Pixelmator uses Apple’s Core Image feature and is world’s  first GPU powered image editing software. The key factor here is that it has an open-source core. It’s developed on ImageMagick which is a cross-platform library of image manipulation tools. It supports almost any image formats that are available in the market. It even has the ability to open PSD files. Unlike Photoshop, Pixelmator is made specially for Mac platform. This makes it have many features that a Mac user always lookup for. Some of them are integration with iLife Media Browser, iSight Camera and more. A built-in photo browser is integrated to this software that can look through the pictures in iPhoto. Another key feature in this is Automator Integration. With this you can perform many tasks with your pictures effectively. Although Photoshop has most of these Automator actions it does not perform it in such accurately and quickly as Pixelmator.

Pixelmator like most of other image-editing software supports layer-based editing. That is, stacking up of multiple items on top of one another and adjusting the transparency of various items separately. Another key feature in Pixelmator is the use of Mac’s iSight to immediately add a new layer to image from iSight.  Pixelmator allows capturing still-frames from built-in Mac camera. Another exciting feature is that it offers onscreen notification for each task performed and offers real-time reflection for changes informed in advance.

Pixelmator lack some key features too. One key factor here is the lack of those much familiar keyboard short cuts we use in Photoshop. Pixelmator lacks it completely which make editing rather difficult. For eg, we cannot use the “shift” button to restrain proportion but need to manually click the restrain key to perform the task. Everything need to be clicked at the interface which makes it rather slow.  Also Pixelmator does not offer any real power over managing text in interface. This make it difficult to perform text manipulation in this software which was much easier in Photoshop by selecting the layer and changing the setting needed.

Though Pixelmator may never replace a much efficient software like Photoshop but when you need to quickly edit a photo Pixelmator outcasts any other bigger software.

Key Features

• The interface and menu structure in Compositor is pretty similar to that of Photoshop 3.0. This also includes the lack of easily accessible layer features and also relatively bleak mechanism for changing image orientation and shape.
• Thought the graphics formats supported by Compositor are limited, it supports most of the basic formats as well as can save files as Adobe PDFs and Photoshop PSDs.
• Compositor allows users to export sequence of images as QuickTime movies. The software offer animation capabilities to these images which even Photoshop doesn’t offer.
• Compositor provides many unique color features including enhanced color picking tools and also supports various types of color palette including CMYK. There is also an impressive brush palette which has many option included in it.
• Compositor has many large varieties of ‘filters’ and ‘actions’ that is even better than the ones in Photoshop. There is also some unique features for animation of images for users to play around. Though these features are not full featured, it does offer users with several impressive features.
• Compositor has a large range of organic stock footage clips that are shot at high speed, pre-matted clips and much easy access using the software.
• The newly added virtual clipboard supports images much larger in size (even 4095 pixels wide or larger).
• Another unique feature is the added History-file recovery feature, which helps in recovering from where user had left off incase of software been quit.
• Though the demo version of Compositor is limited, the full version is worth considering, if you are looking for a Photoshop alternative which can also perform some video work. Compositor is supported by Mac OS X 10.2.2 or later.

The Verdict

Compositor is by no doubt a powerful replacement for Photoshop. The software has a much affordable price and even supports videos to be made from images. Software is full featured and has interface much similar to that of Photoshop so users can easily adapt to that too. Do try it and get impressed yourself!!!