News 

The application is based on OpenGL and OS X's Core Image, technologies that use Mac's video card for image processing, freeing the main processor for other tasks. And if a high-performance card with increased video memory is fitted in your Mac, you will see real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations, including editing tools, colour correction tools and filters.

Pixelmator supports more than 100 different file formats, including Photoshop (.psd) images, including those with with layers. In fact anyone who has used Photoshop will be comfortable with Pixelmator. Tools and layers behave in similar fashion and Pixelmator's

ADVERTISEMENT

menus share common names with Adobe's de facto image editing standard.

There are more than 50 Core Image-powered filters, from essential tools such as Unsharp Mask and Gaussian Blur to fancy effects, colour tweaks, halftoning, tiling and more. Many of these filters can be automatically applied using the bundled Automator actions. Actions can also be used to convert, transform, colour correct and resize images.

In fact OS X integration was clearly high on the list of the developer's priorities. On Macs with iSight cameras Pixelmator's New Layer from iSight feature automatically adds an iSight snapshot as a layer in composition. Images can also be readily accessed from iPhoto or the Pictures folder using the Photo Browser from where you can drag-and-drop images as layers into a composition. The type tools uses the system-wide type palette and colours can be selected from generic colour picker. And it is difficult to find fault with the elegant, state of the art transparent, HUD interface with neat touches such as tool icons in the toolbar palette that enlarge as they are selected.

Pixelmator costs £36.54 (inc. VAT); a free 30-day demo is available.