The Pixelmator Team has released Pixelmator Pro 2.4 “Odesa” to the Mac App Store. The update brings a number of new features, including bringing color adjustments and effects layers, a completely redesigned Layers sidebar, over 200 beautiful new vector shapes, support for M1 Ultra, and more.
Color adjustments and effects layers allow users to non-destructively change the look of entire layered compositions more quickly and easily than ever before. The new layer types make it possible to more easily make selective edits to photos, designs, and illustrations, completely transforming many common workflows.
The Layers sidebar has been redesigned with a fresh new look and a range of usability improvements – different layer types are now much more easily recognizable, layers feature informative subtitles, it’s now possible to customize layer thumbnail sizes, and more.
What’s New
Pixelmator Pro 2.4 Odesa brings a completely redesigned Layers sidebar, color adjustments and effects layers, over 200 beautiful new vector shapes, support for M1 Ultra, and more.
Redesigned Layers Sidebar
• The Layers sidebar has been redesigned to make it much easier to work with layers.
• Informative layer subtitles now show useful info about layers, depending on their type: sizes for image layers, text formatting for text layers, path info for shape layers, and more.
• The design of the blending controls has been updated and they’ll now appear at the top of the Layers sidebar by default.
• Layers sidebar viewing options can now be customized, so you can change the size of thumbnails, the visibility of layer subtitles, and the position of the blending controls.
• You can now quickly add an empty layer using the new Add Empty Layer button.
• Layer masks will now appear as separate layers in the Layers sidebar.
• Layer masks can now be unlinked from their parent layer – double-click the line connecting a layer mask to its layer to link or unlink it.
Color Adjustments and Effects Layers
• Color adjustments and effects layers let you apply color adjustments or effects to all the layers below them in a composition.
• These new layer types work just like other layers — they can be masked, hidden, rearranged, and more.
• You can now easily apply selective edits by using colors adjustments and effects layers with masks.
• Use the Shift-Command-A keyboard shortcut to add a colors adjustments layer and Shift-Command-F to add an effects layer.
Over 200 New Shapes
• Over 200 new artist-designed shapes have been added to Pixelmator Pro.
• Several new shape collections have been added and others have been rearranged, so there are now 10 collections: Basic, Activities, Food, Objects, Arches, Science, Animals, Plants, Organic, and Symbols.
• All shapes are pixel-perfect – this means their vector points perfectly align with pixel boundaries, ensuring any icons you create won’t have any unwanted blurring.
M1 Ultra
• Thanks to support for the M1 Ultra chip, Pixelmator Pro flies when performing machine learning-based tasks on the latest Mac Studio devices.
• Tasks like automatic background removal, super-resolution, and photo enhancement are up to 1.7 times faster on M1 Ultra compared to M1 Max.
Scrubby Zoom
• The Scrubby Zoom mode makes it easier to zoom images when using a graphics tablet or mouse.
• When using the Zoom tool, you can simply drag your image horizontally – like scrubbing video controls – to zoom in and out.
• When using other tools, first press the Space key, then the Option key to temporarily activate the Zoom tool.
• If you’d like to, you can change the scrubby zoom scroll direction from horizontal to vertical using the following Terminal command: defaults write com.pixelmatorteam.pixelmator.x enableVerticalScrubbyZoom -bool true
Other Improvements
• You can now create masks by Command-dragging layers onto other layers.
• You can also copy and paste masks between different Pixelmator Pro documents.
• Use the new Shift-Command-T keyboard shortcut to insert text layers and Option-Shift-Command-T to insert circular text layers.
• Preserve Transparency, Replace Image, and Choose Mask options are now available in the Layers sidebar shortcut menu.
Pixelmator Pro 2.4 Odesa is now available from the Mac App Store as a free update for existing users and $39.99 for new users.
