Poor Man’s Photoshop
Not everyone can afford a copy of Photoshop. It’s simply impractical for a non-professional to shell out that much money for Photoshop. However in today’s digital age, photo editing is fast becoming a popular activity. We shoot photos with our digicam and now we take more and more time and attention to making sure our photos come out great. We want to tweak it here and there. That’s what Photoshop does and it really does it well but it comes at a price. A steep one at that. So what’s a regular guy to do? Enter Pixelmator.
Pixelmator is what I’d like to call a poor man’s Photoshop. Wait. Let’s change that. I should really call it a wise man’s Photoshop. Why? Well for the fact that it costs a fraction of Photoshop but promises to deliver what most people need out of an image editing app.
Scheduled for release this coming July, Pixelmator looks to be a promising application. Pixelmator is a power but easy-to-use image editing application for Mac OS X. It’s a layer based image editing program that leverages the power of Core Image technology built into the Mac OS X. Instead of the CPU doing most of the work, Core Image uses the graphics card of the computer to do most of the imaging task. Freeing up the CPU for other things and making the application much faster.
It has most tools that you’d use in Photoshop. From selection tools, retouching tools all the way to color correction tools, Pixelmator has it. All in a stunningly designed interface. I couldn’t believe how beautiful and Mac like it looked from the images in the Pixelmator web site.
Of course some people are still wary of it. Going as far as calling it vaporware. I really wish it comes true. I would really love to use this app. At $59 it’s a no brainer.
TUAW has a video or Pixelmator in action. Check it out. For more info about Pixelmator, go to their web site.
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POSTED IN: Apple Community, Apps, Juan's Posts, Mac OS X, Productivity, Software
3 opinions for Poor Man’s Photoshop
Claude Gelinas
Jun 1, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Pixelmator isn’t out yet so perhaps more features will be added before it’s released to the public.
If the Mac software scene is any indication, this graphics editing software will surely evolve over the following months and years… although I fear it’ll never pose a threat to the Photoshop user base.
From the looks of this package, it’s an iLife and iWork cousin, taking care of the graphics (where Apple itself doesn’t dare venture).
Juan
Jun 4, 2007 at 11:09 am
Hey Claude,
I don’t think Pixelmator will eat up much into Photoshop’s user base. I think it’s more for those people who want to use/learn something like Photoshop but don’t want to spend a lot.
It’s for the weekend photographer who dabbles in photography but not that much to justify Photoshop’s hefty pricetag.
Hands On With Pixelmator
Sep 26, 2007 at 12:06 pm
[…] blogging about Pixelmator last June, it’s finally available to the general public. A couple of months late but […]
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