I like to dabble in graphics. I’ve created some pretty good pieces in my own estimation, especially considering I can’t draw a straight line with pen and paper. I’ve watched a lot of training by experts like Bert Monroy and Deke McClelland. I’m no pro by any stretch of the imagination but I am far enough along to appreciate pro tools.
Of course, the reigning champion is Photoshop and has been for quite some time. I, like many others, don’t want to pay 3-6 months of car payments for a tool I don’t use to put food on the table. What’s a person to do? I heard David and Katie at the Mac Power Users Podcast talk often about Pixelmator. At under US$30 and a 30-day free trial how could I not try it? They even have an iPad version.
I was immediately shocked at how fully-featured this program was! It has nearly all of the features of the very much more expensive Photoshop. They do take a bit of getting used to if you are coming from a PS background simply because Pixelmator is not a Photoshop wannabe and the controls are different in areas, but it is amazing how much this program does.
They have a new version and did a demo video of how awesome the repair tool is. I watched that and thought “I wonder how the older version does on this same thing?” so I downloaded the image they provided and tried it. Amazingly it was almost as good, only a bit slower (images below). Keep in mind I’m not a pro artist and have little patience for minute details so maybe with the same artist they would look exactly the same. When I was watching the video I thought “They can’t get that right!” but they did, and so did my older version! Once again I underestimated the awesomeness of Pixelmator.
I must say that the only tool I miss from Photoshop is the Brush Engine which allows you to do clever things like make a brush that’s a blade of grass and use the engine to “wiggle” it back and forth or rotate it to make realistic looking art.
In all, if you want to do some art then you can’t go wrong with Pixelmator! The fact that it is affordable is a big plus too! You can purchase your copy in the Mac App Store (link)
There is a little something off because the saturation and brightness of the image they posted is not the same as the retouched one in the video, but for a non-artist I’d say this is pretty close!