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Apple acquires Pixelmator

pixelmator.com

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Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#401
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic is stellar. Why would you feel like its being abandoned? Professional tools don't change UX every 2 years.

Logic falls into a weird space between pro (studio) software and home studio software. Professional studios mostly use Pro Tools and Cubase (Europe). Home users mostly migrated to Live. It's obviously an oversimplification but it does reflect the problem Logic is facing. Live is far ahead of Logic in the electronic music space. With a streamlined UI and M4L it dominated the market for the new(ish) generation of music…

There's some other places that migrated to Reaper because of its own specialties. Reaper runs great and is absurdly, unreasonably customizable.

That of course means extensive skinning capabilities, but it also means ReaScript, a scripting language with a whole API. I recently succeeded in using ReaScript to take my control surface, the faders of which I'd colorcoded, and using them to on the fly adjust output level controls on plugins I wrote.

Not just 'assign the plugins to a fader', or 'assign controls to plugin parameters on the selected track, or discontinuous selections of tracks', though those are also things Reaper happily does.

I mean, in a big mix I can assign track colors to the tracks in Reaper, and the parameters (in plugins, mind you, anywhere in the FX stacks) will all jump to the live position of the control surface fader with that color. A bit specific and personal, but it's entirely done in scripting.

The game industry uses Reaper for similar reasons: being able to automate generation of a game's entire collection of sounds has its uses. I would say it is the DAW equivalent of what Blender is, in 3D modeling.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#402
post #51
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.

Wow, can’t believe I didn’t find this while looking for Lightroom alternatives several months ago. Looks great!

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#403

Is there any way this can go bad? When Apple acquired DarkSky, they absolutely destroyed a service that I loved and relied on. Four years on, Apple Weather is less reliable than DarkSky, and not even close to feature complete. But DarkSky was a cross-platform service, whereas Pixelmator is software that's already Apple-only. I'm wondering how much I should be worried, and if I should already be abandoning ship.

I think a company anywhere near the size of Apple being permitted to acquire another company is, in and of itself, bad.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#404
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a fan of subscriptions but old versions of Photoshop were also lifetime licenses and a 10y old professional software still works exactly the same now as 10 years ago. Yet I don't see much professional gfx artists and workers claiming they are still using the old licensed software instead of whining about the sub. Is this trolling or are people just slave of the lure of the newest and latest? I like new usefu…

> 10y old professional software still works exactly the same now as 10 years ago Great point for Windows. iOS, Mac, and Linux evolve too much to reliably run 10 year old binaries.

you can usually get away with it by chrooting an old release of a distro that has contemporary libs. And this is rarely needed as you usually have the sourcees available under a free license which allows you to recompike and/or port it.

We are talking photoshop anyway so it isn't relevant in that case.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still haven't found an app that's as good as Aperture used to be with my workflow in term of UX/convenience etc... Me neither… I wanted to like Lightroom, which was the solution most of the community seemed to migrate to, but between the infuriating inconsistent UI and the predatory subscription model I did not use it for long. And now I have a Rube Goldberg thing that is janky and feels brittle.

Yep same here, tried it for a while but Adobe's idea of UI just does not work for me. I reluctantly went to Photos, mainly because of ease of use on the phone for family members, but still I miss full tagging and smart album support.

> I miss full tagging and smart album support

Yes! And plugins are great, but the experience is not smooth, and quickly annoying when working with many photos. Also, switching libraries is not good. I wish it were more integrated because on paper, a photo management app combining the features of Affinity, DxO, and others sounds fantastic.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#409
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talent and ideas that were Pixelmator will be substantially diffused as it's absorbed by Apple... most of what you liked about Pixelmator is likely no more over the next year or two. Depending on Apple's reasoning for the acquisition (i.e. how much of it was just for the talent vs the product) you'll may see some small glimpses of Pixelmator's influence a couple years from now in Apple's stuff. Most of the time A…

Logic and and Final Cut were bought and developed since. Pixelmator fills the open Photoshop space in an Apple way, and will plausibly go the same way — no vague pessimism required.

I really, really hope you’re right about that.

Re: Apple acquires Pixelmator

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krita feels like GIMP done right to me,

I am using both[1] and I never understood these kind of comments. Their UI is so similar. [1] Krita more as paint tool on my Lenovo Yoga, Gimp more as an editing tool on other computers.

As long as there continue to be tutorials for how to draw a circle in GIMP, they will not seem alike to me.
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