Learn Pixelmator Pro Basics In 5 Minutes

Pixelmator Pro is a popular image editing tool for Macs, just acquired by Apple. It is a powerful, but easy-to-use, Photoshop alternative.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's a quick start guide for using Pixelmator Pro on your Mac. 
Pixelmator Pro is a popular image editing app that you can get in The App Store.  You can actually use it to edit photos directly from the Photos App. So I have a photo here and I can go to Image, and then down to Edit With, and I can select Pixelmator Pro. It will launch Pixelmator Pro that will allow me to edit the image. 
Alternatively, you can open any image file as well. You can Drag & Drop onto Pixelmator Pro or Open from Within or use Open With and select Pixelmator Pro. 
You're going to see a variety of tools on the left, top, and right. All the way to the right are the main tools for working with your image. The third one down is for Color Adjustments. Select that and you have a variety of different sections here. I'm going to turn on the Basic Set here where I can adjust things like Exposure or Brightness or Texture. These sections also have a ML for Machine Learning button here  where it is going to analyze the photo and make some automatic adjustments, like that. You can simply turn off the ML or use the Undo button here or Command Z works in almost every situation. 
Further down you've got other tools. For instance Hue & Saturation. So I can super saturate the photo or make it more Black & White. At the top here you're going to see some Presets. So you can select some, like the Vintage ones here, and apply a vintage set which is going to make all sorts of different adjustments here to get that result. Again, Command Z to Undo makes it really easy to try things, see what they look like, and then go back.
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The next set of tools down are for Effects. You can choose some Presets here but also add a single effect right here, like for instance Stylize and I can use Pointilize here and usually there are further adjustments you can make with Sliders and Switches as well. There's also a Repair tool. Select that and then you can brush over any part of the image and it will attempt to use Machine Learning to repair it. So, for instance, I can get rid of this railing here, like that. 
You can also add things to the image. Notice a lot of these tools have the little pointer at the bottom right. If you click and hold the tool then you have a variety of different options. So, for instance, I can add Shapes. I can also add a variety of other things including a line shape. So if I were to draw a line like this it adds a layer here. Pixelmator is like Photoshop in that it has different layers. For this line here you see I can adjust all sorts of things about it. So let's go and put an arrow at the start and you can change the color if you like. Then you can move the points around for this arrow. For any layer here you can go to the Style settings and you can change things about it. Like make it semi-transparent for instance.
Another thing you can add is Text. Click on this tool here and then click in the image and you can add some text. I'm going to double click in there and edit it, like that. Then you can select All with Command A. You can adjust the size. You can change the font. You can change the color of the text. This also creates another layer and now you can go into Style here and you can change things. For instance I can add a Shadow here and then change the settings for the shadow. Then I can move the text around where I want. 
Another thing you may want to do with an image is Crop it. If you look at the tool at the very bottom you can click that and select Crop. Now you enter cropping mode. You can grab the corners and then move the area around and then click Apply. 
Now since I opened this image up in Photos if I go and Save it, it actually saves it back to Photos. So now I've saved it and now I can Close it right here. Now if I look back in Photos there's the image edited in Pixelmator Pro. Since Photos always saves the original you can go to Edit here and Revert to Original at any time. 
So you can use Pixelmator Pro as a substitute for the editing tool inside of Photos. Of course Pixelmator Pro has a ton of more things that you can do. But if you had originally opened a file and then you made some changes, added some layers, and you go to Save it is going to Save it out as a PXD or Pixelmator Pro Document. This will save all of the layers and adjustments that you made. If you now want this as a regular image that you can Share or Upload somewhere you can go to Export here and then you can export in various different formats, you can choose the quality for say JPEGs and you can choose original size or scale it down and then Export it with a different name and Save it out. Now you can see I've got the original file here, the Pixelmator Pro Document, and the new JPEG export. If I want to go back and edit it more I can open up the Pixelmator Pro Document and you can see the layers and settings are all there. 
Of course there is a ton more that you can do in Pixelmator Pro. This is just to get you started. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Learn Pixelmator Pro Basics In 5 Minutes”

Sheldon

1 month ago

Thanks bunches

Drew

Great fast and easy to follow 5 minute tutorial. I hope you come out with more Pixelmator Pro tutorials. Thank you Gary.

Any idea what the future holds for those of us who bought Pixelmator Pro a year or two ago now that Apple owns it. Will we be able to get the usual minor updates or be credited as program owner for a discount on the next major update?

Gary Rosenzweig

BW: Your guess is as good as mine. I'm thinking it will stick around as-is and get more updates with more integration. Maybe it will just become free. Maybe it will still cost something (like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and a few other Apple-acquired things). Apple hasn't really charged for updates for things like that recently. You buy the app once and you keep it. I paid $300 for Final Cut Pro 14 years ago and not a penny since.

Ron Hunter

Thank you for this great video! I had no idea Pixelmator Pro was so powerful. Seems much simpler to use than Photoshop. Now that I have an Apple alternative to Photoshop, can you suggest an alternative to Lightroom?

Ron: The Photos app. It is already on you Mac.