Update: Pixelmator Photo is now available for iPad. Original story follows.

The team behind Pixelmator, the popular photo editing app designed for Mac and iOS, today announced the upcoming launch of a new app, Pixelmator Photo.

Pixelmator Photo is an app designed to allow photographers to edit images on the iPad with a collection of nondestructive color adjustment tools that match those available through the Pixelmator desktop app. Pixelmator Photo was designed specifically for the ‌iPad‌ and takes advantage of Apple's latest iOS technologies.


It features AI-based auto enhancing tools, RAW support, a repair tool for removing unwanted objects from photos, and preset filters inspired by analog film.

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There are tools for adjusting brightness, exposure, hue, saturation, vibrance, shadows, and highlights, and there are standard features you'd expect to find in any photo editing app like levels and curves, plus options for selectively adjusting colors, fixing white balance, cropping, and more.

The ML Enhance tool powered by machine learning automatically enhances and crops photographs using a Core-ML powered algorithm that the Pixelmator team trained with 20 million professional photos. It fixes white balance, exposure, and individual color range in each image, while also cropping photos to the ideal composition.

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Pixelmator has always had a powerful repair tool, which has been brought to Pixelmator Photo. It can be used to remove blemishes or cut out whole objects accurately from photos while preserving the background.

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The app offers a collection of presets inspired by different photography styles, including black and white, cinematic to emulate the orange and teal film look, classic films based on classic film looks, and modern films for a more modern style. There are also presets for landscape shots, urban shots, and night shots, plus users can save their own custom presets.

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Pixelmator Photo can be pre-ordered for $3.99, a $1 discount off of the $4.99 launch price. The deal will end when the app becomes available on April 9. [Direct Link]

Top Rated Comments

GoAndrius Avatar
74 months ago
Probably the simplest and most obvious way to put it is: Pixelmator is a layer-based image editor. Kinda like Photoshop. Pixelmator Photo is photo editor with a focus on RAW editing specifically. Kinda like Lightroom. Obviously not the most marketing-y description but probably the kind of description most people will immediately understand. :D

As for the device cut-off — there isn't a way to differentiate between, for example, the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2, so in order to make sure that everybody who gets the app has a great user experience, we've had to set the cut-off point a little later than we maybe would've liked to. Compatible devices are listed on the App Store page ('https://itunes.apple.com/app/pixelmator-photo/id1444636541') and our Pixelmator Photo page ('https://www.pixelmator.com/photo/').
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Amazing Iceman Avatar
74 months ago
Is this app really needed if you already have Pixelmator and Affinity Photo?
What are the advantages?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nicho Avatar
74 months ago
Just out of interest, what was it you didn't like about the transition from the original Pixelmator to Pixelmator Pro? Bearing in mind the facts that, for App Store apps, there isn't a way of providing upgrade discounts...
I don’t know how you did the transition so I’m taking this comment without any context but there absolutely is a way of providing an upgrade discount for people who own app A1 and want to buy app A2. You put them in a bundle at a reduced price of A1 price + upgrade price. Complete my bundle does the rest by removing the price they paid in the first place from the amount to pay for the bundle.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ipedro Avatar
74 months ago
This gets very close to providing a successor to Aperture but on iPad. What’s still missing is a photo management system. A professional photographer needs to be able to keep their hundreds, even thousands of photos per shoot, separate from their personal photos. If Apple were to update the Photos app with multiple libraries, along with this app as an external editor, I can confidently say that I’d drop Lightroom.

In the meantime, I’ll buy this app even though I can’t use it professionally because I want to support the developer. I want to invest in the future of this company. I love how the Pixelmator team sticks so closely to Apple UI standards, so much that their apps look like they were designed by Apple themselves, — essentially what a native advanced photo editing app would look like if Apple were to make one.

I would not be at all opposed to Apple acquiring this company if they kept the team intact and let them do their thing.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GoAndrius Avatar
74 months ago
What about the new iPad Mini 5? That should have enough horsepower for the app.
iPad mini 5 is supported, strange that it's not appearing on the list... We'll have to double-check this. As far as I know, it's possible to buy the app (or at least test via TestFlight) on the 5th generation mini and 3rd gen Air.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
now i see it Avatar
74 months ago
....$3.99

And photoshop back in the day before creative cloud cost $699.00 retail for the DVD.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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