I really love Pixelmator as a painting program. It has Photoshop-like brushes and a Painter feel. I popped a sketch I had started in Painter in and was able to fully block it out and have a decent detail pass in a matter of hours. For me, its simplicity is a big plus. With Photoshop and Painter, I get dazzled by all the options and end up forever tweaking all the tools.
In the future I’m going to do all my pre-painting in Pixelmator and then tweak either in Photoshop or Painter. I’ll see how December’s Al works with it.
It does lack the gazillion brushes that either program has, so I did have to rehash some old tricks back when Photoshop was 3.0. But it’s just plain fun to work in.
I would say this piece took me around five hours, and it’s more than decent groundwork. I did a similiar type piece using a combination of Painter and Photoshop, and it took twice as long. The traits that Pixelmator has in common with Photoshop and Painter combined with it’s simplicity makes it a joy to use and keeps me concentrated on the actual painting instead of being all fidgety with the brushes and options. I also realized yesterday as I was putting some refining moves on it that the final results look like my non-digital acrylic paintings.
On the negative side, I really missed my palette knife tool. And I couldn’t find a use for Pixelmator’s "starry" brush.
