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REALLY glad I purchased the Macheist bundle with this in it.

Bu- Bye Adobe for ME,

"MacDailyNews has been using Pixelmator exclusively in place of Adobe Photoshop since December 2007 for online graphics."

Would that be to do the yellow lines or the pale grey boxes then?

"MacDailyNews has been using Pixelmator exclusively in place of Adobe Photoshop since December 2007 for online graphics."

Tools cannot give an artist a sense of good style or good taste.
A hammer, chisel and the block of marble in the hand of a no talent will result in a ugly, pocked-up stump of marble pile of marble dust. But put the same hammer, chisel and the block of marble in the hands of a Michelangelo and wow!

Still needs Save for Web to be a solid replacement for Photoshop.

May 12, 08 - 09:46 am Comment from: Cubert

@Streetool,
Just curious - do you think Pixelmator is better than Photoshop in some ways or is the price the reason for your switch?

Pixelmator is becoming more and more powerful with each release...

...I have used it instead of Photoshop on a few occasions, and have found it to be quite a pleasant experience. Sure, it's not as "powerful" as Photoshop, but how do you define power?

If by power it is easier to use, then yes, it is powerful. If you define it as having 1,000,000 tools, then it isn't very powerful.

What it can do, it does very well. And I also like the fact it installs itself into /Applications. And nowhere else. Unlike CS3, which crop sprays your HD with files all over the place.

Adobe, please please learn from others and make your Apps nice and simple to install.

Photoshop who?? I remember back when we used to use that program. Man, wasn't it $500.
Wow, things sure have changed.

That program blows. Ran the demo on a brand new 20" imac and it just kept stalling.

@ Will.

Yeh, Photoshop is a bit rubbish like that, I run it on a Mac Pro and it also keeps stalling.

We are talking about Photoshop, right?

Updated it and it choked on a grayscale scan. Never mind, the backup plan (Photoshop) handles 'em without any problems. I'm happy to have both; some day I'll only need one.

Several of those are features I requested. Yay. The addition of rules and guides is a major step in the right direction.

May 12, 08 - 11:10 am Comment from: flappo

elements is terrible

pe6 won't open animated gifs as layers or allow you to make animated gifs from existing ones

yeah , pathetic eh ?

plus it crashes a lot when you move layers

then again pixelmator was crap too

i miss pe2 now that rocked

May 12, 08 - 11:16 am Comment from: ChrissyOne

Gun for show.

Knives for a pro.

@ Jim

Not really. Thats pixelmator I was talking about. My version of photoshop is a beta, but it still runs better on my 2 year old mbp than pixelmator does.

@Will: Erm, not sure what the problem with your computer is, but there definitely is a problem. Pixelmator runs smoothly on my two year old MBP without any snags or glitches.

HOORAY for macheist!

May 12, 08 - 12:14 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

Photoshop CS4 is running just fine on my Mac. =P

May 12, 08 - 12:18 pm Comment from: jjjj

I have been using Graphic Converter for sometime for my basic web images. It's pretty good, once you learn the keyboard commands. I can resize, crop, fix the canvas size and save for web all with keyboard commands.

It may not be the most visually elegant program, but Lemke Software has been doing a bang up job over 15 years. Props to Thorsten.

That said, I have pixelmator and will continue to try it out. It sure looks purdy.

May 12, 08 - 12:27 pm Comment from: Micro Me

@Streetool: "REALLY glad I purchased the Macheist bundle with this in it."

Ditto.

Ya think? I've got CS5a running on my 80-gig touch!

Any online charts comparing Pixelmator; Acorn; Gimp; Elements4/6?

Would like to see what their strenghts/weeknesses are; value for money/time?

Finally, Gimp.app 2.4.5r2 seems to be 'native', but is it stable?

Please, let's be scientific. Facts, not opinions.

May 12, 08 - 04:44 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

Define power?

How about flexibility in being able to have a "Smart Object" that is resolution independent. So you can tweak the hell out of your layout with out having to start from scratch every time you manipulate an image (Size it down, and up again). Also being able to double click this image it will open it's vector data back in to Illustrator where I can edit save and be back in Photoshop being productive.

Pixelmator is a good substitute for Photoshop users that don't need Photoshop, for us that do, their is simply not alternative.

May 12, 08 - 05:45 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

@ Mac-nugget

Quiet! You're making too much sense!!!

all I want is PS7...running in Leopard....but no, I have to buy CS3 to run Leopard....same with Illustrator et al. sucks big weenies

You actually bought CS3!? MW: some "bill" that must've been.

May 12, 08 - 09:21 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@caddisfly
The Mac has seen two operating systems plus a processor architecture migration, and you expect things to simply work?

This is not Windows, the Mac OS has always been a moving target for developers. Why do you thing it's this good.

May 12, 08 - 09:23 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

Think not thing!

May 12, 08 - 09:34 pm Comment from: phantasmosxmagnum

@A. Dumas I agree that would be a great comparison. Throw in a few others like Graphic Convertor, Lineform, Draw It, Swift Publisher, Pixen, 3D Maker, Paintbrush, Naked Light, Live Quartz, Google Sketchup, Art Text, etc. I know they don't all match up but for the money with say 3 apps or whatever I would imagine you could not totally replace Adobe but do nearly everything it can on the cheap.
For what little I need or use Pixelmator, I'm all for it! If these guys can hang in there and not get bought out too soon I'd bet their 2.x or 3.x version would be kickin'! I was an early adopter and I'm happy to support them and at least they're regularly updating unlike some devs that take forever to get out an update.

May 12, 08 - 09:42 pm Comment from: phantasmosxmagnum

@ A. Dumas you might check out this article at Mac360. Not a head to head or a chart but not too bad.
http://mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/new_wave_of_cool_image_drawing_tools_on_the_mac/
Be sure to check out the Readers Talk Back at the end.

May 12, 08 - 11:08 pm Comment from: phantasmosxmagnum

Hmm, I stumbled across this link and seen quite a few I've never heard of:
http://www.thriftmac.com/Graphics/

Thx, phantasmosxmagnum.

I've checked loads of info WRT my list — haven't come across those links.

There's an old saying: If you're having trouble choosing, it's because you haven't got enough information.

I couldn't choose between iWork and NeoOffice. So, I have both

So, for raster and vector art — for now, I'll choose everything!

@Mac-nugget:

PS7 and Illustrator10 survived the all those...up until Leopard. I view it as an Adobe issue --- which has been become more sorry-assed as the years go buy.

...this is from some who has owned Illustrator since v1 (1987) and Photoshop since v1....and has seen numerous Adobe software "investments" die on the vine (Pagemaker, LiveMotion, Dimensions, Premiere, GoLive, etc)

May 13, 08 - 07:12 am Comment from: Mac-nugget

Adobe investments?
So in a way you would rather have Pagemaker then InDesign?
Dimensions is inside Illustrator now, so you can get that functionality back with an upgrade.

LiveMotion is the only one that I will sourly miss (much better UI then Flash). GoLive was to buggy in the end, and Premiere is part of the CS3 video edition suite.

Really, if you have the CS3, you would benefit form having Universal Binary native code. If you have an Intel Mac, this is a good investment, if you don't then re-install Tiger and be done with it.

@mac-nugget:

well, indesign will have to be upgraded to move to leopard as well.

I've designed and layed-out several 400+ paged highly formatted books with PM and didn't have a problem. the improvements with indesign could have been incorporated inside PM, but in general, I'm OK with Indeisgn.

...but at the end of the day, it is close to $1000 in upgrades....photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, indesign, premiere and then all the upgrades to broken PS and ILL plug-ins and then reworking websites, existing docs to be compatible...and for what? specialized tools and functionality I don't need, don't always work well when brought outside the Adobe universe. (ex: You need a "special tool" to make GoLive sites work with Dreamweaver)It has all become like MS Word.....you can barely "word process" any more because all of the "helpful" features that get in the way.

....and then I get to part of the b*llsh*t Adobe "authorization" schema that treats me like a criminal even though I have supported and bought their products for over 20 years. (I haven't even gone into the $$ in fonts, ATM, Acrobat, etc, etc)

May 13, 08 - 02:49 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

ATM is no longer supported on OS X, basically, you don't need it. Depending on how many fonts you own, you may or may not need a font manager. OS X has Font Book that lacks auto activation, but other then that works great.

Dreamweaver is far superior to GoLive, it's the transition that my be a problem, but you are probably better off learning CSS and using a low cost Application like CSS Edit to format and style your web pages.

I started off with PageMaker back in the 80'. I moved to QuarkXpress later, now I am InDesign all the way. PageMaker was horrible, particularly at the end, unstable, unreliable output.

If I am not mistaken, if you have a valid license to Photoshop 7, you are entitled to upgrade to the entire CS3 Design Premium like for $600. It will not get you plugins or Premier, but you get Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, Bridge and Acrobat, not a bad deal at all. If you don't need the web stuff you can do it for $399.

@ A. Dumas it's kinda late but here's a faceoff of low cost Vector apps over at TUAW. "Today, I'm going to review four leaner, lower-cost (or free) options from four high-powered indie Mac developers: DrawBerry, EazyDraw, Lineform, and VectorDesigner." Hmm, I musta missed Drawberry yet another one I've never heard of. LOL

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/13/tuaw-faceoff-low-cost-vector-design-apps/

There are so many other apps too that I've never heard of and a good collection of them can be found at these links here:
http://www.thriftmac.com/Graphics
http://mac.majorgeeks.com/downloads37.html
http://www.freemacware.com/category/free-graphics-software-for-macs/
http://macapper.com/category/applications/graphics/
http://www.pure-mac.com/graphics.html