Apple buys star app developer, Pixelmator

This is quite a thing. Apple has reached a deal to acquire Pixelmator, publisher of powerful and popular photo and image editing apps  Pixelmator Pro and Photomator.

Now at Apple

I imagine most readers will have used Pixelmator. Available across Apple’s hardware ecosystem (Mac, iPad, iPhone) its products provide powerful and easy-to-use alternatives to Adobe’s more expensive tools.

Announcing the deal, Pixelmator said its team will be joining Apple and promises no material changes to its apps “at this time”. It does tell us to “stay tuned for more exciting updates in future.”

Get the picture

It seems plausible these professional tools will join Final Cut and Logic Pro in the Apple stable, where we can really anticipate improvements in its machine learning tools for image optimization. First introduced on iPads, ML Super Resolution is now available across Apple’s devices – and lends itself well to Apple’s overall work in machine vision intelligence.

It is interesting that Apple chose not to include any Pixelmator performance benchmarks within the data published in support of its mst recent Mac releases – the company often uses this information when marketing new Macs. When it launched the M2 Mac mini it boasted, “Up to 22x faster machine learning (ML) image upscaling performance in Pixelmator Pro,” for example.

“We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance,” the Pixelmator team said.

“And looking back, it’s crazy what a small group of dedicated people have been able to achieve over the years from all the way in Vilnius, Lithuania. Now, we’ll have the ability to reach an even wider audience and make an even bigger impact on the lives of creative people around the world.”

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