Sneak Peek at Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone

Sneak Peek at Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone

Note: Demo video on the announcement page, also.
www.pixelmator.com/blog/2014/04/17/sneak...mator-3-2-sandstone/

Good news! A major Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone update is on its way. Some awesomely delicious goodies are coming with this update, but the sweetest of them all is the all-new Repair Tool.

In developing an entirely new Repair Tool, we’ve used the latest breakthrough technologies that enable you to remove dust, blemishes and entire objects from your images with an unsurpassed level of precision and quality.

The new Repair Tool and more are coming in a soon-to-be-released and free Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone major update.

Even more, we want as many of you as possible to have fun while editing pictures. So, starting today we cut the price in half for entire week. If you don’t have Pixelmator yet, it’s a good time to download it for just $14.99 and get Pixelmator 3.2 for free.

I really like Pixelmator and wish it would work better with FCPX. You can save as a PSD file but it would be nice if the native Pixelmator file would import into FCPX. I would then dump Photoshop altogether.

Why are you still using PS, exactly?

A Pixlemator project file is not a graphic file, it is a project file with all sorts of proprietary data in it. I doubt FCPX or anything else will read those natively. Nothing reads a PPro or FCPX project file natively except the originating app. Exporting as layered PSD or PNG is pretty fast and easy.

I love having the Pixlemator project file option on occasion, but mostly just export as a PNG.

Wow - 'orphan maker' is a nice word ... :lol:

so, we see in the near future tons of these:
vimeo.com/84251721

.. I'm a huuuuge fan of Pixelmator - what a tool for what a low price!

Thanks, Ben, for that info!

Is it a good replacement for Photoshop in an FCPX workflow? Typically use PS to cut out background around logos, convert JPGs to PNGs, etc.

Sure is, and does all of that, too! Much nicer GUI and much easier to use then PS.

There is a 30 day trial version you can download and try out.
www.pixelmator.com/try/

Plus all of their really great tutorial videos.
www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/

screendor wrote: Is it a good replacement for Photoshop in an FCPX workflow? ... .

don't forget:
Photoshop has its heritage in pre-PRINT!
so, cramped with CMYK, color-seperation etc etc etc.
plus, it's part of the CS-suite (integration to Iluustrator, AfterEffects) - again: nice if you need, confusing if not.

for video, RGB is all you need.
And for ripping logos apart for layer-animation in Motion, Pixelmator is awesome!

... btw: the repair-tool does in its actual version wonders - for those 2.5D-Ken Burns-effects mentioned above .. or demoe-fun like this ... made more than two years ago - with Pixelmator:

I can confirm that I have been very happily surprised with using Pixelmator for video work. PS used to be our tool of choice, not anymore. Thanks for the tip, Ben, I will check it out.

-Ronny

NP, Ronnie. Yeah, I love the new replace tool they're touting. But, I get more excited about the little things they're not announcing. It is always those little things that make the biggest, most significant difference for me.

Have any of you tried learning Sketch, as an Illustrator alternative?

I have Sketch, iDraw and Illustrator and I'd suggest you check out iDraw first as an Illustrator alternative. Sketch has some wonderful features but it is strongly focused toward web and app designers. iDraw is more of a general purpose vector app.

Inkscape anyone?

For $15.00 how can you go wrong. They have been aggressively updating the app several times every year and always as free upgrade. Grab it now while half price
As with any program, it has a learning curve, but in general it does some amazing stuff.
They updated the engine to take advantage of the dual GPU's in Mavericks/nMP.
Vectormator is an almost hidden part of Pixelmator for vector shapes. Still a little light weight, but was a nice addition.
Removing unwanted objects has always been easy, but the new improved tool looks great.

Haven't upgraded from CS4 and almost never use any of the included programs anymore. Tired of being held up at gun point by Adobe for buggy program updates. Pixelmator has replaced most PS work for me.

Slightly off topic, Acorn 4, another photo editing app is on sale for $14.99 on the App Store or direct. Normally $49.99. For that price I picked it up as well.

Hope this helps, Greg

I tried Acorn and was not happy with the experience, compared to Pixelmator.

As for Sketch, I just deleted it from my drive. I've used it since version 1. Now that version 3 is out, they want me to pay $50 to upgrade (folks who purchased in last two weeks get free upgrade), for a limited time. After that time limit, long time "loyal" users will have to pay full price again. Screw that. 3/4 price for an upgrade? No way. So I'm making the plunge into iDraw. Thanks to the folks on this thread who've mentioned it.

Ben, you're welcome. I look forward to hearing your impressions once you have had a chance to get to know iDraw. My use tends towards diagrams and charts rather than illustrations with lots of gradients. I'm also doing a lot for presentation slides and for the web. I find that iDraw reads PDFs from other programs really well -- i.e. it keeps all the vector info for each element and it outputs good SVG for the web -- so it plays well with others. YMMV.

iDraw just had a nice upgrade to v2.4 and that reminded me of this thread. Ben, have you used iDraw yet? What are your impressions?

Yes, have mixed feelings about it. Not as good for vectors as Sketch, but since Sketch wants to rip us long time users off, iDraw is now my vector go-to. As for Pixelmator, I'm sticking with it. What it does, nothing does better. I'll keep both on hand. But I'm still using Pixelmator way more for shear speed and clarity.