The popular Mac image editing software Pixelmator got an update today to version 2.2.1. The update added numerous enhancements, most aimed at increasing the overall speed of the app.
From the Pixelmator Blog:
Today we are happy to release the first Pixelmator 2.2.1 update. That may sound minor in numbers, but in our little Pixelmator world, it’s a major one. We’ve done some radical improvements behind the scenes. One of them is a new Pixelmator file format. It’s still the same file format you are used to, yet it now has a completely new architecture that takes advantage of the modern OS X technologies making your image editing even faster and more enjoyable.
What’s New in Version 2.2.1
A completely new Pixelmator file format that uses all of the today’s OS X technologies and makes your image editing even faster and more enjoyable:
- 2x faster: It can open and save your Pixelmator documents twice as fast compared with the previous Pixelmator file format.
- Saves in background: This means that while you play with your images, Pixelmator automatically saves the changes in the background.
- Faster saving to iCloud: The first image file format to save only the edits you make to iCloud instead of saving the whole picture each time. So it takes less time to save and you have more time to enjoy image editing.
- Progress bar: The new Pixelmator file format allows us to show a progress bar with accurate status while opening and saving documents.
- Quick Look support: A better Quick Look support that lets you preview your Pixelmator document without even opening it.
A new checkbox for opening images in their original file format. This means that you can now choose whether to open and save all images in the Pixelmator file format or in their original file format.
Improvements
The Effects Browser improvements let you search, preview, and apply effects even more quickly:
- Quickly open highlighted effects by simply pressing the Return key on your keyboard.
- Each effect has more keywords, so that you can find effects more quickly.
- The Effects Browser’s thumbnails preview has been improved, so you can get a better idea of what an effect will look like when applied.
- Better organization of third-party effects. You can now clearly see the line separating built-in effects and third-party effects.
- Third-party effects now have a tooltip so that you can view the entire title for an effect.
Effects improvements that give you more flexibility in previewing effects and faster, more accurate performance:
- Now you can zoom in or out, pan, enter Full Screen, enlarge the document window, switch between Pixelmator documents, or open more images–all while applying an effect or using the Select Color and Refine Selection features.
- Quickly compare how an image looks with and without the effect by pressing the Option-Command keyboard shortcut.
- The Clouds effect now generates a new cloud image each time you apply it.
- Now, you can sharpen images even more with extended values for the Sharpen effect.
- The Sharpen effect has a better and more accurate preview on zoomed in or out images.
- The Light and Dark effect’s performance is now twice as fast.
- The Halo and Sunbeams effect’s preview is now more accurate.
- The accuracy and performance of the Black and White effect has been greatly improved.
- The eyedropper precision for the Replace Color and Select Color tools has been improved so that you can select colors more accurately.
- Improved selection preview for the Replace Color dialog so that you can see what is being colored more clearly.
- Effects’ rope now performs more smoothly.
- Improved support for Noise Industries effects.
WOAH! Quite a list. This is definitely a must have update if you’re already a Pixelmator user, and if you’re not using it, why aren’t you?
Pixelmator is available in the Mac App Store for $14.99. [DIRECT LINK]
