This post was originally entitled “A Month Without Adobe Creative Suite.” On February 24th, after rebuilding both of my computers with Apple’s latest pre-release operating system Lion, I decided not to install my copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5 Standard to see if I could get by without it. I planned to find replacements for all of the suite’s major applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. After several weeks of putting off my logo design and page layout work I failed to find any suitable alternatives for Illustrator or InDesign that could manipulate the native file formats I had already created using these applications. Moving to an “Adobe free” design solution would mean abandoning my legacy documents, and refusing compatibility with industry standard illustration and page layout applications. Towards the end of the month existing obligations forced me to reinstall Illustrator, and InDesign, but I continue to evaluate the Photoshop alternative I adopted during the last 30 days.

Since discovering Photoshop 4.0 in high school I have used some version of the program almost every day for the last 12 years. All of the dithered images that accompany each one of my Egg Freckles was cleaned up, resized, and colorized using Photoshop. (The Atkinson Dithering process was performed using HyperDither.) All of the images for my Dad‚Äôs website SebagoFurniture.com were masked, color corrected, padded, and resized using Photoshop. Every photo I have ever saved from my digital camera has visited Adobe’s Photoshop Camera RAW conversion utility. I can’t think of a single creative project I have worked on where Photoshop did not play a significant role, and I am sure that is true for the rest of the design community as well.

Since version 4.0 Adobe has added countless new features to keep up with the ever growing demands of an increasingly diversified set of Photoshop users. Layer styles, vector tools, healing brushes, non destructive editing, new masking techniques, and a large assortment of user interface improvements have kept Photoshop the dominant graphics editor it is today. CS5, the latest release, has even managed to perform the impossible by revealing pixels that were never there via Content Aware Fill, and 3D transformations.

It comes at no surprise that today’s Photoshop is much more complex than the version I was using ten years ago after hours in my High School’s computer lab. Adobe has done their best to minimize the bloat by only displaying the necessary tools with customizable workspaces, but an application that needs to customize its user interface to address individual tasks is often in trouble of catering its features to too many specific user groups. I choose Photoshop Standard edition because I don’t need the DICOM support or 3D rendering capabilities offered by the extended version, but how many other features am I paying Adobe for that I will never use? Why is Adobe so excited to offer a Windows version of Photoshop when as a licensed user I am only entitled to a single platform? I would rather pay for an application that is optimized for my workflow and engineered for my operating system, than support an overpriced corporate cash cow that can perform tasks I will never need on an operating system I will never use. Since a major Photoshop rewrite customized for my needs is not in the cards I took it upon myself to find an alternative graphics program that returns me to the simplicity of Photoshop 4.0 with the Mac OS X integration I deserve.

I first purchased Pixelmator in November of 2007, less than a month after it was initially released. I fell in love with its interface early on. Pixelmator is what Photoshop would look like if it was designed exclusively for Mac OS X. It’s interface is familiar enough that I was immediately able to get started manipulating images, but the 1.0 release lacked the features I needed to adopt Pixelmator as my full time image editor. Over three years and six free point upgrades later Pixelmator is ready to replace Photoshop for my day to day image editing needs. Finally the interface I love, combined with the OS integration I deserve, and the features I require.

User Interface

Pixelmator’s user interface is one of its best features. By taking a lesson from Adobe’s UI, design long time Photoshop users like myself know how to start using the program immediately. Most of the built-in keyboard commands are the same as well, and when all else fails a Help menu Spotlight search of Pixelmator’s menu commands points novice users like myself in the right direction.

File Compatibility

When you have an existing body of work compatibility is a big deal. I was only able to adopt Pixelmator as my Photoshop alternative because it is capable of importing my multi-layered Photoshop documents along with 100 other still image file formats. Pixelmator’s support of PSD files only includes the features Pixelmator is capable of. Photoshop files with layer styles, shapes, adjustment layers, and masks will first have to have those layers flattened before working with Pixelmator.

Image Import

Just like Photoshop, Pixelmator allows for importing images from digital cameras, scanners, and multifunction devices like the iPhone. In addition Pixelmator allows users to quickly access their Aperture or iPhoto Library projects, albums, smart albums, or folders using a photo browser that has the same RAW compatibility as Mac OS X.

Filters

Filters seem to do more good at marketing a program than editing an image, but Pixelmator has 130 of them including all the essentials like Gaussian Blur, Unsharp Mask, and Noise generation. The difference between Photoshop’s filters, and Pixelmator’s is that all of Pixelmator’s filters are powered by your Macs GPU freeing the CPU to process other tasks.

Color

Color is important to all images, even black and white photographs. Pixelmator has 16 powerful color correction tools Photoshop users will be familiar with like Levels, Curves, Replace Color, and Exposure. Pixelmator can also assign or match ColorSync profiles, or pick a color from anything on the screen using Apple’s Colors Palette or the Eye Dropper tool. I will still have to rely on Photoshop to do my CYMK conversions.

Masking

Fine-tuned masking is one of the things Pixelmator does not do as well as Photoshop, and for masking my Dad’s furniture I miss the ability to create press-ready vector paths. That being said Pixelmator does have a Refine Selection tool, Quick Mask mode, and I dare to say its Magic Wand’s tolerance is far easier to control than Photoshop’s.

Guides, Grids, and Rulers

The first versions of Pixelmator did not ship with a guides, grids, or rulers. All are essential tools drawing, dividing, and slicing up web images. I still miss the pixel grid from Photoshop CS5, but Pixelmator allows for grid subdivisions as small as every pixel which is just as good.

Slicing

Before slicing was added to Pixelmator in September of 2009 I used to crop, export, and undo my Pixelmator compositions over and over again until I saved all of the slices. With the slice tool I can not only preview what my slices will look like with different degrees of image compression, but do so from the main Pixelmator window while editing my image.

Web Export

Web export is one of those features lots of image editing applications say they do, but few actually do well. Exporting a slightly optimized JPEG, PNG, or GIF is not exporting an image for the web. Pixelmator does it right by allowing me to pick the number of colors in a indexed PNG or GIF right from the slice palette and see the results in real time.

Social Sharing

Sharing my images on popular social sites like Flickr, Picasa and Facebook is not an essential feature for any image editor, but Pixelmator does one better by allowing users to seamlessly export their images to any of these three services. Add Dribbble, and TwitPic support and Pixelmator might make social sharing an essential feature for the next version.

History States

Pixelmator may not have the non destructive capabilities of Photoshop, but it does have an almost unlimited set of undos. Combine that with the ability to save layer comps of various working milestones, and Pixelmator has a lot of history to go back on.

Pixelmator does not have all the features of Photoshop, but that is why I like it so much. Instead of performing tasks at a push of a button I am forced to think how I can combine the available tools with multiple layers to make my desired composition. I have returned to the creativity I once felt in my high school computer lab after the bell had rung and everyone else had gone home. I will still keep Photoshop around its vector tools, CYMK conversions, and heavy lifting, but Pixelmator will be my first app for image creation.