Is There a Paint App On The Mac?

Remember when Macs came with a basic Paint app? There hasn't been a default app like that for a long while, but you can use Preview and Photos for most things. If you want to be able to draw with pixels, however, you'll need a graphics app. Here are some suggestions, including one that is free and easy to use.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. The question for today: Is there a Paint app on your Mac?
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So the question is often asked is there a paint app on your Mac. In other words is there an app that you could open up an image with and edit the pixels or draw something on a blank canvas. While the answer is No there is no dedicated paint app that comes with your Mac there are several apps that you can use to edit images and draw. There are a variety of apps that you can get in the Mac App Store that allow you to edit images, draw, and some of them are even free. 
First let's say you have an image here and you just want to Edit it. There's an app on your Mac that allows you to do some editing and it's called Preview. It's what you get by default. When you double click on the file to open it you'll open it up in Preview. Now in Preview you can go to Tools and in here you can do things like Adjust Color. Then you have a variety of ways to adjust the colors in the image. You could also go to Adjust Size and this allows you to resize the image. If your goal is simply to convert the image you can go to File and then Export and then from there you can choose a variety of standard formats. You can also mark up the image using this tool here. Now you have a variety of things, including the ability to draw on the image, add text, boxes, lines, all sorts of things. You can even make selections. So you can select something, Copy and Paste it or Clear the Image in that area. So while you can't really draw and do the things you would expect to do in an Imaged Editor you can do some basic things that may mean that this is the only tool that you need. 
On the other hand if the image is in the Photos App then there are a lot of tools in the Photos App that will allow you to do things. It's still not a paint tool. You can't actually edit the pixels. But you can go to Edit and you have the ability to make adjustments, so you have lots of light and color adjustments here. You can apply filters and you can Crop and Rotate the image. You can also, in Photos, export the image to convert it into a variety of different formats. 
What about a real graphics app? Something that allows you to edit an image, change the pixels, draw on it, and create something from scratch. Well, of course, the king of all the apps is PhotoShop. But PhotoShop is fairly expensive. But there are some great apps in the App Store that don't cost nearly as much. So the first one I want to mention is Acorn. Acorn is a great image editor that costs $30 in the Mac App Store. Here's what it looks like. You can see there's a variety of tools and things you would expect to see in a graphics app. It has all of the basics and then some. It's not the most full-featured app but it also is probably the easiest to get into. I find when I want to do something quick I go to Acorn. 
Now a higher end app is Pixelmator Pro. You can get this in the Mac App Store for $40. There's a pretty comprehensive set of tools in Pixelmator Pro and of course there are also versions of it for the iPhone and iPad. It's definitely the most popular choice of Mac users for a graphics app. In fact I use it everyday to make the thumbnails for the MacMost videos and for a variety of other things. 
Another popular choice is Affinity Photo which costs $25 in the Mac App Store. Affinity Photo has an excellent set of tools for manipulating photographs. One down side though is that most of the graphics creation tools are actually in another app called Affinity Designer. So Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer work really well as a pair and I use both of them. As a matter of fact I love using Affinity Designer to design graphics for my games. In a way this is more similar to how Adobe does things with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. 
But what if you don't want to pay anything for an app for now. Well, there's actually an app in the App Store, it's been around for a long time. Not only is it pretty good as an image editor but it's probably the most similar thing to a paint type app that you'll find. It's called Seashore. Here's what Seashore looks like. It's a much more basic tool than Pixelmator, Affinity, or Acorn. But it does feel a lot more like an old fashioned painting app. If you only occasionally need to be able to edit the pixels in an image or create a graphic this may be the tool that you need since it doesn't cost anything.  
There's one more that I want to mention. If you really like PhotoShop and you want to stick with PhotoShop but you don't want to pay the monthly subscription to Adobe, maybe you just don't use it often enough, there is PhotoShop Element. That's available in the Mac App Store and Adobe updates it just about every year. You can get it for $80. It's still more expensive than any of those other tools I mentioned but a lot cheaper than getting the full subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud.
So which one is the best one for you? Well, it really depends on your situation. Pros are probably going to still stick with full PhotoShop because it's what they're colleagues and their clients use and they need that compatibility and they need all the different tools that PhotoShop has. But also a lot of pros have left PhotoShop to use either Affinity Photo and Designer or Pixelmator Pro. But if you just want to be able to adjust images, crop them, export them, I would try to stick with the Photos App already on your Mac or just use Preview. If you want to have a little fun with graphics every once in a while on your Mac and you don't need all the features in those other apps give Seashore a try.
But those aren't the only choices. If you're using something else and you really like it let me know in the comments below.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Is There a Paint App On The Mac?”

Douglas Brace

4 years ago

I use Gimp (https://www.gimp.org/downloads) for very basic editing.

John

I agree with your suggestions. I also like the Affinity products. I would also suggest Graphic Converter. This has been around since well before OS X. At its core it converts image formats. At this it is superb. It can open practically anything. You can edit pixels one-by-one, fill regions, use a brush, crop, resize and select regions to be made transparent. It has a nice image browser, and a batch processor. Probably I'm missing a lot. $39.99 on the App Store.

mel

can't get a black and white print in the Mac photos they have a crimson tint or a blue tint I use a canon ip8750

Gary Rosenzweig

Mel: Check your printer options when printing. It is different for every printer, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't a grayscale option for your printer. Consult your printer documentation if you need to, or call their support.

Steve Smith

What are your thoughts on Luminar by Skylum. I'm an amateur photo editor -- I've tested their sky replacement feature and am intrigued. Is it unique? Worth the incremental cost?
Thanks!

Steve: Sorry, I haven't played with it.

Dean Kutzler

Hey Gary! 👋🏻 As always, thank you for putting out these videos. I'm currently using Pixelmator Pro and I'm having trouble finding more brushes free or paid. Any suggestions?

Dean: Sorry, I don't know about brushes. Maybe check their site and ask support?

Graeme Salmond

Hi Gary, I use an older version of Corel Painter but haven’t upgraded because of the cost. I’ve since discovered Autodesk Sketchbook which is free and suitable for most things I do in Corel Painter.

Comments Closed.

Is There a Paint App On The Mac?

Comments: 9 Responses to “Is There a Paint App On The Mac?”

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