December 24, 2012

Development Update

It’s been a great year for Pixelmator. We are extremely happy to see how Pixelmator improves with each release and that the Pixelmator community is rapidly growing. Successful releases, such as Pixelmator 2.1 Cherry, only prove that the decisions we are making are the right ones.

And, boy, we made a lot of them during 2012. We’ve changed from the ground how Pixelmator handles colors, we’ve introduced the world’s fastest Healing Tool, updated Pixelmator for Retina displays, and added other cool new features. In fact, we’ve released more Pixelmator updates than ever before, fixing several hundred bugs and making very important improvements. The number is astonishing when you think that all of it was done by our small Pixelmator Team.

All of those constant maintenance updates aim for more than just to make Pixelmator more reliable and stable, and awesome. We’ve carefully crafted and laid a foundation for a couple of new features that we will introduce next year. And, you know, we just can’t keep it a secret any longer, so here it goes.

We are super excited to announce that, in 2013, layer styles are coming to your favourite image editing app! But wait, there’s more. Just before introducing layer styles, we have one more treat for you on the way—Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry. Here’s a hint:

That’s all from us for now. Talk with you next year.

The Pixelmator Team wishes you all warm and cozy holidays!

Comments

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  • Klaus Major

    Hi friends,

    Ho, Ho, Ho 🙂
    Keep on the good work and happy holidays!

    Best from germany

    Klaus

    11 years ago
  • Tim

    Wow, great this will finally kill Photoshop off my workflow. Really looking forward. Happy Holidays!

    11 years ago
  • Josh

    Layer styles! Oh, man. Thank you in advance for all your hard work on this wonderful app. I could ditch Photoshop finally!

    11 years ago
  • Rob

    Including drop shadow?

    11 years ago
  • Ivan

    Just purchased Pixelmator from MAS, keep up the good work!

    11 years ago
  • Tom

    Thanks a lot!

    Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays!

    11 years ago
  • Nik

    WOW! So cool. can’t wait. Looks like i going to delete PS after this update 🙂

    11 years ago
  • Jeff

    Does the hint mean it will also be a vector app????

    11 years ago
  • Joe

    Very excited about this. Hopefully layer styles includes full compatibility with PS layer styles so we can work with PSDs that include them.

    11 years ago
  • Micah

    IT’S SO ON.

    11 years ago
  • Andre Santee

    Hopefully it will include nearest color pixel resize.

    11 years ago
  • John

    Love Pixelmator but is anyone else perplexed and dismayed by the lack of the ability to lock a layer. It’s quite a limitation and I don’t understand the omission of this essential feature. Is it that hard to implement.

    11 years ago
  • Morten

    Is there a gradient fill in those vector shapes? Exciting…

    11 years ago
  • Ivan

    This is great news! I’m eating nails craving it reaches 2.2!

    thanks pixelmator team

    11 years ago
  • Ryan

    I love Pixelmator. I use it pretty much exclusively. But for the love of god, please throw together a new color picker/wheel. The default one is just bullshit. Even now, thinking about it, makes me literally shake with rage. You know when a group of people take up the whole sidewalk but move at glacial speed, and you just want to get some cigarettes from 7-11 but you can’t seem to get past this bunch of motherfuckers? That’s how I feel whenever I have to pick a color in Pixelmator. Other than that, looking forward to the new release.

    11 years ago
  • Tiago

    Please, drop shadow too!!! But, wait, I love Pixelmator and I’m use it more than photoshop for my personal jobs, drawings and everything, and drop shadow will be a welcome feature!!!
    A Rotation Canvas” feature it will be welcome too!

    11 years ago
  • philschreiner_0203

    Would it be possible to make the brushes rotatable as with photoshop ? by the way: please take all brush functions from ps if possible because it is kind of annoying that some features are missing in pixelmator.

    but you’re well doing ! i really love pixelmator ! keep on working 🙂

    11 years ago
  • erland

    The image above looks like “vectorize text” tool.

    Very excited about layer styles!

    11 years ago
  • Ivan

    Import vector? (svg, eps, ai) I hope that if..!

    11 years ago
  • Sebastian

    YES, Layer Styles finally will kill PS for me, thanks!

    11 years ago
  • Alessandro R.

    OMG, with layer styles “Pixelmator” will be perfect!!! Great Team!

    11 years ago
  • Sammy

    Long story short.. I like working in Pixelmator much more than in Photoshop 🙂 Good work guys and keep going 🙂

    11 years ago
  • Cristobal F

    Nice Jobs, it’s absolutely my main design software.

    11 years ago
  • night

    16bit support. Please.

    11 years ago
  • Aditya

    I will also really like 16 bit support.
    Also ETA for Blueberry.

    11 years ago
  • Nic

    I love Pixelmator! It’s by far the easiest image editing software to learn and use. When I found out about this software, it was the first application I ever purchased on my mac, and by far it was the best thing I ever purchased for $15. Keep it up Pixelmator!

    11 years ago
  • PsykX

    You guys are late about Layer Styles which should have been in 1.0, but still… Pretty sure Layer Styles will make me ditch Photoshop for good. I’ll get more for my buck, especially because I’m getting free updates. Photoshop will be like 50x more expensive than Pixelmator.

    11 years ago
  • PsykX

    Only thing really keeping me off of Pixelmator is the black interface. It’s not too bad on my MacBook Pro, but on my iMac 27″, it’s too dark for me to see adequately.

    11 years ago
  • Everett

    Is that a convert text to path? Layer Styles… all I can say is, “it’s truly Christmas.” Thank you Pixelmator team. looking forward to the year to come.

    11 years ago
  • Richey

    Layer Styles, I can’t believe it! Goodbye Photoshop 🙂

    Thank you so much Pixelmator. Have a Happy new Year and go on like you do right now.
    And please don’t add so many useless features like Adobe does.

    11 years ago
  • DJ

    Hangs far too many times and for no apparent reason.

    File size doesn’t seem to be a factor, as it can go ‘not responding’ on a small image just as easily as a big one.

    It’s often a memory hog when this happens too, slowing my entire MacBook Pro to a crawl until I can manage to Force Quit.

    Pixelmator has potential, but I still have to run Photoshop as my dependable image editor.

    11 years ago
  • BAz

    Layer Style ? What did I just read ? LAYER STYLE ???? LAYER STYLE !!!!!
    This is going insane ! Pixelmator <333333333 !

    11 years ago
  • Pat

    Just bought Pixelmator today from the Mac App Store in anticipation of Layer Styles. Can’t wait. I know it’s not right to ask about ETAs but is the new 2.2 update release anywhere round the corner?

    11 years ago
  • Hector

    If layerstyles come out i will delete PS.

    11 years ago
  • ImperectLink

    This going to sounds nuts but I wish you guys would consider porting Pixelmator to Windows. I love this app but my most powerful machine is not a mac.

    11 years ago
  • Gary

    I currently rent the Adobe CS software simply because ‘layer styles’ are that important of a feature for me.
    When Pixelmator finally adds them, then I will be able to drop PS and save $360 a year!

    11 years ago
  • WHITE BALANCE NEEDED!!!!

    WHITE BALANCE NEEDED! WHITE BALANCE NEEDED! WHITE BALANCE NEEDED! WHITE BALANCE NEEDED!

    At least white balance or color temperature!

    11 years ago
  • Ethan Waldo

    Overall, Great app. However, it is still missing a few key parts:
    *Compatibility with Adobe Photoshop’s Smart Layers
    *Drop Shadows

    Thats about all I can think of that is very necessary. Regardless, I still love this program.

    11 years ago
  • PsykX

    @Ethan : I believe Drop Shadows will be included in Layer Styles.

    11 years ago
  • PsykX

    What I would love is :
    – Dockable Windows as a temporary fix in 2.2
    – a Single-window app that does it all for a permanent fix

    If we take a look at Apple’s apps, their biggest apps are pretty much all like this or in the process of becoming single-window apps : Final Cut Pro X, GarageBand, iTunes, Logic Pro, iPhoto, Aperture, iBooks Author …

    Third-party apps are also following the trend : Office 2011, Coda 2, …

    Then, I would fix that black interface that’s killing my eyes and making me flee from Pixelmator.

    11 years ago
  • Cre8tv

    Styles is the #1 thing missing to make this a total Photoshop replacement for my video business. Been using Photoshop since the ’88’ version on a mac classic. It’s time to jump ship from bloatware to something fresh.

    11 years ago
  • David Malcolm

    Hope this means full pen support, not to mention the ability to mask raster layers to vector ones. I recently was trying to create some sprites for a video game and no matter how I do it I can’t easily export my Illustrator creation to Photoshop while keeping each vector object separate. What I really want to be able to do is apply raster masks over top that will let me create textures and shading, while still keeping everything as shape as vectors allow for. If Pixelmator can accomplish this I think you’ll soundly trump everything else Photoshop offers me.

    11 years ago
  • Christopher Lindblom

    Looks like text as path, which would be awesome, pixelmator needs more/better vector tools (if you would like to be the go-to-tool for web design). Sure some people still do all their web design with raster, but the industry has been and will be moving away from that, thats why tools like Sketch is gaining ground. But if thats not what pixelmator would like to focus on, its okay by me, i’ll use both. Pixelmator will probably always have a special place in my heart and on my computer, thanks 😉

    11 years ago
  • Klaus Major

    OK, it is february already…
    Come on guys, talk to us 🙂

    11 years ago
  • Alex

    i bought Pixelmator a while ago, simple because it did so many things in a much more modern way. It was ment to replace PS which may be full of features, but lacked polish. Now, half a year later, i still had to use PS because Pixelmator was missing important things i needed for web design: Layer Style (starting with simple things like drop shadow).

    Now, it seems this is finally going to change and i really can’t wait for this important feature to be included. Then i am going to say goodbye to adobe, as they might have the most feature packed software tools, but to be true, most of them are not needed for my daily business and other tools like Pixelmator are really catching up.

    Keep up the good work and never stop showing us that you are working and improving, what is already a great product.

    11 years ago
  • gpgxlmtr

    exciting that the new version is coming out. Recommended mantra for 2013: bug fixes. Too many spinning beach balls and other strange quirks. It’s my top beach ball spinner app!

    11 years ago
  • Ivan

    2 months made ??the announcement, I think many of us are very impatient … but anyway, no matter if the results are good.

    Really hope they can also add real support for pattern fills.

    ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team!
    ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team!
    ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team! ¡hurray PMX team!

    11 years ago
  • Aryugaetu

    WHITE BALANCE!

    With the obnoxiously over complex world of each digital device having its own fingers in the hue adjustment pot, including my own lying eyes, it would be nice for me to simply point to a known gray/white area, and have Pixelmator do very simple math and adjust the image’s RGB accordingly. Easy-peasy. It would instantly cut through all of the unnecessary headaches. I know for a fact Mac’s OSX Core Image has white balance. There is no complex coding or copyrights involved. Someone at Pixelmator had to make a conscience decision to eliminate it. It’s like removing the “D” from a car’s automatic transmission.

    10 years ago