Pixelmator Pro

[Bill Davis]

[Craig Seeman] “Claris, now Filemaker Inc, is still an Apple subsidiary AFAIK. I”

I have a strong suspicion that Apple – as a global behemoth corporation – has an almost unimaginable amount of data to manage.

Having a nice, extensible semi-relational database, in house – with the product team under the roof, so to speak – is likely a big value add in the overall Apple scheme of things.

I know I’ve had occasion to call in for FileMaker Pro tech support and the level of expertise and the calm “here is some info that might set you straight” response I’ve encountered has been almost spookily professional.

That FMPro competes in the marketplace as its own product is surely nice, but I’m not sure that if it didn’t – it would go anywhere.

It solves real works organizational problems brilliantly – is extensible and customizable – and well supported. And Apple has a long history of favoring IP solutions they own outright.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Craig Seeman]

So do you think Apple would have motive to buy Affinity but as a subsidiary as Filemaker is?
Certainly one would think Apple would have motive to have advance design tools in house.
But, Aputure was an alternative to Adobe Lightroom and one would think a good thing to have in house yet that was killed. Or do you think Apple values Filemaker uniquely and won’t consider repeating the “subsidiary” strategy with another software product line.

[Michael Gissing]

[Warren Eig] “I second Affinity Photo.”

Having played with it for a couple of hours yesterday so do I. I watched a couple of their tutorials and then opened up a couple of psd files that I had previously worked on in CS6 Ps and fixed some issues I had left. It was almost zero learning curve from what I already knew of Ps and I’m not a power user.

Installed on the same PC I run Resolve, it must be leveraging the GPU as the processing was much faster than Ps. Perhaps it works a bit better on the Mac by hooking into the OS but given the grunt I have in my PC, that may be a non issue. I’m very impressed that it translated my previous Ps work so well and it was so useful particularly with the replace inpainting tools. I haven’t used CC Ps so I am comparing to an older Ps but this is a no brainer cheap perpetual license ‘upgrade’. Big bonus is it opened a cDNG frame.

Cross platform is critical for me. As I weigh up the option to run Resolve in Linux or Win, the ancillary software becomes a determinant. Frankly given the hardware issues I see with running Mac OS only software I really want that choice.

[Carmi Weinzweig]

We bought both Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro and both seem great so far. At $60 each on the Mac App Store, buying both did not seem like that big a deal. We will see if one wins out as we move forward. We really like the convenience of license management that App Store purchases give us.

What I find most interesting is that both companies are building full publishing suites. Affinity Photo (Ps), and Affinity Designer (Illustrator) are out now, Affinity Publisher (InDesign) was announced for 2018. Pixelmator Pro’s Vectormator Pro (Illustrator) companion is due next year (and they have teased an InDesign competitor as well). Both are selling not renting their software. In addition, MacPhun’s Lightroom competitor is supposed to add Digital Asset Management next year and they seem to directly be targeting Adobe in their ads. I am curious what has changed that has led to this direct competition.

Affinity has a great iPad version and Pixelmator Pro’s iPad version is due next year. Cross platform between Windows and MacOS is less important to us right now than having iOS/MacOS compatibility, so we look forward to Pixelmator Pro’s iPad release.

These new Photoshop competitors along with Final Cut X 10.3, Resolve, and Fusion make it seem possible to have a reasonable non-Adobe workflow.

[Oliver Peters]

[Carmi Weinzweig] “We bought both Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro and both seem great so far.”

Great. I, too, am running both. I’m in the early testing stages so far, for an upcoming product review. What I’m initially seeing (and I could be wrong on some of this), is that Affinity Photo more closely aligns to the interface and tools of, and compatibility with, Photoshop. So if you want a “direct” replacement, then Affinity Photo is the way to go. Pixelmator Pro uses a more fluid, modeless UI that’s less of a copy of Photoshop. In a way, it’s closer to FCPX’s design philosophy, or maybe the new Apple Photos. It’s very pleasing and refreshing to work with. There are some cool machine learning functions, like automatically guessing a layer name, based on analyzing image contents, like sculpture, furniture, etc.

I find a few things missing in Pixelmator Pro, such as layer and type effects (shadows, bevels, etc.) and 3D rotation/perspective – or maybe I just haven’t found them, yet. If I open 10 files using “open with” Pixelmator Pro, it will open 10 UI windows instead of tabs inside of a single window. Much more cluttered. Clearly more oriented on working with one image at a time. You can open a new image as a layer inside another, of course, but I’m talking about Photoshop (and Affinity Photo) style of behavior.

Pixelmator functions with more things in real-time, without the need to rasterize. I haven’t tested multiple raw files as layers, yet, but it’s supposed to maintain raw editability inside the app. Some of these same functions in Affinity Photo require rasterization before the app lets you move out of one mode into another.

If I import an existing Photoshop file with layer and text effects, there’s really good compatibility in Affinity Photo. I can further edit shadows, bevels, etc. If I do the same in Pixelmator Pro, some layer effects, like shadows, are flattened to that layer, and others, like text effects, are just discarded.

So my preliminary judgement is that if you want to maintain the broadest compatibility with Photoshop on the import side, then Affinity Photo is the way to go. If that doesn’t matter to you and you want a very cool, fast, powerful graphics app, then Pixelmator Pro might be your choice instead.

Also, Pixelmator Pro requires High Sierra, whereas Affinity Photo runs on earlier macOS versions.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Shawn Miller]

[Michael Gissing] “Big bonus is it opened a cDNG frame.”

It’s also cool that Affinity Photos will open compressed cDNG files… which, Photoshop won’t… odd.

Shawn

[Michael Gissing]

[Oliver Peters] “So my preliminary judgement is that if you want to maintain the broadest compatibility with Photoshop on the import side, then Affinity Photo is the way to go”

Absolutely. And an added bonus I just found is I can use Photoshop designed plugins like the Nik suite which I just imported into Affinity. Not sure how wide the compatibility for other Ps plugins are but thats a nice start.

[Bill Davis]

This is just a pure Guess, but the organization of data is a fundamental business need in a way image management just isn’t.

Something like Filemaker can drive efficiency across every single department in a major corporate enterprise.

Real Estate, HR, facilities – all can effectively use databases as a core management tool.

While ANY photo manipulation tool is just hugely more limited in use.

Far fewer users really need a photo processong tool.

I just don’t think that will ever change.

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Craig Seeman]

Hmm, but I know many more people that have a photo app than who use relational databases.

I can’t say what the metrics are for businesses (and the number of employees) who uses photos (and software to manipulate them compared to relational databases but I do think the use databases but I suspect the use of photo apps by professionals is fairly wide spread.

Regarding fundamental business needs, I know many large businesses uses databases only a small subset are using Filemaker, probably some smaller businesses.

[Bret Williams]

I have found that very little gets rasterized in AP. Even scaling a layer is not rasterized. No smart layers required. It tends to treat things like objects more than PS. Kind of a PS AI hybrid. The same holds true for Designer.

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