Apple Acquires Pixelmator

[@KevKevAllen]

@Apple please, if you’re reading this, I’m begging, bring back Aperture and integrate Pixelmator into it and add support for RAW photos. I am BEGGING for an Apple alternative to Lightroom, PLEASE. 😭🙏🏻 I LOVED Aperture.

[@aRandomPersonOfTheInternet]

Isn’t Pixelmator more like Photoshop and Illustrator? It is not a lightroom-replacement?

[@juurstudio]

Pixelmator Pro is nothing like Aperture was. If anything they will incorporate Photomator to Photos (which would be a real jab to those who has bought the lifetime Photomator license), but Pixelmator Pro should remain a standalone pro app to compete with Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

[@rossprohaska6263]

Aperture is not coming back. Apple doesn’t look backwards. They go forwards and either call it something else or retain the essence of what things are called and incorporate them into their ecosystem. This is sooooooo amazing and I am just ecstatic this happened.

[@Nabeelco]

Aperture going away was one of the reasons I switched back to Windows after being a Mac user for over 14 years.

[@Nabeelco]

@@rossprohaska6263 There's nothing "backwards" about releasing a new version of Aperture. Nothing does what Aperture does, and does it as well. Lightroom was a cheap (quality wise) shitty Aperture knock off that STILL, in 2024 doesn't work as well as the last version of Aperture from 2014. 10 years later, with no more development in Aperture, and Lightroom STILL hasn't caught up. Pros need a tool like Aperture, but unfortunately Apple doesn't care about Pros anymore, which is why Final Cut has been ruined, Logic has been ruined, and Aperture was killed. Apple used to be the market leader in NLE for video, and in DAWs for audio, as well as in digital darkroom software. But Steve died, and Tim Cook destroyed each of those categories.

[@axelpritzbauer]

Bring back Apple Aperture - it was underestimated an a wonderful application.

[@pixelrancher]

Apple should have purchased the Affinity Suite and not let it go to Canva.

[@aRandomPersonOfTheInternet]

Affinity is cross-platform while Pixelmator is native. It is built from the ground up on Apple’s technologies, specifically for the Mac platform. It is only natural that Apple wanted to buy them - their whole company is already integrated tightly into their ecosystem.

[@alastairleith8612]

they would have killed Affinity products within five years. look at what they did with Aperture, FCP-X, (quartz composer) they just don’t give a toss when their balance sheet is bigger than most nations. they happily kill software products through attrition and putting recent grad software engineers onto it as they did with the iWork suite rewrites to make them web app compatible. (since they can’t make PC software so they had to go web app).

[@alexgranados8719]

Disagree. Affinity is the only cross platform alternative to the Adobe Suite.

[@juurstudio]

Many creative pros have been begging Apple for years to take their "Pro" software lineup a bit more seriously, not just please the iPhone people. One could hope buying Pixelmator Pro is a step towards that direction, but we'll have to wait and see, it can go either way.

[@rossprohaska6263]

Completely agree. I have been using FCP for ages and It crushed me when Aperture went away because I used its organization while I was a professional sports photographer. There is going to make other apps in your Apple devices even more powerful.

[@Nabeelco]

There used to be a time when most Hollywood movies were made with FCP, and most hit songs were made in Logic. That's not the case anymore.

[@markshirley01]

Can it do publishing work like InDesign - ie pdf page work etc

[@beingatliberty]

getting bought out is very often a disaster for consumers, pity affninity was bought by canva, I predict its going to get more expensive.

[@ckeilah]

Andy is exactly the kind of sucker Adobe and Barnum & Bailey counted on. “$15/mo” is almost $200/year out of pocket! That may be fine if you’re earning thousands of dollars off of your *work*, but if you’re just a hobbiest who doesn’t use the damn program for several months, but then wants to create a nice photo, that’s a hell of a while wallet theft.

[@WattTheTech]

As someone that still uses Aperture this might be the push I need to get me onto Apple Silicon. My photography business was started with Aperture and nothing has the workflow like it. I have tried everything over the years but nothing for me comes close. Annoyingly I was about to try Photomator. Apple just give us Aperture 2 then don't pull it 10 years from now.

[@frankhoffman9329]

Hopefully Photomator will add more robust metadata controls so I can add some longer descriptions of subject activities and names.

[@WillFastie]

Apple obviously has deep roots in the creator market and is happy to say that its product videos are shot on iPhone and post-processed by Final Cut Pro. The hidden part of that message is "Oh, by the way, if you want to do creator-level photo processing, check out Adobe's Creative Cloud." In other words, Apple needs to fill a hole. Pixelmator as an Apple-branded alternative to Photoshop sounds like a smart move.

[@rossprohaska6263]

With the iPhones cameras getting so good that they are literally filming cinema level video this was something that had to happen. It’s a marriage made in tech heaven. The app is so Apple is exactly why it’s the perfect mate. I have been using Pixelmator since literally almost its inception. I used Aperture and loved it but it needed a complete overhaul like what they did with FCP X. I kept telling people when I used to teach at Apple this will be a Photoshop/Illustrator/Lightroom killer but it doesn’t have storage or library organization just yet. Apple will build something or already have something in the pipeline using what they already have. Because now they will have professional Video, Music, and Photography software for everyone that is using Apple products. iCloud storage is going to be where you pay in order to integrate across every Apple device. So that’s where they will make their money.

[@PLANETWATERMELON]

I would think Apple will change the name as "Pixel" is too Google sounding.

[@robertfenney]

Apple needs a photo platform to embed their ai/ml tools to build on

[@ckeilah]

Pretty soon GiMP is going to be the only way to actually *own* your tool. SASS sucks! Thankfully, GiMP has improved by leaps and bounds the last few years. ❤️

[@peterbreis5407]

They need another App to neglect AND/OR remove features from before cancelling completely.

[@jwillbassist]

I want them to give adobe some serious competition!!!!

[@PLANETWATERMELON]

Pixelmater's agreement with Apple has "regulatory" approval which I think means Apple has to do things to Pixelmator's approval.

[@RoastBeefSandwich]

What is the advantage for Apple to extinguish Pixelmator? They're obviously going to fold Pixelmator/Photomator into their own apps. They better move quickly because Apple's current apps in iOS 18 and macOS 15 are horrible.

[@aRandomPersonOfTheInternet]

Following your logic, they’re also going to fold Final Cut and Motion into iMovie and then ditch Logic Pro in favour of GarageBand. This is professional-grade software that is much more advanced than your everyday iPhone apps. I doubt they’ll merge them

[@RoastBeefSandwich]

@@aRandomPersonOfTheInternet They actually went backwards with Final Cut - they folded iMovie into Final Cut and ruined the app. Slowly they made it better but tons of editors jumped ship when Final Cut X first shipped a while back.

[@twit]

@roastbeefsandwhich Bingo

[@mehAudio]

I find Pages to be superior for creating diagrams and for low level DTP tasks. Pixelmator to me feels just that little bit too clunky to use it more regularly. I hope they will be able to put the Pixelmator guys to good use to beef up Pages to Pages Pro and get some usability cracks from Apple to polish Pixelmator so I can use keyboard shortcuts more intuitively. That way, Apple would end up with a great suite of apps for print, graphics and photo tasks. It doesn‘t HAVE to outcompete adobe. It just has to offer the 10% of features which 80% of casual users actually need to achieve their goals.

[@christopherlund1198]

Now they need to do is, buy Modo. Since Foundry just killed it.

[@DGgraphicsNY]

MacPaint is coming back

[@charlesteton]

I don’t think it’s necessarily good news, I immediately subscribed to Photomator once they allowed editing outside Photos. Apple have a track record of trashing good apps, even FCP not X version, overnight. At the minute we have literally weekly updates, a road map and being able to ask Pixelmator for features etc and actually talk to designers, all this will disappear once Apple swallows them. I still have a computer running full Adobe CS suite, all paid for outright, I thought with Pixelmator’s two apps I could finally move on. It’s actually quite stressful as you go all in on apps only to be confronted with total uncertainty.

[@user_ao625]

Apple wants a photoshop competitor due to Adobe monopoly and subscriptions.

[@joesalyers]

This might be like the Camel Audio acquisition when Apple just folded their tools into Logic exclusively. On the other hand it is very rare for Apple to keep any project alive outside of their own internal ecosystem. So my guess is the Photos dev team have hit a wall or are brain drained and need a new shot of creativity so Apple will take the best and brightest from Pixelmator's team and fold them into the Photos team. But I do think Apple wants to offer a more "pro" photos app on the level of Final Cut or Logic and not just the iMovie Garageband free tier app they have now with Photos. I think in about 2 years we will see "Apple Photography" a 1 time Mac purchase and a subscription for iOS/iPadOS to serve the professional market. Just like Logic and Final Cut!

[@MJHiteshew]

“iWork…”😂😂😂

[@DerikTran]

IMO. The bad: Photomator is going to be absorbed in Apple photos. They will take some of the good stuff and not care for the rest. A real shame though. The good: I'm guessing Pixelmator will become Apple Photos Pro. I'm HOPING they would combine BOTH photomator and pixelmator into 1 and bring back Apperture equivalent. Will need at least 12-24 months to find out their intentions. The got Final Cut and Logic Pro, missing a true professional grade Photo editor.

[@jpitts15Baby]

Does anyone remember "Shake"? Apple bought it, did nothing to it, then killed it!

[@rossprohaska6263]

Bottom line. Apple is not going to destroy Pixelmator. But we have to look at one more level of photography that has to happen where Aperture had a decent handle on. Library organization. Apple already has that capability integrated into iCloud. You can’t tell me that some forward thinking people who are probably still at Apple that worked on Aperture didn’t say. Guys…if we do this we need to do this…Library organization is critical to professional photography and Pixelmator doesn’t have that…YET!!! Photos has it in a decent level but now is where the rubber hits the road and honestly I think it’s going to be free or extremely cheap and Adobe is watching!!!!

[@Chaz_r]

$24.99 for the new apple mobile creative suite.. Final Cut, Logic & Pixelmator 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

[@RoastBeefSandwich]

Apple's photo strategy after Aperture is a mess - the apps are very bad. Apple hasn't really written good software in years. I guess they're not attracting top talent organically anymore, so they have to buy companies to get it.

[@mrrolandlawrence]

apple are going after desktop next. new mini m4... they want in as a value prop. iphones are at max saturation. desktop is something they could really expand.

[@steveseidel9967]

They already had Aperture though, which, at least before it was abandoned, was better than Lightroom. I don’t know know what Apple is thinking with this purchase other than it’s a very good Apple specific app.

[@ckeilah]

What do you expect when they won’t let you program in a real programming language, but force you to use this thing called Swift for all development? 😜

[@alastairleith8612]

@@ckeilah and yet most of the other Mac imaging apps are written in Swift/Obj-C not C++ go figure.

[@Superz3ro]

@@ckeilah Curious… 🤔