Best Photoshop Alternatives – Pixelmator Pro 

For years, Photoshop has faced competition from various alternatives, but few have matched its power and legacy. However, with the emergence of proprietary creative tools like the Affinity suite, some rivals are coming dangerously close to surpassing Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro, in particular, stands out with its innovative features, reputable development team, and seamless AI integration, offering a serious challenge to Photoshop’s dominance. Lets know More About Best Photoshop Alternatives – Pixelmator Pro 

Price Of Pixelmator Pro

Adobe offers variable pricing based on your needs, whether you subscribe to a single app, a smaller plan, the full Creative Cloud All Apps plan, or qualify for discounts as a student, professional, or business. Adobe Photoshop’s pricing structure reflects these factors.

For professionals without discounts, a standalone Photoshop subscription costs $23 per month. Alternatively, the Photography Plan, which includes both Photoshop and Lightroom for comprehensive photo editing, is priced at approximately $20 per month—making it a better value for those needing both tools. Photoshop is also part of the All Apps plan, available for $59 per month. All Adobe plans require an annual contract, and a 7-day free trial is available for new users.

Pixelmator Pro takes a different approach, offering a one-time purchase model instead of subscriptions. The desktop app costs $50, while the mobile version is available for $10, both offering excellent value without recurring fees. Like Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro provides a 7-day free trial, allowing users to test the software before committing.

Interface and navigation

Photoshop’s interface has become iconic, setting the standard for creative software and often being imitated by many open-source alternatives. While it has seen some updates over the years, its overall design and navigation have remained largely consistent.

The interface is user-friendly, familiar, and highly customizable to suit individual preferences. Recent additions, like AI-powered tools, have introduced minor inconveniences, such as the Contextual Task Bar pop-ups. However, Photoshop continues to offer a functional and polished user experience.

Pixelmator Pro, on the other hand, stands out with its Mac-centric development, giving it the feel of a native Apple application. Its sleek and minimalist interface contrasts with Photoshop’s layout, with flipped default navigation. Despite this difference, Pixelmator Pro remains intuitive and easy to use.

Pixelmator Pro’s macOS-focused development gives it a familiar interface and UX/UI design, resembling other native Apple applications. While new users may face a slight learning curve, the software is intuitive and easy to pick up, making the transition smooth for most.

Features and tools

Photoshop is a raster graphics editing software widely recognized for image manipulation and photo editing. Since its inception in 1987, it has evolved into the world’s leading graphic design tool, setting industry standards and inspiring other developers in the creative software space.

While Photoshop excels in photo editing, it is often paired with Lightroom for optimal results. It provides powerful tools such as cropping, layers and blend modes, smudge, selection, erase, and adjustment layers for fine-tuning color, lighting, threshold, and more.

Pixelmator Pro, on the other hand, offers a broader range of creative features. Though it focuses on raster image editing, it also includes vector illustration, editing tools, and digital painting capabilities. Its AI tools are seamlessly integrated, enhancing workflows without disrupting the use of non-AI tools.

Unlike Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro allows direct editing of RAW images without requiring additional plugins like Camera Raw. It also comes with built-in LUT tools for advanced color grading and editing. Similar to Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro features a robust suite of AI and machine learning tools, enabling faster and more precise editing processes.

Compatibility with other software

Photoshop is highly compatible with other Adobe tools, enabling seamless integration of files between Photoshop and other software in the Adobe Creative Cloud ecosystem. This makes it a powerful tool for users working within Adobe’s suite. However, its compatibility with non-Adobe tools is more limited.

Photoshop’s proprietary file format, PSD, is widely supported by many creative applications, including Photoshop alternatives, making it easy to open and edit PSDs across various platforms. Additionally, Photoshop supports a broad range of file formats for importing, editing, and exporting. While it offers vector editing capabilities, it is not the ideal tool for creating or editing vector graphics compared to specialized software like Adobe Illustrator.

Pixelmator Pro, with its Apple-focused development, is exceptionally compatible with most native Apple apps and software. The integration feels natural and smooth within the Apple ecosystem. Following Apple’s acquisition of Pixelmator Pro in late 2024, even greater compatibility with Apple tools and apps is anticipated, solidifying its position as a go-to creative tool for macOS users.

Best Photoshop Alternatives – Pixelmator Pro  -AI features

Photoshop added many AI tools across 2023 and 2024; it’s expected to see even more throughout 2025 and beyond.

Its generative AI can be used to expand, remove, replace, or edit any image type. The AI selection features help make selecting complex areas a total breeze. The neural filters let you transform your images in ways that traditionally would take hours of painstaking skill.

Some of Photoshop’s AI tools seem gimmicky — like many AI features announced in creative software — but using Adobe Firefly’s technology, the quality is high for image generation, and the selection tools are incredibly accurate.

The AI tools in Pixelmator Pro are more integrated and less obvious than Photoshop. The background masking tool works incredibly accurately, even on complex areas like afro-textured hair. It doesn’t offer obvious generative AI features, but they may be to come.

Some of the ML features Pixelmator Pro offers are enhancement and resolution tools, color matching, denoise, quick selection tools, background removal, subject selection, and masking tools. These are all naturally found within the toolbox and don’t have specific AI or ML labels on the tools.

Pixelmator Pro has more promise than Photoshop’s future

Pixelmator Pro is a much newer software compared to Photoshop, and despite less time in development and being publicly available, Pixelmator Pro already has all the same features and power as Photoshop — except animation tools. Photoshop is an industry standard, but with Apple’s acquisition of Pixelmator Pro, Apple users choosing to stick with a native tool that offers similar, or better, features, power, and compatibility might overtake it.

 For More Updates Follow Us On Twitter & Facebook 

Read More Related To Best Photoshop Alternatives – Pixelmator Pro  –The Best Online Photo Editors Like Photoshop for 2025