TheBeeOBee

Want: Pixelmator 2

Look, I love Photoshop. I use it EVERY DAY.  But it is far from perfect. The user interface is 20 years old and it has dozens of useless legacy features (yay, you can open Photoshop 3.0 images!) which have made it a bloated mess. Yes it is the most powerful image editor you can buy. But, yes, there are great alternatives that fill a void if you are looking for a sleek image editor for Mac OSX.

Pixelmator 2, which is set to be released today on Apple App store, has a great interface, all of the features I need for image editing, and a great pricetag: $29 (limited time? regularly $59). 

The two major updates are full OSX Lion compatibility and, sound the trumpets, CONTENT AWARE FILL. This feature was introduced in Photoshop 5 and it’s amazing that you can get such an advanced editing tool in a $30 program. Basically, you can remove an object without affecting the background because the program detects the pixels outside of the area you selected and tries to fill the area of the selection with new pixels that match. In other words, select the power lines, hit the button, it fills the space where the power lines previously were with brand new sky pixels.

Now only if they’d add a way to make animated GIFS!

Check out the preview here before it is released. EDIT: it’s out! Check out their website or the Mac App Store.