The moment I saw John Gruber link Pixelmator - a powerful new Core Image-based image editor with support for layers, a wide variety of tools, iLife/iPhoto, Automator and more - I had to get a closer look. I remember the days of Apple hyping Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and all the power of Core Image, and then never seeing a formidable editor make use of them. Sure there are a few apps that make use of Core Image in one way or another, but nothing really struck me as truly leveraging all there was to leverage in Apple's Core image.
While Pixelmator may technically be vaporware according to Gruber, I managed to snag an exclusive demonstration video of the app in action from its developers, brothers Aidas and Saulius Dailide (who you might be interested to know also founded Jumsoft). The demo showcases some impressive Pixelmator features, including working with multiple layers and objects, opening Photoshop files and moving layers from one image to another, taking a picture with an iSight camera and embedding it into the current working image, and even some slick blending modes.
From what I see here, I can definitely say 'wow', especially since Pixelmator is expected to ship in late July for only $59. Stay tuned for more info as soon as we can nab it.
I'm
beginning to think that today is some kind of image editing holiday, as Image Tricks, the freeware image editor that
leverages Mac OS X Tiger's Core Image features, has been updated to version 2. New features include 'generators' - the
ability to "randomly and manually generate images with mathematical algorithms," a fit-to-size option, PDF
export, file size adjustment when exporting to JPEG, and other minor fixes and improvements.
