A month down the line, there’s increasing excitement about Apple buying Pixelmator, the company behind a suite of image manipulation apps which appear to bring new functionality and convenience, especially to Apple users.

Online in 9to5mac, Michael Burkhardt waxes lyrical about what Pixelmator brings to the iPad where, he says, software “always fell short” of the tablet’s hardware. In Petapixel, Jeremy Gray found thanksgiving was a time to be grateful for Pixelmator Pro’s AI-powered ‘Smart Deband’ feature.

And nearer to home, Wideformat Online’s Andy McCourt is enthusiastic about the strategic implications of Apple further investing in creative tools, potentially challenging Adobe’s dominance in that market. Universal, it seems, is distaste for Adobe’s subscription payment model, one of the reasons why attention earlier turned to Affinity’s layout and image suite.

I can still (just) remember the excitement that came with Photoshop, and the Mac itself, for that matter. After seeing the Mac and PageMaker at a UK trade show (in the same Brighton hotel that had its front blown out), I recall borrowing one from a UK dealer over a weekend, and showing it to a band of bolshie but wide-eyed comps before handing it back… but that’s another story.

The Photoshop excitement came when I’d reached Australia, and with the realisation that image manipulation then required way more processing capacity than you thought you could need or afford. So to show it off, I heaped Ayers Rock – as Uluru was called then – onto a removable hard disk and hiked it around to a neighbourhood prepress trade house (two things we don’t have any more) for them to weave their magic. The resulting magazine cover was a sensation.

Of course, I had to “try that at home” on the pizza-box Mac LC of the day, and found even that was possible… with patience, and several coffees!

Now, of course, sensations that leave those for dead are possible at a stroke, in the sliver of tech in your back pocket!

There’s always been a relationship between the Lithuanian software house behind Pixelmator, and the technologies that make Apple stand out. McCourt mentions Metal and Core ML, supporting AI-driven features such as automated background removal and intelligent image adjustments.

Increasingly, we’ve become used to Mac (and iPad) software – behind the scenes – that “just works”. But what happens “under the hood” will drive what Apple makes of its new acquisition.

Peter Coleman