Pixelmator Pro 2.4 is now available, bringing color adjustments and effects layers, a completely redesigned Layers sidebar, over 200 beautiful new vector shapes, support for M1 Ultra, and more.
Color Adjustments and Effects Layers
Color adjustments and effects layers let you nondestructively change the look of entire layered compositions more quickly and easily than ever before. These new layer types also make it possible to more easily make selective edits to photos, designs, and illustrations, completely transforming many common workflows.
If you’d like to learn more about these layer types, we’ve got you covered – check out our video on this topic below.
Redesigned Layers Sidebar
The Layers sidebar has been redesigned with a fresh new look and a range of usability improvements – different layer types are now much more easily recognizable, layers feature informative subtitles, it’s now possible to customize layer thumbnail sizes, and more.
Over 200 New Vector Shapes
Pixelmator Pro 2.4 adds over 200 new artist-designed vector shapes in categories like science, activities, and symbols. Vector shapes are resolution-independent so can be used freely in any design or illustration. And they’ve been meticulously crafted to be pixel-perfect in pixel designs, so you won’t see any unwanted blurring at their edges when using them as icons or other elements in your designs.
M1 Ultra Support
Pixelmator Pro is a Universal app that runs natively on M1-powered Mac devices, taking full advantage of all the power of the new M1 Ultra chip and its unified memory architecture. Thanks to machine learning model optimizations, ML-powered tasks, like automatic background removal, super resolution, and photo enhancement are up to 1.7 times faster on M1 Ultra compared to M1 Max.
Other Improvements
Pixelmator Pro 2.4 also adds a new Scrubby Zoom mode, adding an all-new way to zoom images, brings the ability to unlink layer masks, includes new keyboard shortcuts for adding layers, and more.
The update is totally free for all existing Pixelmator Pro users and $39.99 for those of you who don’t yet have a copy. Head on down to the Mac App Store to make sure you’re all up to date and enjoy all the shiny new features!
We’ve been spoiling you with updates recently – and we love doing it – so we’re very excited to say that, today, we’ve got a cherry on top of the 2021 cake for Pixelmator Pro. Today’s update brings the ability to export files to Apple’s motion graphics tool, the aptly-named Motion. Now, if you don’t use Motion, that might not sound like such a big deal to you, but hiding behind the headline is another equally big improvement for all Pixelmator Pro users: completely reengineered support for SVG files. Intrigued? Read on for all the details.
Motion file format support
First of all, Motion. This year, we’ve made a point of improving support for Apple pro apps, starting with Final Cut Pro and support for LUTs as well as the ability to export PSDs specifically optimized for FCP. We’re good, nay, great Apple citizens so this seemed like a pretty natural step as we keep building Pixelmator Pro to be the best app it can be.
So, starting today, you can now export Motion files from Pixelmator Pro, making it easier than ever to create motion graphics. Not just that, because Pixelmator Pro has support for SVGs, you can even open SVGs and export those in Motion format. This is great if you, for example, want to create some animations or Final Cut Pro templates but don’t feel like creating all the illustrations yourself. If you’d like to learn more about using Pixelmator Pro and Motion, check out this in-depth video guide from Ripple Training.
All-new SVG engine
Another big project this year has been improvements to the file reading and writing foundations of Pixelmator Pro, starting with massively improved support for PSD files. Now, it’s time for SVGs. And the improvements here are maybe even bigger.
The SVG format is pretty fascinatingly huge and isn’t limited to just simple vector layers. It can contain images, text, path text, layers with different blending modes, letter spacing, filters and effects, masks, clipping paths, opacity. And how much of this is supported can be measured in numeric terms because there are certain compliance tests you can run and we have created our own test suite.
The file format specification really is huge and most raster and vector apps would pass a small number of these tests. The latest version of Pixelmator Pro now passes four times more of our test suite the the previous version did. We’ve also added support for some features that are only available in SVG 2, the newest specification of this format.
4ximproved support for SVGs
Below, you can see a visual example of how some SVG files used to be opened in Pixelmator Pro and what the situation’s like in today’s version. Big improvements!
Previous Version
Latest Version
We also don’t plan to stop there and will continue improving support for PSDs, SVGs, and will probably add some more useful formats next year and in the future. Pixelmator Pro itself will need more features to be able to keep up, so that’s also in the works.
The update is free for all existing users and available now. Also, Pixelmator Pro is still on sale for another week or so, so you have time to grab a copy at the current ridiculously low price. To do that, you can open up the App Store using the link below.
Phew. It’s been a busy and very fun 2021 here at the Pixelmator Team. Thank you to all of you who use our apps to create cool stuff, give us compliments, feedback, and the occasional bits of criticism. We really do appreciate you all. And we’ve got even bigger plans for next year – stay tuned!
Not even a full month since our last major update, we’re bringing you another huge update with some truly amazing new features. Pixelmator Pro 2.3 – codenamed Abracadabra (because it’s totally magical) – brings a new automatic background removal feature, automatic subject selection, a new Select and Mask tool, and more. Not just that, starting today, Pixelmator Pro is also going on sale for 50% off!
Magic Background Eraser
With today’s update, you can now magically remove the background from any image with just a click. We’ve trained a convolutional neural network to find the subject in pretty much any image and automatically remove its background. In fact – we’ve created three separate machine learning models to each do its little bit of magic. If you’d like to learn more about where to find this feature, we’ve got a super quick tutorial on it that you might enjoy.
Built-In Quick Action
In addition to being available in Pixelmator Pro itself, the Remove Background feature is also available in the Finder app as a Quick Action!
Decontaminate Colors
When you remove the background from an image, the object left behind can often have traces of the previous background around its edges. The (AI-powered) Decontaminate Colors feature automatically removes these traces so objects blend seamlessly with any new background. Although this is usually done automatically when it makes sense, you can also apply it yourself to any layer – even ones that have been cut out in other apps.
Select Subject
Another totally magical new feature is automatic subject selection – with just a click, you can make a selection of the subject of any image. And if you’d like to refine that selection down to the tiniest detail, we’ve also got a…
Select and Mask Tool
To make it possible to make incredibly accurate selections of any object, we’ve created a new Select and Mask tool. This is designed to make it easy to select the most difficult areas of all – hair, fur, and similar objects with very complex edges. Here, you’ll find a completely redesigned Smart Refine feature and other tools that make it a breeze to select even the most challenging areas of an image. To help you get the most out of this tool, we’ve got a great tutorial on it – check it out on our YouTube channel.
Smart Refine
If you have a rough – or even quite accurate selection – you can refine it automatically using the totally redesigned Smart Refine feature. Again, with just a single click, you can go from a rough outline to a perfect selection.
Refine Edge Brush
For anyone who wants absolutely pixel-perfect selections of every single area in an image, we’ve added a Refine Edge Brush. This brush is designed to be used specifically on tricky edge areas – create accurate selections of those areas by simply brushing over them.
How the magic happens
All this is powered by a set of machine learning algorithms that we’ve spent the last 12 months developing. Because Pixelmator Pro does much more than just simple background removal, we decided to create three algorithms – one for detecting the subjects of images, one for refining selection edges, and one for decontaminating the colors at the edges of objects. If you’d like a closer look at how this all works – read on!
Step 1: Find the subject of the image
First, we need to find the subject of the image. In the comparison below, the image on the left is the original and the one on the right shows the mask created by the subject detection feature. In this case, the mask is already pretty accurate but the edges aren’t fully refined.
Original image
Mask created by subject selection algorithm
Step 2: Refine the edges of the selection
The next step involves refining the edges of the selection. The image on the left shows what the mask looks like after the subject selection algorithm has done its magic and the one on the right shows what the selection looks like after it’s been processed by the edge refinement algorithm. Much better!
Selection after subject selection
Selection after subject selection and selection refinement
Step 3: Decontaminate the colors at the object’s edges
The last thing we need to do is decontaminate the colors at the edges of the object. This is actually a massively important step – without it, the object wouldn’t blend naturally with backgrounds of different colors. In this comparison, we’ve changed the background so you can see what the image would look like both with and without color decontamination.
Without color decontamination
With color decontamination
These new features are going to completely transform pretty much every image editing and photography workflow in Pixelmator Pro, so we’re incredibly excited to be able to share them with you. The update is totally free for existing Pixelmator Pro users and on sale for 50% off for anyone who doesn’t yet have a copy. Visit the Mac App Store to make sure you’re all up to date and enjoy all the additions!
The update includes some other little things, like the ability to specify custom export sizes and scales in the Export dialog. For all the details, check out our Updates page. And lastly, although 2021 is drawing to a close and we’ve shipped some really fantastic updates this year, we’ve got a few more surprises under our belt. Stay tuned for more news in the coming weeks!
After a short summer break, the entire Pixelmator Team is back at work, continuing our quest to create the world’s best image editor! And boy do we have some great stuff in store for you over the coming months. Today, we’re releasing Pixelmator Pro 2.1.3, which includes a huge update to our support for Adobe Photoshop files – in fact, we’ve rewritten the entire engine that handles this from the ground up.
All-new PSD engine
First of all, what’s the PSD engine? It’s what we call the part of the app that handles reading, opening, and writing PSD files – in a nutshell, everything to do with PSDs. And we’ve completely rewritten it to be faster, safer (crash-free!), and much more advanced.
This was a really big project and took us almost a year to complete. A cool note is that for the reading and writing part of this project, we used the Rust programming language. Also, we dived really deep into the PSD format itself and have a much better understanding of it, with some fantastic internal documentation and a great foundation for even more improvements in the future.
Support for PSD shapes
There are so many things that have been improved with regard to PSD support, but one of the most important ones is support for shapes in PSDs. Previously, PSD shape layers would be opened as image layers in Pixelmator Pro. Now, they’ll be opened as vector shapes, which is a really big deal. They’ll also be exported as shapes from Pixelmator Pro, bringing much improved compatibility!
Layered TIFFs, PSBs, improved effects, and more
In addition to this, there’s a whole lot more that we’ve added. This includes support for PSB files (very large PSDs), layered TIFF files (which actually include embedded PSDs), way better support for effects, and even support for some adjustment layers (such as Hue/Saturation, Exposure, Invert, and Channel Mixer). Support for text layers has also been improved a great deal – there’s now support for advanced features like SF Symbols sizing and improved handling of line height, spacing, and indents.
Optimize for Apple pro apps
A really nice extra detail is that you can now optimize exported PSDs for Apple pro apps like Final Cut Pro and Motion. This was needed because Pixelmator Pro now supports some much more advanced features in PSDs that these apps don’t.
A quick example
Below, we’ve got a quick visual example of how certain PSD files with some advanced PSD features (smart filters with masks and certain layer styles) would be opened in the previous version of Pixelmator Pro. This was inspired by a real-world case – the template files you can find on the Apple Design Resources page. The differences are pretty huge! And the new PSD engine is an ongoing project, so we’re certainly not done – we’ll be making more improvements as we continue to develop Pixelmator Pro.
Pixelmator Pro 2.1.2
Pixelmator Pro 2.1.3
Today’s update is free for all existing Pixelmator Pro users and is available from the Mac App Store right now.
Good day, Pixelmator fans! Today is truly a fantastic day because we’re releasing Pixelmator Pro 2.1 Coral, our latest and greatest major update, which is packed full of awesome new features and improvements.
Machine learning-powered intelligent cropping
The first new feature (at least in the What’s New window) is ML Crop, which provides suggestions for eye-catching ways to crop your photos. Simply click the new ML Crop button in the Crop tool and see what happens!
This tool isn’t designed to take the creative side out of cropping your photos, but getting a good composition can be tricky for beginners and getting a new perspective on this common task should be useful – especially when there’s machine learning magic involved. By the way, in the Crop tool, you’ll find that we’ve actually redesigned quite a lot of the tool itself, adding perspective correction, crop overlays, and more.
Quickly fill areas using drag and drop
The new Quick Fill feature lets you drag and drop colors from colors wells onto layers to quickly fill them with colors. It’s incredibly fun and so convenient when you want to quickly change the color of a shape, some text, or even an image layer.
You’ll find there’s also a brand new color well in the Pixelmator Pro toolbar that displays your foreground and background colors and lets you quickly switch between them. That’s a feature for which we’ve had quite a few requests and we’re excited to be able to add it.
Paint perfect brush strokes along paths, shapes, and selections
In the Paint tool, you’ll find a brand new Stroke with Brush button that lets you automatically paint brush strokes along paths, shapes, and even selections! We’ve even got a new tutorial about the feature – it’s very easy to use, so the tutorial is a quick one. You can find it here.
An improved Type tool
The Type tool has got itself a makeover, making it even more powerful and easy to use. It’s got a handy new text size slider (this sounds small, but you’ll find yourself using it all the time, trust us), a way to adjust paragraph spacing and indents, and more.
These are just the features that we could fit into the What’s New window, but there’s way more than that. To get you up to speed with all the changes, we’ve also created an overview video about the update, which you can find on our YouTube channel. And for those of you that want to see a line-by-line list of the changes, you’ll find them on our Updates page.
The update is now available (and is free for existing users), so open up the Mac App Store to make sure you’ve received it, and maybe leave us a nice word there too. If you feel like it, of course.
As for us, once an update like this is ready to ship, we’re usually already working on a whole bunch of things to surprise you with in the future – and boy do we have some goodies in store for you later this year. Speak soon!
It’s time for another awesome update to Pixelmator Pro – today’s update adds full support for LUT files, which are universal presets that let you instantly change the look of images and video in a wide variety of different apps. You can think of them as filters that are compatible with all kinds of creative apps. We’ve also partnered with some awesome LUT creators to offer special discounts on LUTs for Pixelmator Pro users. Read on for all the details about Pixelmator Pro 2.0.8!
Support for LUTs in Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro now includes a new Custom LUT adjustment, which lets you apply a LUT to any layer in your image, changing its colors and transforming its look. Our support also has a few great features that you won’t find in other apps – like the ability to convert a LUT into color adjustments using machine learning! Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve added:
Import and apply custom LUTs
You can now import custom LUTs that you’ve downloaded or purchased from LUT creators and apply them to your images. This transforms the colors of an image just like a preset or filter would.
Convert a LUT into color adjustments
A LUT is simply a set of instructions that tells an app how to edit the colors of an image or video and cannot be edited with other apps once it has been created. But using the magic of machine learning, we can turn LUTs into Pixelmator Pro color adjustments that you can fine-tune yourself.
Export LUTs
If you create a look you like in Pixelmator Pro and want to apply the same look to other images or video in other apps, you can export adjustments from Pixelmator Pro as a LUT file.
Built-in LUT collection
To make it easier to get started with this, we’ve included a number of different LUTs, ranging from cinematic look LUTs and LUTs that create duotone effects to technical LUTs that convert images to grayscale or apply certain photographic filters.
Scripting support
Pixelmator Pro has some of the best (quite possibly THE best?) AppleScript support out there and we’ve also added a way to script both applying LUTs and exporting them from the app.
Download the update
The update is out now and you can make sure you’ve received it by visiting the Mac App Store.
We think you’re going to love this update and we’ve got more really great stuff in store for you in the coming months. It’s an exciting time to be a Pixelmator Pro user.
This is Pixelmator Pro 2.0. Redesigned from the ground up, it’s more powerful than ever, more beautiful than ever, and it will be available in just six days, on Thursday, November 19th.
Support for M1-powered Macs
The Pixelmator Pro editing engine is powered by high-performance Metal code, so we can take advantage of the unified memory architecture of the M1 chip to bring you much speedier and much more responsive image editing. Machine learning tasks like ML Super Resolution are now up to a staggering 15 times faster on the new Macs. And, as a Universal app, Pixelmator Pro 2.0 runs natively on both M1 and Intel-based devices, so we’re completely ready for the new era of Mac.
Up to 15x faster ML Super Resolution
macOS Big Sur
Pixelmator Pro 2.0 is also fully compatible with macOS Big Sur with a new unified toolbar and a gorgeous new app icon.
All-New Design
Oh, and there’s one more thing – one more pretty huge new feature. That’s the all-new, more refined, and more modern design. Almost every tool, every menu, and every button has been updated to make the app more intuitive and more fun to use, making it easier for you to be creative. You can now customize the Pixelmator Pro interface, the list of tools, and the toolbar. We’ve also added a new Effects Browser, a new Presets Browser, over 200 beautiful new presets for the Color Adjustment, Effect, Style, Shape, and Gradient tools, and more.
In fact, this update is so big our full release notes didn’t even fit under the App Store’s 4,000 character limit. But you can read them in full on our Updates page!
You can get all the details about what’s coming on November 19th on our all-new Pixelmator Pro page. And make sure to sign up for our newsletter to be notified as soon as the update goes live.
We’ve been very busy over the last few months and we’re finally ready to share with you another great major update to Pixelmator Pro. Pixelmator Pro 1.7 Sequoia brings text on a path, canvas rotation, a new welcome screen, and version 3 of ML Super Resolution. Let’s dive right into each of those features!
Type text on a path, in a circle, or any other shape
This long-awaited and much-requested feature is now available in Pixelmator Pro! And we spent a long time refining every detail to make it the simplest and most intuitive tool of its kind.
In Pixelmator Pro 1.7 Sequoia, you’ll find three new tools grouped together with the regular type tool. There’s the Circular Type, Path Type, and the Freeform Type tools. You can use those to quickly and easily create text layers on paths. And you can also create your own shapes or paths and then click them with any of the type tools to add text on a path. Here are a few neat facts about our new type tools:
We use the native macOS text system, so things like SVG fonts and emoji are fully supported!
The Shift–T keyboard shortcut will now cycle through the currently selected type tool
We’ve also added support for the standard Shift and Option modifier keys when resizing text boxes on paths
Freely rotate the image canvas to any angle
Canvas rotation might be one of the most important features for digital painters and illustrators and it’s something we’ve wanted to add for a long time. We also spent a long time making sure it’s easy to find, and almost as importantly, easy to reset!
To rotate the canvas, you can use the standard rotate Multi-Touch gesture. Or, if you’re using a graphics tablet or mouse, you can also press and hold the Spacebar–R keyboard shortcut and drag your canvas to rotate it. You’ll notice that, when the canvas is rotated, some very handy canvas rotation controls automatically appear, disappearing once the canvas rotation is set back to 0°.
A friendly new welcome screen
The first thing you see when you open an app makes a big impression. And we wanted to make it easier for new users to open and create images. That’s what this new welcome screen is all about! You’ll find quick ways to create an empty new document, open images from your Photos library, and browse images saved on your Mac.
If you’d rather see the native Open dialog, that hasn’t gone anywhere — simply turn off the “Show this window when Pixelmator Pro launches” option in the welcome screen.
Improvements to ML Super Resolution and RAW support
ML Super Resolution has been improved once more, this time, we’ve worked on the quality, added a progress bar, and added support for upscaling RAW photos while preserving all their RAW data!
The update is available today from the Mac App Store and is free to all existing Pixelmator Pro users. Visit the App Store to make sure you’re all up to date and let us know what you make of the additions and improvements!
Fresh from the Pixelmator oven, we’ve just released Pixelmator Pro 1.6 Magenta, a major update you’re sure to love.
The all-new color picker
Pixelmator Pro now has a brand new color picker, designed to be incredibly powerful and full-featured, yet amazingly easy to use.
We love the Colors window, so why did we decide to make our own color picker? Well, for an app like Pixelmator Pro, it falls a little short in a few small ways. And those small things often make a big difference.
We wanted to give you an easy way to pick colors using the classic hue, saturation, and brightness control, hex and and RGB color codes, and good old color swatches. And we wanted everything to be in one place so it’s all super easy to find. We also wanted to have a beautiful and informative eyedropper for when you’re picking colors from your image. And this is the result:
We’ve also added a dedicated Color Picker tool, where the eyedropper is always active so you can quickly pick a series of colors from an image. You can also customize how the eyedropper works everywhere else in Pixelmator Pro. For example, you can change its sample size (so it picks an average color, rather than an exact sample), change which color code is displayed, or turn off displaying color names. We hope you’re as excited about this new picker as we are!
An easier way to select multiple objects
This is another great improvement to make Pixelmator Pro even easier to use — you can now drag over multiple objects to select them. Hint: to make this easier to use with illustrations and other images, lock the background layer.
Identify and replace missing fonts
Whenever you open an image with fonts that you don’t have installed on your Mac, you’ll see a handy notification letting you know. And, using the Replace Fonts feature, you’ll be able to replace those missing fonts in a snap!
Performance improvements and other goodies
Along with all this, we’ve also included some performance improvements. The image overlay — which includes things like guides, selection outlines, layer handles, and others — has been rewritten to use Metal, bringing obvious speed improvements. What’s more, you can now press the Shift – Command – h keyboard shortcut to hide or show it!
We’ve also improved the speed of layer strokes, added the ability to apply inside and outside strokes to text layers, and made a range of improvements the the shape tools, making it easier to create illustrations and drawings. All in all, it’s a pretty awesome update, even if we do say so ourselves.
If you want to know every detail about the update, head down to our What’s New page, where you’ll find the release notes and more. Otherwise, visit the Mac App Store to make sure you’re all up to date. And don’t hesitate to let us know what you think!
Pixelmator Pro just got an awesome major update! Version 1.5 (codenamed Avalon) brings full support for macOS Catalina, the upcoming Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR, introduces intelligent, machine-learning powered noise removal, big performance improvements, and a whole lot more. Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve added.
macOS Catalina Support
Pixelmator Pro is now fully compatible with macOS Catalina, including support for Sidecar and Apple Pencil, which means you can extend your desktop workspace using your iPad as a second Mac display! And with Apple Pencil support, you can paint, sketch, create graphic designs, and retouch your photos with pressure-sensitivity, acceleration, and tilt support as well as support for the double-tap gesture. Plus, as Pixelmator Pro fully supports Touch Bar, handy controls appear at the bottom of your iPad when using Sidecar — even if your Mac doesn’t have a Touch Bar.
Mac Pro
Thanks to its Metal-based architecture and GPU-powered editing engine, Pixelmator Pro absolutely flies on the upcoming Mac Pro. We’ve been able to optimize multi-GPU support so that with multiple graphics processors in Mac Pro, you’ll see big performance boosts in Pixelmator Pro. And performance increases even more with each additional GPU. For example, Pixelmator Pro applies the new Core ML-powered ML Denoise up to 2.5x faster and effects up to 2x faster on Mac Pro with 2 GPUs compared to iMac Pro.
EDR Mode
We’ve also added support for the upcoming Pro Display XDR. The display’s true 10-bit color depth and P3 wide color gamut are natively supported in Pixelmator Pro. And the new Extended Dynamic Range Mode lets you display clipped details in RAW photos. To do this, we use the display’s 1600-nit peak brightness to bring out details in the highlights without compressing the dynamic range of the rest of the photo, bringing a never-before-possible RAW editing and viewing experience.
ML Denoise
ML Denoise is an amazing machine learning-powered noise removal tool. Integrated via Core ML, ML Denoise effortlessly removes luminance and color noise created by cameras in low-light photos. What’s more, it can even reduce artifacts caused by image compression algorithms, improving image quality while preserving important details!
Performance Improvements
Pixelmator Pro now has an end-to-end Metal pipeline for rendering and editing and a new asynchronous zoom engine, which brings some big performance improvements. Zooming and scrolling is now at least 10x faster and always responsive, effects are up to 2.7x faster, and painting is up to 2.4x faster!
SF Symbols
SF Symbols, the new set of over 1,500 configurable vector icons designed by Apple, is fully supported in Pixelmator Pro. So you can easily open SF Symbols templates, customize them to create your own symbols, and even drag and drop symbols right into existing documents!
This fantastic fifth major update to Pixelmator Pro is free for all existing users, so download it, try it, and let us know how we did. As you might guess, we’re already working on some more really incredible additions to Pixelmator Pro and we can’t wait to share them with you. Until next time!
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