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Apple acquires Pixelmator

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#381

Post by croshan »

no_wizard wrote: post #337
thenberlin wrote: post #187

Putting concerns about future states aside, congrats to the Pixelmator team. I've been using the app for years and it's a really great piece of software, well designed and well built. It's always been incredible value for the price, especially given that it basically replaces Photoshop for a wide swath of the market without compromising on UX (which is a problem for other competitors) at a price point that's like 1-2…

I suspect this move is due to behind the scenes Adobe / Apple relations souring over the years. Adobe used to be one of their biggest supporters and helped winning over users to the Mac platform. This has diverged significantly over the years, and I think Apple is looking at Adobe and their business model and realizing that it both lucrative for them to have software that fills into this market to round out their cre…

In general, the way a walled garden wins is by providing everything its villagers need inside.

And Apple’s products seem to create walled gardens in order to prioritize [first creative, then economic] control.

Based on the demographic that a significant portion of their marketing seems targeted towards (artists and creative types), I think your theory sounds likely.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#382

Post by petetnt »

Hopefully Apple doesn't ruin this, but I assume that it will be infested with Apple AI features sooner than later. Oh well, at least Pixelmator Pro is not a subscription service, so it will last me for a while even if that becomes the case.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#383

Post by jitl »

petetnt wrote: post #382

Hopefully Apple doesn't ruin this, but I assume that it will be infested with Apple AI features sooner than later. Oh well, at least Pixelmator Pro is not a subscription service, so it will last me for a while even if that becomes the case.

Pixelmator already has plenty of "machine learning" features that work well.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#384

Post by jitl »

AlanYx wrote: post #51
vr46 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aperture could have been amazing, but it was slow, buggy and suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to - just as Lightroom appeared. FCP was outstanding in its time, but was neglected. I went all in on Logic, however, and that has proved a great buy, no subscription model, fantastic extras and works super well. If they can rebuild a enthusiast-targeted set of…

One of the senior Aperture team members went off to use the underlying OS RAW infrastructure in product called Gentleman Coders Nitro. It's a decent but little known Lightroom alternative with no subscription, albeit without all the recent Lightroom AI-infused features. It does have AI masking though.

Amazing, this looks like just what I've been wanting

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#385

Post by looping__lui »

no_wizard wrote: post #337
thenberlin wrote: post #187

Putting concerns about future states aside, congrats to the Pixelmator team. I've been using the app for years and it's a really great piece of software, well designed and well built. It's always been incredible value for the price, especially given that it basically replaces Photoshop for a wide swath of the market without compromising on UX (which is a problem for other competitors) at a price point that's like 1-2…

I suspect this move is due to behind the scenes Adobe / Apple relations souring over the years. Adobe used to be one of their biggest supporters and helped winning over users to the Mac platform. This has diverged significantly over the years, and I think Apple is looking at Adobe and their business model and realizing that it both lucrative for them to have software that fills into this market to round out their cre…

… didn’t Apple switch away from Nvidia, push for OpenCL and keep Adobe in the rain when their new release was all super optimized for Nvidia? And I think heavily push for their proprietary video and image editing software? But Adobe rewrote its codebase and had the better product after all. And that was 15+ years ago?

One article from back in 2010: https://nofilmschool.com/2010/07/apple-snubs-adobe-again-wit...

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#386

Post by fortran77 »

cyberpunk wrote: post #24
talldayo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adobe must be trembling. Adobe is probably popping open a champagne for every cross-platform Creative Cloud competitor that gets mothballed with Apple's capital. If Microsoft acquired Affinity next, the Adobe offices would look like a disco ball for a week.

I’ve never seen a graphics person using a windows machine in all my years in tech… Maybe I’m in some sort of bubble.

Really? I worked in Hollywood for many years and all the color grading and photo editing was done on PCs with Sony professional color grading monitors, which weren't supported right on Macs.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#387

Post by otterpro »

I bought Pixelmator nearly a decade ago for my Mac, when I needed a decent image/photo editor. I hope they make Pixelmator free, as mac definitely needs a good default image editor that is more advanced than Preview.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#388

Post by [deleted] »

stu2b50 wrote: post #360
wlesieutre wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark Sky would've added more value if they'd just renamed it Weather and made it the built-in app, and yet... I do hope they'll offer Pixelmator as an included app on Macs and Pixelmator Pro alongside Logic, Finalcut, and other "Pro" software. The lack of a built-in image editor can be annoying. Photos works for some stuff, Preview includes basic adjustments too, but sometimes you just want something like a hue/satur…

Eh, I don’t think it’s the same thing. The gulf between “photos user” and “pixelmator” user is quite high, much more so than “weather app” and “weather app but better”. In particular, if you have the average user Pixelmator, they’d be worse off. The same isn’t really true with weather or darksky - they really just do the same thing. We still have iMovie and FinalCut, GarageBand and Logic. Apple has kept two different…

[deleted]

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#389

Post by TheKarateKid »

no_wizard wrote: post #337
thenberlin wrote: post #187

Putting concerns about future states aside, congrats to the Pixelmator team. I've been using the app for years and it's a really great piece of software, well designed and well built. It's always been incredible value for the price, especially given that it basically replaces Photoshop for a wide swath of the market without compromising on UX (which is a problem for other competitors) at a price point that's like 1-2…

I suspect this move is due to behind the scenes Adobe / Apple relations souring over the years. Adobe used to be one of their biggest supporters and helped winning over users to the Mac platform. This has diverged significantly over the years, and I think Apple is looking at Adobe and their business model and realizing that it both lucrative for them to have software that fills into this market to round out their cre…

I don't think so. Mac sales have only grown and the whole "you need a Mac for creative work" hasn't been a thing since the 00's.

I think this is more about having the team put advanced photo editing features into the native Photos app, and possibly contributing to AI image processing.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#390

Post by samatman »

ghaff wrote: post #302
samatman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally, Pixelmator is absolutely a product I just fire up once in a great while. I bought it anyway because when I need it, I need it. But there's no way I would let a program like that deflate my bank account like a pricked balloon.

I don't think you're disagreeing with me. I do subscribe to Photoshop mostly because Lightroom makes sense as a subscription. Otherwise I'd probably make do with GIMP or maybe something like Pixelmator. (I used Photoshop Elements for a long time.)

It doesn't appear that I am. All I meant to add is that if Apple turns Pixelmator into a "cursed subscription zombie" (and I very much doubt this will happen) then I will not be getting that subscription. I expect most people wouldn't either.
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