1.4.1 today, an update to the revolutionary GPU-powered image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images. Available as a free software update, Pixelmator 1.4.1 features a noise filter, improvements, and bug fixes. The Pixelmator Team is also introducing a new learning website and a new user manual for Pixelmator users.

“Tens of thousands of Mac users have fallen in love with Pixelmator,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “With the new learning website and manual, the Pixelmator Team continues to demonstrate its commitment to Pixelmator quality and attentiveness to the needs of its users.”

Pixelmator 1.4.1 introduces a noise filter, which allows the artist to quickly apply random pixels to an image. This allows users to create realistic textures and special effects and provides advanced retouching capabilities. The current update also offers minor user interface and performance improvements as well as bug fixes to the application.

The Pixelmator Team is also launching a new learning website for Pixelmator users. This new website (www.pixelmator.com/learn/) is all about learning how to use Pixelmator. It features helpful text, video, and third-party tutorials, tips, and tricks, as well as practical resources to make the most of the powerful Pixelmator features and tools.

Further, the Pixelmator Team released a new user manual. Fully updated with information about the most recent version of Pixelmator, this manual introduces users to the Pixelmator interface and its powerful features, providing detailed instructions about using Pixelmator tools. The 300-page manual, full of useful information for intermediate as well as for beginning users, is available as a free download at the Pixelmator website (www.pixelmator.com/support/documentation/).

Pixelmator 1.4.1 is a free update for current Pixelmator users.

Read more…

Check out the way our buddy Kyle Lambert took advantage of Pixelmator’s latest painting engine.
Impressive, huh?!

David Appleyards

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And then since we are celebrating Sprinkle’s birth, let’s talk about the new features in detail:

Feature #1: New Painting Engine

Much of the work we did for Pixelmator 1.4 Sprinkle was for the new painting engine. In fact, we did a complete rewrite of painting foundation in Pixelmator to improve on what we had before and create more power and features for the Brush, Pencil, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Blur, and Sharpen tools.

The result is a new painting engine that delivers smoothness, excellent performance, and new brush settings for painting tools in Pixelmator. This new painting engine creates a very good foundation for not only current, but also future tools in Pixelmator that relate to painting.

Feature #2: New Brush Settings

The creation of the new painting engine introduces several new brush settings to Pixelmator 1.4 Sprinkle. New advanced brush settings include scatter, flow, follow direction, size jitter, stroke jitter, angle jitter, opacity jitter, and color jitter. In order to maintain Pixelmator’s ease of use, we decided to include just the most essential brush settings and remove the less useful ones.

Feel free to experiment with these and give us your feedback. Also, accessing Pixelmator Help for more information about what each setting does might help you create the next great brush.

Feature #3: New Brush Presets

Sprinkle features a nice collection of brush presets for you to start with. Here is a preview of some of them:

Feature #4: Brush Sharing

From now on you can share your brushes with other Pixelmator users. It is as simple as dragging and dropping brushes from the Pixelmator Brushes palette onto your desktop, and vice versa.

Feature #5: Big Brother Brushes Support

In addition to the ability to load and save brush presets, Pixelmator 1.4 Sprinkle also gained the ability to import Adobe Photoshop brushes. Again, it is as simple as dragging and dropping .abr files (Photoshop brush presets) into the Pixelmator Brushes palette or window.

Feature #6: Graphics Tablet Support

Clearly if there is a better painting engine there should also be a better graphics tablet support. Well, our graphics table support is not just better …it is much broader in terms of painting experience. Pixelmator gained the ability to control brush diameter, flow, and scatter—not only by graphics tablet pressure, but also by tracking speed (of your mouse or the same graphics tablet). Try it: I think you will love it.

Feature #7: Document Presets

One of the most requested features since version 1.0 has been document presets. We have removed the image name field that was unusual in OSX and somewhat useless and added a document presets pop-up instead in the New Image panel. We have included a list of most popular presets for you, but of course you can easily create your own. You can also share your presets simply by dragging and dropping a preset onto desktop from the Manage New Document Presets sheet. This will save it as a document you can send to your friends.

We have even included iTunes Artwork and iPhone Desktop picture presets for you. We want your feedback, so tell us if you create something cool for you iPhone desktop!

Feature #8: Clouds Filter

Again, one of the most requested features by those of you who do a lot of work with special effects was a cloud filter which allows the artist to easily generate realistic clouds that can be used in either photos, special effects, or for creating natural textures.

Feature #9: Details

The proof is in the details! It is not about the features as much as it is about the details that make the application better and more fun. For example, the Clone Stamp is a bit more user-friendly; the painting tools cursor shows you the selected brush shape; the Welcome Screen has been updated; and perhaps most noticeable is that the package in which Pixelmator comes was reduced from 62 MB to 25 MB.

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Again, I really hope you love what we did with version 1.4. Obviously I want to thank you very much for using Pixelmator, providing us feedback, and letting your friends know about this great Mac application that we feel is definitely worth trying.

Have fun!