Photomator for Mac
Photomator 3.0 today got its official release on macOS, bringing Pixelmator’s iPhone and iPad photo-editing app to MacBooks and Mac desktops for the first time.
With an interface that will be familiar to users of Photomator on iOS and iPadOS, the Mac app includes a fully fledged photo browser with native Photos app integration, allowing users to organize, duplicate, share, and favorite images, as well as sync edits between Photomator and the Photos Library.
I guess this is the new name for Pixelmator Photo. It’s $29.99/year or $99.99 lifetime, up from $23.99 and $54.99 when it was iOS-only.
It’s really cool how multiple apps can plug into the system photo library, but it has practical as well as hard limits, and it’s just not what I want to use to consolidate all of my photos and videos or use for long-term storage.
Previously:
- Pogue’s Photos Unification
- Photos, Spotlight, and iCloud
- Pixelmator Photo Switching to Subscriptions
Update (2023-05-24): Nick Heer:
But, as these are merely suggestions, it makes for an effectively no-lose situation: if the automatic repair or cropping works perfectly, it means less work; if neither are effective, you have wasted only a few seconds before proceeding manually.
The Photos integration is fantastic. If you have ever used a mixed Lightroom and iCloud Photos environment, the simplified workflow is a dream come true. Photomator is also a damn good RAW photo editor. While Photos has some editing tools built in, they are cumbersome for experienced users — there are three modes for white balance editing in Photos, but you cannot select Temperature/Tint as the default, for example. Photomator feels like it has been designed by people who edit photos for people who edit photos.
Update (2024-11-26): Jeff Carlson (post):
In spirit and practice, Photomator, from the Pixelmator Team, is both a worthy successor to Apple Aperture and an inexpensive editing alternative to Adobe Lightroom on the Mac (there is no Windows version). Although Photomator still leans on the Apple Photos app for managing your library, its editing tools (many based on machine learning technologies) and overall approach as a dedicated photo editor make it an appealing choice.
For me, the fact that it relies on the system photo library is a dealbreaker.
Previously:
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Photomator is NOT replacing Pixelmator Pro. Pixelmator Pro Is analogous to Photoshop, and Photomator is analogous to Lightroom. See https://birchtree.me/blog/the-difference-between-photomator-and-pixelmator-pro/
Using Apple’s own raw support is peculiar, and frankly, amateurish. They are stuck with Apple’s ridiculous update cycle, where they can’t be bothered to add new camera model support unless it’s a major OS update. For example, my six month old Sony A7R V, remains unsupported, until macOS 14.0 beta gets released. By proxy, this software is among the last RAW development software not to support this camera model. Ridiculous.
