saulrosenbaum.com / Trying hard to like Pixelmator

The last MacHeist included a copy of Pixelmator, an interesting graphics editor that leverages Leopard’s Core graphics capabilities, it certainly has it’s pro’s, it’s real fast, has some pretty neat built-in effects (although it’s questionable how useful some of them are for daily design and web development) best of all it’s processor light, and smoking fast (compared to Adobe’s Photoshop). It’s cons are all about usability - the interface is dark, and IMHO over-styled, the effects controls, odd and non-precise.

Even standard tools are counterintuitive - take the crop tool for example, among it’s useful ratio presets, 16x9, square, and custom, it’s this last choice that makes me sad, open a 300x600 image, choice the crop tool, select custom, enter in 185x70 and crop the image - guess what size your new image isn’t, I’m assuming the custom settings are also a ratio, so frustrating. I’m all for unique and clever UI’s but when your building in a category with a dominant player (like Photoshop) you really should take some cues from that app, in regards to standard functionality.

So the jury is still out if it’s an actual keeper or not.