[Updated] Pixelmator is a standout photo editor for the iPad
Pixelmator for iPad had an impressive demo at the Apple event a couple of weeks ago, and the app was impressive. Now Pixelmator has hit the App Store and it's been fun to use in real-world tests.
The US$4.99 app (introductory price) was designed from the ground up to be iPad friendly, so it's not a port of the Mac version of the popular photo editing app.
This is a complete editing environment, not something cut down to size for the iPad. It works with both bitmapped and vector graphics, supports layers and can import Photoshop files as well as JPG, PNG and TIF variants. It also supports some core Apple technologies like iCloud Drive and Handoff. The app can also export Photoshop layers intact.
It also supports a large variety of filers, plus tools like repair, lighten, darken, sharpen and more. For portraits, it can smooth skin and remove red-eye.
I opened some landscape photos I had on hand and the results from Pixelmator were certainly good. I found useful things like curves and saturation tools. I could work selectively on parts of the image, changing things like sky colors and leaving the rest of the photo alone.
Some of the correction tools are automatic, so one touch of the screen and your photo improves. However, you are not in any way limited to automatic adjustments only and you won't want to be.
The app auto-saves your work (a feature of the Mac version), which is a nice way to protect your work and something only rarely seen on iOS.
I appreciated the lighting effects, like bokeh and CGI light leaks, and some of the vintage photo effects. You won't use all of these features in every editing session, but when you want them, you'll be glad they are included in Pixelmator.
Color correction tools are plentiful. There are 8 correction presets, so you have curves as mentioned, brightness, contrast, saturation, and white balance adjustments.
I did my testing on a lowly iPad 2 and found the app speedy and responsive, although the Pixelmator team recommends the latest and greatest iPads. One major tool missing on my iPad 2 is the repair tool, roughly the equivalent of Photoshop's Content-Aware fill tool. It is left out of older iPads like mine -- likely due to performance issues -- but the App Store specs don't reveal this. It's an important feature, and I have other apps that run on the iPad 2 with similar rendering features that work just fine, so I'm disappointed it couldn't be put into this release. I'm hoping the Pixelmator team will re-think this. [Good news! The version of Pixelmator released October 31 now adds the missing features so it runs on older iPads. I gave it a try on my iPad 2 and now the healing tools work. They are not speedy, but the result is worth the wait. Kudos to the Pixelmator team for listening!]
Other than that caveat, I think Pixelmator now stands as the very best image editor for the iPad. The Photoshop Mix app is also quite powerful and is well integrated to Adobe's total workflow, but Pixelmator has a smarter layout and seems easier to use.
I do wish the Pixelmator Team would do a version that works on the new iPhones. Maybe that will come along one day if there is demand, and I'd love to be able to do this kind of quality editing on my iPhone 6. If you do a lot of image editing on your iPad, I think Pixelmator is a must buy.
Pixelmator requires iOS 8 and remember that not all features will work on older iPads.
