In the General tab, you can control different features of Pixelmator Pro, from the way the application and its elements look like and how it displays documents, to how images are opened. You can also turn things like guides, action tooltips, and information labels on or off.
You can work with Pixelmator Pro in light or dark mode. Pixelmator Pro can also adapt to your macOS appearance automatically.
To switch between light and dark appearances:
Note: This feature is available on macOS Mojave and later.
You can change the background color of the Pixelmator Pro application window. Doing this can make it easier to work with documents that might have the same background color as the window background.
In the General tab, do one of the following:
To reset the background color to default, click the Window Background pop-up menu and choose Default.
The checkerboard grid indicates transparency in an image. In Pixelmator Pro, you can change the color of this grid, adjust its brightness and opacity, or turn off the checkerboard completely.
To customize the transparency grid:
In the General tab, do any of the following:
To reset the transparency to default, click Reset Transparency.
When you create a new image in Pixelmator Pro, a background layer is automatically added for you. You can choose it to be black, white, or transparent.
By default, Pixelmator Pro opens documents in tabs. If you typically open documents in separate windows on your Mac, you can also set Pixelmator Pro to respect your system settings.
When opening JPEG, PNG, and TIFF images, Pixelmator Pro typically imports them, creating new Pixelmator Pro documents and leaving the originals untouched. This lets you edit images completely nondestructively.
If you'd like to edit destructively, overwriting the originals, you can also customize this:
Once you're done editing an image, choose File > Save from the File menu at the top of the screen and any changes will be saved directly to the original JPEG, PNG, or TIFF file.
Note: Turning off this option also disables Auto Save and Versions for all documents.
Action tooltips are short descriptions that tell you when a certain action in Pixelmator Pro is performed. Action tooltips can accompany actions such as Undo, Redo, Cut, or Paste.
Information labels provide some helpful information about actions in Pixelmator Pro. For instance, when moving a layer, the information label shows its live coordinates on the canvas.