Pixelmator: The Challenge

A while back, David Alison wrote about Pixelmator. He said it was a good program. I trust his judgment, and in general I've agreed with his assessment of Mac apps. As a result, I began recommending Pixelmator without hesitation to my clients.

I have to admit I am a Photoshop snob. I had never actually used Pixelmator. I had all sorts of excuses - didn't want to pay for it, I already own the top image editor on the market so why bother learning a new one, yada yada. AND I own Imagewell from Xtralean. AND Lemke's Graphic Converter.

Wondering why I would use anything but Photoshop? Sometimes all I need to do is resize and compress images for web use. Imagewell loads so fast and the interface for these two task is so handy that i can fly through resizing and outputing four images before Photoshop has even loaded!

Are you asking, "What about Graphic Converter?" Lemke's wonder software was the first image editing software I ever owned and it has monster batch capabilities unmatched by any other software. I can fly through the resizing, renaming, converting, and outputing 1000 images in minutes. If there is an image file that Graphic Converter can't open, I haven't found it. (It makes favicons too).

So why bother with yet another image editor, right?

The Pixelmator Challenge.

One of these clients I previously mentioned (the ones i blindly and unabashedly recommend Pixelmator to) loves the editorial composite images I created for his website. He doubted that Pixelmator would be able to create anything like that. Knowing I am the said Photoshop snob, and knowing my penchant for a good challenge, he dared me to do a composite image using Pixelmator.

So I downloaded a copy of Pixelmator and went about doing some things I do every day with Photoshop.

My To Do List:

1. Create and use a clipping mask for an editorial image for a website.
2. Make a Quick Composite of two images
3. Composite three images into one.

Pixelmator fulfills my first rule of life: First, do something simple. Then read the manual.

This rule applies to software, hardware, remotes, printers, boyfriends, etc. If in my first interaction with any one thing, I cannot figure out how the most basic of functions works, then I can do without that one thing. Regardless of how special that one thing may be hyped to be.

After gathering up source materials and launching iSHowU Screen Recorder, It took me less than five minutes to accomplish my to-do-list. The only function I was uncomfortable with was typing text. The cursor disappears when you begin typing so I was never quite certain exactly where I was typing, but that might be a quirk with my system, affectionaltely named Pandora's iMac.

Pixelmator is enough like Photoshop that the learning curve is negligible. One of my colleagues compared it to using Photoshop V.3, which is still head and shoulders above most of the image editors available at this price point ($59). There are enough selection, painting and color corrections tools to accomplish most tasks (certainly everything on my list) though, for some reason, I found the translucent black backgrounds distracting.

Soon I will be posting detailed tutorials for each task.