Auf dem Mac fehlt ein Grafikprogramm der Mittelklasse, das heisst in etwa GraphicConverter, aber mit einer zeitgemässen und ergonomischen Benutzeroberfläche. Das neue Mac-Grafikprogramm Pixelmator versprach und verspricht ein solches Programm zu sein:
Pixelmator, the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images.
Schaut man sich Pixelmator nicht bloss kurz an, zeigt sich leider rasch, dass Pixelmator zu jenen (meist kostenpflichtigen) Mac-Anwendungen zählt, die zwar das Auge des Benutzers erfreuen, in ihrer Funktionalität aber enttäuschen. Tonio Loewald schreibt in seinem englischsprachigen Blog über Pixelmator unter anderem:
Pixelmator is expensive enough ($59) that people will probably think twice before just paying for it. My guess is that it will sell a few licenses to people who are impressed by its sizzle and don’t notice that there’s no steak. As an image editor it is inferior to less hyped programs … and it has no really excellent core functionality which some target audience will find indispensable to fall back on. It doesn’t implement all the Core Image filters, its layer controls are merely adequate, and its painting tools are all flawed (e.g. the rubber stamp is very slow to undo, which is a very common operation when using the rubber stamp).
What I can’t tell you is whether if I’d never used any other bitmap editing program I would think Pixelmator was great. I can’t unplug chunks of my memory and look at Pixelmator with fresh eyes. But I can tell you this: MacPaint 1.0 had better selection tools.
