Pixelmator Pro for Mac Update Brings Support for Portrait Masks, New Comics Effect, Much More

Pixelmator Pro 1.3.1 adds support for Portrait Masks, brings a new Comics effect, includes a number of new keyboard shortcuts, and more.

New Features
• Thanks to Portrait Mask support, Pixelmator Pro will now open photos taken in Portrait mode on iOS 12 together with a layer mask.
• Pixelmator Pro will now always use tabs by default and remember your window size and position for all new documents.
• Use the new Comics effect to quickly apply a comic book-style to any image — you can find this effect in the Stylize category.
• A number of new keyboard shortcuts make it easier to select, organize, and duplicate layers.
• Press the Slash (/) key to quickly lock and unlock layers.
• Option-Left bracket ([) and Option-Right bracket (]) let you select one layer up and down.
• Option-Comma (,) and Option-Period (.) let you select the top and bottom layer.
• Option-Arrow will now duplicate layers and move them by 1 pixel. Option-Shift-Arrow will duplicate and move by 10 pixels.
• Option-clicking a layer’s visibility icon will now hide all other layers.

Improvements
• Zoom performance improvements speed up zooming in documents with many layers.
• Pressing the Return key while drawing a path will now close the path.
• Converting text to shape is now much (much) faster.
• The Repair tool progress bar will no longer be shown when making quick, small repairs.
• The Brightness adjustment is now more precise in images with extreme tonal ranges.
• Previously, the Channel Mixer used our perceptual color model to make prettier adjustments. Since it’s more of a functional adjustment rather than a creative one, it now mixes channels purely mathematically.
• Changing the rulers’ origin will now update the grid to match the new rulers.
• Pressing and holding the Shift key while changing the rulers’ origin will now snap it to the grid and objects in your composition.
• When you add a new, untagged layer to a tagged group, it will be assigned the group’s color tag.
• Attempting to use the Color Fill or Gradient Fill tools on text or shape layers will now create an empty new layer and fill that instead of doing nothing at all.
• Added an Add Guide command to the View menu’s Guides submenu.
• Whenever possible, Pixelmator Pro will try to preserve the font face when changing font family.
• Improved compatibility with certain kinds of text layers in Photoshop documents.

Fixes
• Pixelmator Pro was performing slowly in the latest version of macOS on certain 2016, 2017, and 2018 Mac computers. This version includes a workaround with a fix.
• Due to new font smoothing introduced in macOS 10.14, fonts were thicker on 10.14 than 10.13. Fixed.
• When dragging & dropping text presets, the preview was incorrect. Fixed.
• Holding the Z key to choose the Zoom tool would make Pixelmator Pro beep inappropriately. It’s now much better behaved.
• Layers would incorrectly snap to grids based on non-pixel units. Fixed.
• New documents created from text or shape layers in the clipboard would not be correctly aligned to the canvas. Fixed.
• After dragging to rearrange parts of text within a text layer, changes would be undone incorrectly. Fixed.
• Pixelmator Pro workflows in the Automator app were not working correctly when RAW files would be automatically converted to Pixelmator Pro format using the Auto Enhance action. Fixed.
• The colors in the Color Picker preview did not correctly match the document’s colors. Fixed.
• When changing font family, the previous font’s name would sometimes briefly flicker in the menu. Fixed.
• On macOS Mojave, tab titles would sometimes overlap. Fixed.
• On macOS High Sierra, text in the About window was the wrong color. Fixed.

Pixelmator Pro 1.3.1 for Mac is available in the Mac App Store for $39.99. The update is free to current users. [GET IT HERE]