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trip221 · Jan 14, 2008, 06:54 PM

I'm relatively new to Macs, so please bear with me. iPhoto is great for adjusting the levels, etc, of pictures and organizing everything, but when I had Photoshop Elements on my PC, I was able to add objects from one picture to another, take people out, remove blemishes from people's faces (with the nice "easy fix" tool thing).

What do you guys recommend for that type of stuff on the Mac? Full Photoshop is too difficult and too expensive. Photoshop Elements 6.0 will be out in March. Acorn's price looks nice, but makes me think it doesn't have enough features. Pixelmator's website looks really nice and the program looks slick. Of course, any program that makes these things easier is best. And I don't need professional photographer results, but decently high quality for normal use.

Thanks!

forumhound · 10:09 AM

Im a photoshop freak, so i would be biased there, but if budget is a concern, have u tried Gimp? It's free...

Richard Richard · Jan 20, 2008, 07:34 AM

pixelmator is utter garbage , i wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy

most awful interface i've ever seen , buggy , crashes all the time too , i got a refund after a week of having to 'endure' this pile of dross

photoshop elements 6 is out mid -march - i can't wait !!!

wataru · Jan 20, 2008, 07:46 AM

My needs are fairly simple, so I mostly use Gimp. It's free. Give it a shot.

OreoCookie · Jan 20, 2008, 08:07 AM

Pixelmator has a great UI IMO, but it isn't ready for prime time yet. It's very crash-prone due to some memory leaks in Core Image.

I'd wait for Photoshop Elements 6 -- which is what I'm getting as soon as it's released.

lpkmckenna · Jan 20, 2008, 06:14 PM

Seashore

cgc · Jan 21, 2008, 06:17 PM

Pixelmator (which I got as part of MacHeist) is a nice program but it's missing too many features and is slow even on my MacPro with 3GB memory. Can't even clone an area without a beachball... Wait for Photoshop Elements 6 due out soon

0157988944 · Jan 21, 2008, 08:47 PM

Pse6!!

Veltliner · Jan 22, 2008, 04:08 PM

If you want to do composites from elements from different images, your only lower priced option is PS Elements.

If you want primarily to edit images, retouch blemishes, adjust color, etc... then Lightroom, which is also great in organizing, is the better choice. It's a much more powerful and modern software, all edits being non-destructive when working from RAW files.

I have both Photoshop, the full edition, and Lightroom. I started out with Lightroom, and never even considered to buy "Elements".

Check if Photoshop Elements has Adobe Camera Raw. If that's the case, you can do non-destructive edits like in Lightroom, AND the composites. If you don't need the great database and workflow tools of Lightroom, that might be the best choice for you.

add-on: of course you can buy both. Lightroom works well with both PS and PS Elements.

cbk1994 · Jan 22, 2008, 07:32 PM

Adobe Fireworks CS3. Been using it forever. Might be overkill for what you want. I'd recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements if you aren't interested in Fireworks. I've gotten like 8 copies from different things (tablets, printers, scanners, cameras, etc)

Macanoid · Jan 23, 2008, 05:35 AM

be sure to also keep an eye on iris - not ready yet, but looks promising. to me it feel like a mix of aperture and photoshop (gui-wise that is).

Richard Richard · Jan 23, 2008, 07:06 AM

pixelmator is truly hopeless , i tried using it today and found the drawing / painting package in appleworks more useful

roll on pE6 !!!

Macanoid · Jan 23, 2008, 07:22 AM

with regards to pixelmator, i think it's hardly fair to judge it against something as powerful as photoshop. I have bought pixelmator, even though I use photoshop most of the time. thing is, sometimes you need to do day-to-day common stuff such as rotating, colour modifying, cropping etc, for that I often use pixelmator, as it bloody fast. it's not as powerful as photoshop, of course, but it's not useless either.

pixelmator is not for designers, at least, not yet (who's knows what they may come up with), but for a lot of people photoshop is overkill, and that's where pixelmator comes in. don't forget, people who visit these boards usually have better computer/design skills than most, whereas the average computer user has not. photoshop is for the first group, pixelmator for the latter, and for proper design stuff photoshop is still king of course.

OreoCookie · Jan 23, 2008, 07:46 AM

Photoshop is an app with many, many man years of development time invested into it, Pixelmator is brand new. The developers themselves call the next version their `teenager version' -- which is quite realistic. I can see that it will be a great app in a few years, that's why I bought a license.

It works well for very simple stuff, meh for stuff with a few layers, but it's not usable for anything beyond that (in particular because of memory leaks).

Cadaver · Jan 26, 2008, 01:29 AM

Yeah, I don't think Pixelmator is that bad, either. Its not Photoshop, but I don't think its supposed to be (not yet, anyway). For basic stuff, its pretty good, and 50% less expensive than Photoshop Elements. And of course, its available now (unlike PSE 6).

Personally, I'm not all that eager to send my money to Adobe these days if I can avoid it. They treat Mac users like second-class citizens and continue to offer up applications that have bugs or incompatibilities with current OS versions (come on, don't they get developer releases? Don't they have enough programmers to put a guy or two on fixing bugs while everyone else is hard at work on the new versions?).

cgc · Jan 29, 2008, 09:59 PM

The latest update to Pixelmator fixed a few of the speed issues with using the tools (e.g. cloning doesn't beachball for minutes on end with my MacPro and 3GB memory). Actually useable.

bluedoggiant · Apr 22, 2008, 01:56 AM

well macrumors.com guy, but decided to sign up just to pinch in on this thread.

I have used the latest of pixelmator and pse6 side by side on my 2.8 imac.

pixel mator is out of this world crazy fast, i mean, FAST, and there are no bugs for me, and it is fully functional, IMO, pse6 is also good and functional, but a tad slower load time. Both have a wonderful UI, pixel mators isnt distracting, and the pse6 grey interface, well from close up, nothing much has changed, basically just a dark grey tint for the biggest.

I am in the process of choosing between pixelmator and pse6, anyone who has been using both regularly tell me what they think?

and do u think i should spend the extra $$$ on pse6 when pixelmator basically does everything i am trying to think of in an easy package, i mean adding filters and stuff, its just awesome. and easy to use, but pse6 costs more, more features, but a harder

any ideas, i know thread back from the dead

Richard Richard · Apr 22, 2008, 09:29 AM

i'm using pe6 and it's a bit of a cludge tbh

no support for opening gifs ! ( a bug apparently )

the save dialog box is the same as pe2 ( you'd think they'd update it to the grey look of the rest of the program ) and it crashes a lot - moving layers - and it crashes ! wtf ?

i wish i'd stuck with tiger then i could be on the rock solid pe2

ghporter · Apr 22, 2008, 09:39 AM

The thing that's kept me from playing with Gimp is having to mess with X11 first. I'm probably just being a fraidy cat about it, but the whole X11 setup thing worries me. Seashore, being a Gimp derivative, looks like it needs X11 as well... Is this really an issue?

0157988944 · Apr 22, 2008, 10:16 AM

Seashore doesn't need GIMP. On the flipside, it completely utterly downright SUCKS. It's like Microsoft Paint with a slightly better look.

X11 isn't a pain at all. I don't like it just because its really un-Mac, but thats me. Its really easy and seems bug free.

ghporter · Apr 22, 2008, 10:38 AM

Thanks, Adam. Given a little bit of time, I'll check out Gimp.

NeXTLoop · Apr 22, 2008, 11:31 AM

Don't forget that they're working on a version of Gimp that doesn't require X11 anymore.

bluedoggiant · Apr 22, 2008, 12:58 PM

Discussion on the PSE6 vs pixelmator??

wataru · Apr 23, 2008, 08:25 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

The thing that's kept me from playing with Gimp is having to mess with X11 first. I'm probably just being a fraidy cat about it, but the whole X11 setup thing worries me. Seashore, being a Gimp derivative, looks like it needs X11 as well... Is this really an issue?

X11 on Leopard has problems out-of-the-box, but you can solve all of them by simply upgrading to 10.5.2 (or re-applying the 10.5.2 update if you're installing X11 from the 10.5.0 CD). See here.

Once it's working, the fact that it's X11 is not a problem at all. You can still open files by double-clicking, drag-and-dropping, etc. If using ctrl for key combos bugs you, you can customize X11 to use the command key. Also see the link above about enabling click-through so you don't have annoyances switching window focus.