Technical Specifications

Tools

  • Use more than 40 tools for selecting, cropping, drawing, painting, retouching, typing, measuring and navigating
  • Basic tools
    • Move, Zoom, Hand, Eyedropper, Type, Crop, Slice
  • Selection tools
    • Elliptical Marquee, Rectangular Marquee, Column Marquee, Row Marquee, Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magic Wand
  • Painting tools
    • Brush, Pencil, Pixel, Eraser, Paint Bucket, Gradient—Specify blending mode, opacity, and type of brush
  • Retouching tools:
    • Smudge, Clone Stamp, Healing, Sponge, Blur, Sharpen, Burn, Dodge, Magic Eraser, Red-Eye—Specify strength, and type of brush for most of the retouching tools; specify blending mode, brush, and opacity for the Clone Stamp tool only
  • Drawing tools:
    • Pen, Freeform Pen, Rectangular Shape, Rounded Rectangle Shape, Ellipse Shape, Polygon Shape, Star Shape, Line Shape
  • Customizable Tools palette

Layers

  • Layers-based image editing
  • Create new, duplicate, delete, rename, load as selection or hide layers
  • Create editable text layers
  • Use New Layer from iSight feature to add pictures as layers from iSight camera

  • Change blending mode for layer
    • Normal, Dissolve, Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Linear Burn, Darker Color, Lighten, Screen, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge, Lighter Color, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, Hard Mix, Difference, Exclusion, Subtract, Divide, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity
  • Adjust layer opacity
  • Preserve layer transparency
  • Create clipping masks
  • Add, remove, edit, show or hide layer masks
  • Link, unlink or select linked layers
  • Convert Text/Vector layers to pixels
  • Merge layers
  • Merge all layers
  • Group layers
  • Arrange layers
  • Drag-and-drop layers onto Mac OS X desktop to export as TIFF
  • Drag-and-drop pictures into the layers palette or a Pixelmator image to place them as layers

Technologies

  • Pixelmator is built using Cocoa
  • Image processing is powered by Core Image and OpenGL
  • Includes Automator actions
  • ColorSync color management
  • Quartz Composer
  • Quick Look support
  • Core Animation
  • Spotlight support
  • QuickTime

Image Processing

  • Layers-based image editing
  • Image processing is powered by Core Image technology
  • 64-bit architecture
  • Import images directly from cameras, scanners, multifunction devices, and devices such as iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
  • Use more than 40 tools for selecting, cropping, slicing, painting, retouching, typing, measuring and navigating
  • Use over 15 color correction tools
  • Use over 150 filters
  • Adjust image size and resolution
  • Specify canvas size
  • Trim images
  • Rotate canvas
  • Export images for the web
  • Transform images, layers or selections using the transform tools
    • Free Transform, Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, Perspective, Flip (vertical or horizontal)
  • Fill images, layers or selections
  • Stroke images, layers or selections
  • Graphics tablet support

Color Correction Tools

  • Use more than 16 color correction tools
    • Levels, Auto Enhance, Curves, Color Balance, Brightness and Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Desaturate, Colorize, Replace Color, RGB Channel Mixer, Exposure, Invert Color, Shadows & Highlights

Colors

  • ColorSync support
  • Select colors using Apple Color Picker
  • Web Color plug-in for Apple Colors Palette for quickly copying hexadecimal colors to HTML or CSS applications
  • Eyedropper allows picking colors from images

File Formats

  • Compatible with all popular file formats
    • PSD, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, WebP, PDF, GIF, BMP, TGA, JPG-2000
    • Supports Photoshop images with layers.
  • Optimize and save images for the web in JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP

Automator Actions

  • Change Type of Image action allows conversion to JPEG, PSD, PNG, TIFF, and Pixelmator native file format — PXM
  • Crop Images action allows the expansion or reduction of the canvas size to the desired dimensions
  • Fit Images
  • Trim Images
  • Watermark Images

OS X Integration

Photo Browser offers quick access to iPhoto Library, Aperture Library, events, albums, Smart Albums, Photo Booth, Pictures folder

  • Versions
  • Autosave
  • Fullscreen
  • Use your iSight camera to add pictures to your compositions
  • Comes with Automator actions
  • Spotlight support
  • Drag-and-drop support
  • In-App Help
  • Apple Fonts and Apple Color Picker palettes
  • Send To (Mail, Aperture and iPhoto; as well as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa)
  • Built-in Quick Look plug-in
  • Quartz Composer compositions support

Metadata

  • View or extract metadata from images
  • Add, remove or edit keywords
  • Use Spotlight to find images by any metadata info
  • Available over 50 metadata tags

Filters

  • Use more than 150 Core Image-powered filters
  • Distortion filters
    • Bump, Bump Linear, Circle Splash, Circular Wrap, Displacement, Glass, Glass Lozenge, Hole, Pinch, Torus Lens, Twirl, Vortex
  • Blur
    • Box, Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Noise Reduction, Zoom, Median
  • Sharpen
    • Sharpen, Unsharpen Mask
  • Color
    • Color Map, Color Monochrome, Color Posterize, False Color, Mask to Alpha, Sepia Tone, Gamma Adjust
  • Stylize
    • Bloom, Crystallize, Edge Work, Edges, Gloom, Height Field from Mask, Hexagonal Pixellate, Line Overlay, Noise, Pixellate, Pointillize, Shaded Material, Sport Color, Sport Light, Threshold, Comic Effect, Equalize
  • Halftone
    • CMYK Halftone, Circular Screen, Dot Screen, Hatched Screen, Line Screen
  • Tile
    • Affine, Affine Clamp, Kaleidoscope, Op, Parallelogram, Perspective, Triangle , Eightfold Reflected, Fourfold Reflected, Fourfold Rotated, Fourfold Translated, Glide Reflected, Perspective, Sixfold Reflected, Sixfold Rotated, Twelvefold Reflected
  • Generators
    • Checkerboard, Clouds, Constant Color, Lenticular Halo, Random, Star Shine, Stripes, Sunbeams
  • Transitions
    • Copy Machine, Disintegrate with Mask, Dissolve, Flash, Mod, Page Curl, Ripple, Swipe, Bars Swipe
  • Use more than 60 Quartz Composer compositions as filters
    • Distortion compositions
      • Bulge, Dent, Light Tunnel, Pinch, Squeeze, Twirl, Fish Eye, Mirror, Stretch
    • Stylize compositions
      • ASCII Art, Blue Print, City Lights, Compound Eye, Concert, Crystallize, Dot Screen, False Color, Film Stock, Glow, Kaleidescope, Line Overlay, Line Screen, Monochrome, Neon, Pixellate, Pointillize, Posterize, Tracer, Zoom Blur, Black and White, Color Pencil, Comic Book, Pop Art, Sepia, Thermal Camera, X-Ray
    • Generator compositions
      • Defocus, Fall, Floor, Gradient, Grid, Image Hose, Moving Shapes, Travelator, Wall
    • Transition compositions
      • Copy Machine, Cube, Dissolve, Mask, Mod, Mosaic Flip, Push, Swing, Zoom Dissolve Other compositions: Blur, Color Controls, Exposure Adjust, Flip-Flop, Gamma Adjust, Image Resizer, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Color Invert
    • Other compositions: Blur, Color Controls, Exposure Adjust, Flip-Flop, Gamma Adjust, Image Resizer, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Color Invert
  • Use filter rope to control center of the filter
  • Use custom Core Image units
  • Use custom Quartz Composer compositions as filters

Painting Engine

  • Advanced brush settings
    • Size, hardness, spacing, scatter, flow, follow angle, stroke jitter, size jitter, angle jitter, opacity jitter, hue jitter, saturation jitter, lightness jitter, graphics tablet sensitivity and control by mouse speed settings
  • Adobe Photoshop brushes support

User Interface

  • Interface designed for working with images
  • Toolbar customization
  • Transparent HUD (heads-up display) palettes
    • Tools, Layers, Brushes, Gradients and Photo Browser palettes
  • Info labels
  • Full-screen mode
  • Quick Mask mode
  • Use rulers, guides, grid
  • Add layer from iSight sheet shows preview
  • Action Tooltips

Languages

  • English, German, French, and Japanese