Useful for people who already have Pixelmator Pro?

Discuss Photomator and photo editing.
User avatar

2023-05-26 17:11:51

I split my work evenly between digital illustration work, and photorealistic / photography. Even looking at the Compare page (https://www.pixelmator.com/compare), it's hard to determine if picking up Photomator is worth it.

From the breakdown the only things I see are:
- additional AI for masking/segmentation (depending on how well this works, could be very useful)
- Batch edit (not really useful for me)
- Filmstrip (again not really useful for me)


Just trying to understand if its worth picking up, and how easy it is to move back and forth between the two applications on Mac.



EDIT: Pixelmator Team please consider adding a FAQ at the bottom of the compare page answering the following questions.
1. I already have Pixelmator Pro, is it worth picking up Photomator?
2. I already have Photomator, is it worth picking up Pixelmator?
User avatar

2023-05-27 00:02:46

If you mostly work on one photo at a time and don't need to:

• Edit significant amounts of photos sequentially
• Manage extensive photo collections
• Make precise selective edits (it's not just the AI features that are important here, but the selective editing tools are designed specifically for photographic edits with easier-to-use masking tools, etc.)
• Edit batches of photos

Then Pixelmator Pro is certainly enough for you. Generally, Photomator is much more optimized for photography workflows in little ways that can seem very minor (too minor to list on a comparison page), so there are other things you might enjoy about it. But again, these things can probably only be felt when you start working on larger numbers of photos one after another. Also, at the end of the day, the app is free to download and try, so I'd suggest taking it for a spin and seeing how you like it.

As for the additional questions – great suggestion, that's something we should certainly consider!

For future reference, if you already have Photomator and are considering whether you might need Pixelmator Pro, then there are two main "groups" of reasons:

Group 1: Photography stuff
• You'd like to combine elements from multiple photos into one, i.e. create photomontages, do stuff like double exposures, etc.
• You'd like to add text/annotations/shapes to photos.
• Distort photos (warping/stretching/pinching areas) or do more advanced skin retouching stuff using techniques such as frequency separation

Group 2: All other design stuff
Photomator is not a design/illustration/painting app, so if you need to do any of that, including but not limited to things like
• Designing posters
• Creating digital paintings
• Creating UI designs/website designs
• Placing designs into mockups
• Creating vector illustrations

Then you need Pixelmator Pro.

Anyway, that's just a quick overview and I'm sure there are some things I missed, but hopefully it helps at least a little bit!
User avatar

2023-05-27 08:10:08

@Andrius

Why not add the AI masking tools to Pixelmator Pro? Is it the "PRO" app, right?
User avatar

2023-05-31 18:58:18

@Andrius Thanks for the detailed breakdown! I don't do a lot of batch work and mostly focus on illustrations so this is good to know.