November 22, 2011

Pixelmator 2.0.1 and More

I am extremely happy to let you know that Pixelmator 2.0 Chameleon is the most successful release of Pixelmator in our history. People are crazy about it, and it is one of the most successful apps in the Mac App Store in terms of everything: great reviews, massive download numbers, and, obviously, sales. In other words, Pixelmator 2.0 is a hit.

But hey, we just don’t stop here. Today, we are releasing Pixelmator 2.0.1, an update that brings back German, French, and Japanese languages as well as adds quite a few minor improvements and fixes those annoying bugs. Pixelmator 2.0.1 is available immediately as a free update via the Mac App Store.

But there is more. In addition to the whole support website, we also updated our community discussion forums. We added a clean look and feel to the forum websites and removed much of the useless features in them. Feel free to check out the new, easier to use forums or even join them to discuss everything Pixelmator with your buddies. There are many great people out there who are eager to help you get the most out of Pixelmator.

Also, a little hint for the future: we are already working hard on Pixelmator 2.1, whose codename nor any detailed info is not yet available.

So stay tuned for more info about Pixelmator 2.1. And, also, please don’t forget to let us know what you think about the new forums and 2.0.1 update. I am getting back to work to build the best image editing app for the Mac (which automatically means the best in the world).

October 27, 2011

Pixelmator 2.0 Launches on Mac App Store

Image Editing App Adds New Drawing, Retouching and Smudge Tools, Content-Aware Fill, and Support for OS X Lion

The Pixelmator Team today released Pixelmator 2.0, the latest version of its groundbreaking image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images. Pixelmator 2.0 features new drawing and retouching tools, Content-Aware Fill, a Healing Tool, a Smudge Tool, and more. Designed from the ground up for OS X Lion, Pixelmator 2.0 now supports Full Screen, Versions and Auto Save, and is available from the Mac App Store for introductory $29.99.

“With tons of exciting new features and support for OS X Lion, this new version of Pixelmator is the easiest, most enjoyable way to experience the best of image editing,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Pixelmator 2.0 gives everyone the tools they need to unlock their creativity and boost their productivity.”

The new drawing tools in Pixelmator allow users to add, create, combine and edit vector shapes easily. In addition to Pen and Freeform Pen tools, Pixelmator also includes pre-drawn shape tools for quickly adding triangles, lines, circles or rectangles into compositions. Fill and stroke settings for created shapes, as well as shadows, can be easily adjusted in the new Shape Settings palette. Drawing tools in Pixelmator are useful for creating buttons, icons, web page elements, illustrations or any other items for use in image compositions.

A breakthrough new Content-Aware Fill technology in Pixelmator allows users to magically get rid of unwanted elements in images, as if they never existed. By choosing either the new Healing Tool or the selection tools, a user can select wrinkles, blemishes, image damage or any other details present in images, and with just one click let Pixelmator seamlessly fill the selected area with similar nearby image content.

The new retouching tools in Pixelmator 2.0 include a Sponge Tool for adding more color or taking color away from areas of an image by painting on them; Burn and Dodge tools for naturally darkening or lightening areas of an image; a Red Eye Tool for easily—either automatically or manually—fixing the red-eye effect in images; and a new Smudge Tool for smearing paint or rubbing out blemishes or any other details in images, as realistically as using one’s fingers.

Other new features of Pixelmator 2.0 include an easier-to-use interface, a new Eyedropper Tool, a new info bar, a convenient tool options bar, a fully customizable Tools palette, a new Type Tool, a Pixel Tool, and a number of other minor improvements.

Pixelmator 2.0 is available from the Mac App Store for an introductory price of $29.99. http://www.pixelmator.com/buy/

For existing Pixelmator users who purchased the app from the Mac App Store, the new version is available as a free upgrade.

September 5, 2011

On the Pixelmator 2.0 Shipping Date

We expected to ship Pixelmator 2.0 Chameleon sometime this summer. But the summer is almost gone, and the app is not out yet. Why is it still late even though we worked very hard and had zero serious technical issues?

In fact, it’s simple—Pixelmator 2.0 is late because we put our hearts into it and want it to be perfect. But it looks like perfection requires some more time.

As of today, we think we have done a great job on nearly everything we touched in Pixelmator 2.0: the look and feel of the app; the fantastic new vector, type, retouching, and many other tools; the exclusive OS X Lion support; hundreds of lovely details; and much more. But hey, we still would like to squash bugs and improve some little things that we think should be improved before the release.

I assure you that the upgrade is worth every single moment of your wait, and I kindly ask you to excuse our tardiness and allow us a few more weeks to release a totally perfect Pixelmator 2.0. After all, we do this for you and care very much about what you think of our creation.

While I am getting back to work on shipping the app as soon as possible, I hope you enjoy a short movie we made about the new Eyedropper Tool in Pixelmator 2.0.

August 25, 2011

Flapcraft

Before the release of the amazing Pixelmator 2.0, we thought we should have some fun… And, boy, did we do the craziest thing this year…

…we created a game. Yep. A real game. A completely complete iOS game for our beloved iPhones, iPads and iPods (touch).

The game is called Flapcraft. And it is awesome. And here is what it looks like:

In Flapcraft, you play as a handsome Viking doing tricks in the air by flying on a wooden log. To perform those tricks more effectively, the Viking’s wooden log can be upgraded with techy stuff like wings, rockets, engines and more. The game looks gorgeous, features great sound, and is fully accelerometer-based. In short—well, you should try the game for yourself—it is a lot of fun.

Oh, and just to make things clear: We are not going into the game business anytime soon. If you try to get the business logic behind Flapcraft… don’t; there is none. Flapcraft was developed during beta testing of Pixelmator 2.0—well, of Pixelmator’s 2.0 painting engine, to be more precise. We found that testing Pixelmator 2.0 by creating game graphics was very effective. What’s more, we made ourselves comfortable with many of those great iOS technologies in the process. In fact, we handled everything ourselves in the building of Flapcraft—no third party was involved.

To create the game from scratch, we used Pixelmator 2.0, GarageBand, and, of course, Xcode. You’d be very surprised at how easy it is to create a game for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch if you know the tools. Actually, the special Flapcraft page on our website was created using Pixelmator 2.0. We even did a short making-of Flapcraft video.

Flapcraft is available right there on the App Store for only $1.99. It is a completely universal app that will fully work on all iOS devices once downloaded, whether iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. And, yep, it does support the amazing iPhone 4 Retina display.

For more information on and screenshots of Pixelmator’s Flapcraft, please visit the Flapcraft page on our website or view the game description in iTunes.

Now go ahead and have fun. After all, the game is twice as cool when you know that it was created with your favorite image editing app. I hope you like it.

As for me, I am getting back to work on the Pixelmator 2.0 release. Still some stuff left to do there.

July 20, 2011

Ready for OS X Lion (Update)

I’m very happy to let you know that while working extremely intensively on Pixelmator 2.0—codenamed Chameleon—we still managed to improve the currently available version’s compatibility with OS X Lion. Pixelmator 1.6.6 adds fixes and improvements that will help the app run smoothly on OS X Lion.

Lion is a must-have upgrade of Mac OS X. Believe me, we spent a lot of time using it, and everyone at the Pixelmator Team absolutely loves the OS X Lion.

To easily update to Pixelmator 1.6.6, simply use your Mac App Store app. For non-Mac App Store users, it is highly recommended to transition to the Mac App Store at this time. However, if not ready to transition yet, users can run the Software Update feature in Pixelmator.

High-end support for OS X Lion is coming along for Pixelmator 2.0 Chameleon. With Lion-specific features, the new version is going to totally rock on OS X Lion. If you haven’t yet noticed, we have a sneak preview website for more info about what’s coming in Pixelmator 2.0.

And finally, we thought you might be happy to take a look at the new Smudge Tool in Pixelmator 2.0. Enjoy the video!

Update (A Bump)

We had a nasty bump in the road with the release of version 1.6.6. Because of a critical bug (a crash upon launch) found in version 1.6.6 fifteen minutes after its release, we had to temporarily remove the app from the Mac App Store and from our downloads.

With the bug fixed in Pixelmator 1.6.7, everything is up and running again. I apologize for any inconvenience you experienced. It was a good lesson for us.

(It’s a pity to waste a version (1.6.6)).

June 17, 2011

Pixelmator Apple Design Award

Last week’s WWDC was totally crazy for us. The craziest thing that happened was winning the Apple Design Award. It was so unexpected and so unbelievable that even if I had wanted to do a blog post on the evening of our win, I simply couldn’t have done it. There were too many things to think of, too many words to say and too many people to thank. I had to chill out.

That Apple Design Award is very special for us. We’ve dreamed of winning it since the very beginning.

Because the award is so special, we spent few minutes to create a special web page to celebrate it. We even made it possible to see the award trophy in a 360? view and took some close-up photos so you can check it out and rejoice along with us.

Visit the Pixelmator Apple Design Award Website.

June 2, 2011

Pixelmator Team Unveils Pixelmator 2.0 Chameleon

New Features Include Drawing Tools, Content-Aware Fill, New Retouching Tools, Smudge Tool

The Pixelmator Team unveiled Pixelmator 2.0 today, a major upgrade of the groundbreaking image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images. Pixelmator 2.0, codenamed Chameleon, features drawing tools, Content-Aware technology-based Fill, a Healing Tool, new retouching tools, a Smudge Tool, and more.

“Pixelmator makes it incredibly fun and easy for anyone to create, edit and enhance images,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Now, with tons of new features and improvements, the next generation of Pixelmator is clearly one of the most impressive and useful apps ever built for Mac OS X.”

The new, full-featured and precise drawing tools in Pixelmator allow users to easily add, create and edit vector shapes. In addition to Pen, Freeform Pen, Convert and Path Selection tools, Pixelmator also includes pre-drawn shape tools for quickly adding triangles, lines, circles, rectangles, and even custom shapes from the new Shapes palette into compositions. Fill and stroke settings for created shapes, as well as shadows, can be easily adjusted in the new Shape Settings palette. The drawing tools are very useful for creating buttons, icons, web page elements, illustrations or any other items for use in image compositions.

A breakthrough new Content-Aware Fill technology in Pixelmator allows users to magically get rid of unwanted elements in images, as if they never existed. By using either the new Healing Tool or the selection tools, one can select wrinkles, blemishes, image damage or any other details in images, then let Pixelmator smartly and seamlessly fill the selected area with similar nearby image content.

The new retouching tools in Pixelmator include a Sponge Tool, for adding more color or taking color away from areas of an image by painting on them; Burn and Dodge tools, for naturally darkening or lightening areas of an image; and a Red Eye Tool for easily—either automatically or manually— fixing the red-eye effect in images.

The new Smudge Tool allows smearing paint, or rubbing out blemishes or any other details in images, simply by using any brush tip, as realistically as using one’s fingers.

Other new features of Pixelmator 2.0 Chameleon include a cleaner and easier-to-use interface, a new Eyedropper Tool, a new info bar, a convenient tool options bar, a fully customizable Tools palette, a new Type Tool, a Pixel Tool, and a number of minor improvements.

Pricing and Availability

Pixelmator 2.0 is a free upgrade via the Mac App Store for everyone who has purchased any version of Pixelmator via the Mac App Store. More information on Pixelmator 2.0 can be found at www.pixelmator.com/sneak-preview/

Pixelmator 2.0 will be available exclusively on the Mac App Store for $59 later this summer. For now, anyone can purchase the currently available version of Pixelmator on the Mac App Store for $29 and receive a free upgrade of Pixelmator 2.0 once it is released.

February 8, 2011

Pixelmator 1.6.5 is Out

So what do you do when your app is extremely profitable and receives so many positive reviews? Well, at least in our case, nothing unusual, except that we work even harder (a lot harder) since the atmosphere here among the Pixelmator Team is wonderful.

We are currently working on Pixelmator 1.7 Geneva and 2.0 simultaneously (since the two are somewhat related) and some other minor but still great Pixelmator updates.

Today, we are updating Pixelmator to 1.6.5. New in the update are two blending modes – Subtract and Divide – important bug fixes, and some other minor improvements.

While I would love to have not added these blending modes since I think there are more than enough of them in Pixelmator, we had to do it due to better Big Brother (PSD) support. So, generally, adding just two more blending modes is, in fact, a good thing – especially for those of you who know how to use these modes (send me a message or an example if you are one of those lucky ones).

Another bunch of changes in version 1.6.5 are very important bug fixes (such as the sudden disappearance of Quartz Composer filters in version 1.6.4) and some minor improvements.

The original plan was to ship the very new and awesome Crop Tool with version 1.6.5, but since the bugs were so important, we decided to focus on them instead. But don’t worry; the new Crop Tool is coming very soon – it is in test mode now, and I love what we’ve done with it so far – I honestly believe that we’ve got one of the world’s best crop tools.

For now, Pixelmator 1.6.5 is a free update for everyone who owns the app (run the update through the built-in software update or use the Mac App Store app to do that for you).

If you don’t have Pixelmator yet, go grab it while we are still running the transition to the Mac App Store and the price is as its lowest. The transitional pricing will be up until the last day of this month (February 28th).

January 25, 2011

Pixelmator Grosses $1 Million on the Mac App Store

I am ecstatic to announce that Pixelmator grossed a gigantic $1 million on the Mac App Store. And that happened in only 20 short days.

What is even better is that the app is getting rave reviews on the Mac App Store (4.5 stars with over 275 ratings on the US store, 5 stars with over 128 ratings in the UK, and 4.5 stars with over 129 ratings in Germany). And, thanks to the Mac App Store, more people than ever are choosing to download Pixelmator.

Such an amazing success feels fantastic. Thank you so much for your enthusiastic support.

We can’t wait to hit your Macs and the Mac App Store shelves with the hot new updates (1.6.5, 1.7 Geneva and the outstanding Pixelmator 2.0) that are currently in the works.

January 11, 2011

Pixelmator 1.6.4 Is All about the Details

With the Mac App Store launch and the Pixelmator transition to it running at full throttle, we worked tirelessly for the last few days to finally bring Pixelmator 1.6.4 to everyone – not just the Mac App Store.

The update is clearly one of the most significant refinements we’ve ever made to Pixelmator, even though it is all about the details. In fact, you can think of it as massive enhancements and modernization of things in the app that are not visible at a first glance, but that are definitely felt once the app is brought into play.

Gradient Tool

The Gradient Tool has been revamped completely. For a combination of major performance improvements and high-quality smoothness (or dithering, which basically means no banding between colors), we had to do a complete rewrite of gradient kernels (the most low-level, foundational stuff of the gradient engine). We think we’ve got the world’s best Gradient Tool – very high quality, very fast, and alive, since you see the results instantly when drawing a gradient with the Gradient Tool.

In addition to all of the Gradient Tool improvements, Pixelmator has introduced a new collection of gradient presets in the gradients palette and gradient sharing.

Gradient Sharing

This one is very cool. Sharing gradients in Pixelmator is as simple as dragging and dropping them from the gradients palette onto your desktop, and vice versa. Even more, the exported gradients icon shows a preview of the exported gradient. We created a special Quick Look plug-in (built into Pixelmator) for this purpose – a detail that is a lot of fun.

Selection Tools

We also did a complete revamp of all the selection tools in Pixelmator: Magic Wand, Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Rectangular Marquee, and Elliptical Marquee.

In addition to major (I mean it) performance improvements for the selection tools, a great deal of attention was paid to the details… lots of details. A few examples:

  • When you start moving the selection around, the selection border dissolves until you release your mouse. It helps you to clearly see where you are about to place the selection.
  • The selection border also dissolves when you add an adjustment or filter onto it for a better preview of the final result.
  • By pressing the Space key on your keyboard you can now temporarily switch to the Hand Tool whenever you like when drawing a selection with the Polygonal Lasso Tool.
  • Shift-click with the Polygonal Lasso Tool to draw a selection border every 45?.
  • Command-press when drawing a selection with Polygonal Lasso will show you a preview of a closed selection and, with the Command key still pressed, you can close it (the selection) with a single mouse-click.
  • All the selection tools now have the intersect mode, which basically does what it says: allows intersecting selections with each other.

Oh, and the click-and-drag-technology-based Magic Wand Tool is very, very fast now.

Although I am not saying that we already have a complete package of selection tools, I am very confident that those that we have now are the very best selection tools in the world. We will continue to add more of them in the future.

JPEG Turbo

Pixelmator 1.6.4 is first in the world to add a new JPEG compression/decompression engine, called the libjpeg-turbo. JPEG Turbo, as we named it, brings 2x faster JPEG compression via Pixelmator’s Export for Web feature. Remember, Pixelmator has a real-time preview for optimizing images or slices for the Web, so JPEG Turbo makes that preview even more instant.

Refine Selection

Three months’ worth of scientific-caliber research and development went into the new Refine Selection tool. Refine Selection delivers quality results when enhancing your selection borders, whether that be smoothing, feathering or resizing. A noteworthy ease-of-use of the Refine Selection tool in Pixelmator remains exactly the same as before.

Tutorials

In addition to a wonderful update, we’ve got some supplements for you to play with – new and inspiring Pixelmator tutorials covering Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magic Wand, Marquee Selection Tools, and a Gradient Tool.

Users who purchased Pixelmator through the Mac App Store are already using Pixelmator version 1.6.4, while non-Mac App Store Pixelmator users can get version 1.6.4 from our website or through Pixelmator’s built-in software update.

Those of you who haven’t yet picked up your copy of Pixelmator can download a trial on our website or, if desired, purchase the complete app from the Mac App Store.

Thank you so much for using Pixelmator. We really hope you will enjoy using version 1.6.4 as much as we enjoyed creating it.