The Pixelmator team has announced the availability of Pixelmator Pro 2.3 Abracadabra. The new update brings AI-powered automatic background removal, automatic subject selection, a Select & Mask tool for making advanced selections, and much more.
What’s New
Version 2.3
Pixelmator Pro 2.3 Abracadabra brings AI-powered automatic background removal, automatic subject selection, a Select & Mask tool for making advanced selections, and much more.
Magic Background Eraser
• Use the new Remove Background feature to automatically remove the background from any image with just a click.
• Find this new feature in the Pixelmator Pro toolbar, the Edit menu, by pressing the Shift-Backspace keyboard shortcut, by pressing and holding the Command key when dragging and dropping images into Pixelmator Pro documents, as a Quick Action in the Finder, and when Control-clicking image layers in the Layers sidebar.
Select Subject
• The new Select Subject feature lets you automatically select the subject of any image – also with just a click.
• Note that this feature works especially well on macOS 12 and devices powered by the M1 chip.
Select and Mask Tool
• Thanks to the new Select and Mask tool, you can now make advanced selections of challenging image areas – like hair or fur – with ease.
• In the Select and Mask tool, you’ll find a redesigned Smart Refine feature that turns rough selections into accurate ones automatically.
• When using the Select and Mask tool, you’ll also find a Refine Edge Brush that intelligently makes accurate selections of edge areas.
• To see your selection in more detail, you can try different selection overlays, like On Red, On White, or Black and White.
• Once you’ve refined your selection, choose to output it to a selection, a mask, a new layer, or a new layer with a mask.
• In addition to the Select and Mask tool for refining and creating selections, we’ve added a Refine Mask tool for refining and creating masks.
• Find this tool in Format > Mask > Refine Mask or by Control-clicking masked layers in the Layers sidebar.
Decontaminate Colors
• Use the Decontaminate Colors feature to remove any traces of the previous background from the edges of objects.
• When removing backgrounds, colors are decontaminated automatically, but you’ll also find this feature in Format > Image.
Other Improvements
• The Pixelmator Pro actions in the Shortcuts app have been updated to be able to remove backgrounds and create subject masks from any image (not just portrait images).
• The Remove Background, Select Subject, Smart Refine, and Decontaminate Colors features are now scriptable with AppleScript.
• The Export dialog now features an option to export images at custom sizes and scale factors.
• The last-used export location will now be remembered app-wide rather than for each document.
Pixelmator Pro 2.3 is a free update for owners of previous Pixelmator Pro versions and is available now, and there’s currently a 50% discount off the app price (usually $39.99) in the Mac App Store. A 15-day free trial is also available here.