First announced back in September, Pixelmator Pro is an upcoming photo editing app for Mac that introduces an improved workflow and utilizes macOS High Sierra’s Core ML (machine learning) framework and Metal 2. Today in a new blog post, the release date and pricing has been revealed.
The Pixelmator team has stated that November 29 will be the launch day for the Mac app, with a starting price of $59. After the initial purchase, future updates for the app will be free according to the blog post, however they note that the debut pricing of $59 will not stay. As they deliver new features to the app in the future, the pricing is said to go up. They give a $99 “intended” price point, but I have a hard time believing that is nothing more than marketing nudging people to impulse buy and not wait, similar to what Serif pulled with Affinity Photo for iPad a few months back.
The blog update also officially clues us in that there will be a Pixelmator Pro for iPad coming too. No further details on the iPad app were mentioned other than it will be a “great friend” to Pixelmator Pro for Mac.
You can read up on everything new coming in Pixelmator Pro on their website.
I have been wrestling with some of those thoughts too. The RAW developers are great to a point then they stop. They have dangers too: the danger (in LR, C1P, the old Aperture let's say) is that your edits are stored in a database and the completed image does not exist until you export to JPG or TIFF or print.
As Aperture users (like me) found out, if the company pulls the plug on your RAW developer, it's very difficult to migrate/preserve those edits to a new RAW developer (if not impossible). Yes, LR and capture One (C1P) have an option to import other catalogs, but it is at best an estimation of the original and your images will not look the same.
LR users may face a similar dilemma in 2 years (my guess and fear) when/if LR "Classic" has it's plug pulled by Adobe and you'll have to switch to LR CC (Cloud) and pay through the nose for cloud storage ($600/year for 5TB is what I'd need to pay based on current pricing). I personally left LR a couple years ago for CaptureOne and don't regret it.... but PhaseOne could pull the plug on C1P too, I realize that.
So my main concern is that RAW processors may not be "The Answer"... and it is obviously very difficult for them to include things like content-aware fill, advanced layer compositing, frequency separation, 20+ blending modes for layers etc. So I think we'll continue on the [RAW developer] + [pixel editor] path like LR+PS, C1P+Affinity etc. for the foreseeable future; a place where RAW editing goes "to a point" and then you do the heavy lifting (if needed at all) in PS/Affinity/Pixelmator.
Not 100% sure, but it seem like the new "all-in-ones" Luminar and On1, try to combine both worlds into one package. However internally they seem to be "RAW developer" and "pixel editor" rolled into one tool with a discreet step which converts RAW images to "pixel" (TIFF or PSD-like proprietary files) which can then be layered and blended and such. So I don't know that they are that much different than LR + PS.
And then there's more the old school approach where you "develop" all your RAWs as step 1, then use PS (or Affinity or ?) for all your editing. In the age of relatively cheap 8 and 10TB drives, this workflow is clearly an option and you don't have to worry about losing your edits should your RAW developer pull the rug out from under you.
Anyway, more questions than answers for me, but I'm glad to see PS get some more competition and while I am a bit wary of RAW developer "lock in" , I keep march deeperer and deeper into being locked-in myself :-)
Fascinating insight, this has made me think.
For the cost of $59 this should have had a bit more to offer. I mean, I don't want to sound negative, but I see no reason to buy it despite all the claims about it being a next-gen editor.
https://macdownload.informer.com/Mac-Stories/why-is-pixelmator-pro-a-nex...
But I guess this is the industry standard now. Nothing new.