What you need to know
- There's a new version of Pixelmator Pro.
- Version 2.1.3 brings with it a massive upgrade to PSD support and performance.
- It includes optimization for Apple pro apps like Final Cut Pro and Motion.
A brand new version of Pixelmator Pro brings with it a huge update to PSD performance for photo editing on all of Apple's best Macs.
Version 2.1.3 brings "huge improvements to PSD support", that's the bit of the app that handles PSD files including reading, opening, and writing:
First of all, what's the PSD engine? It's what we call the part of the app that handles reading, opening, and writing PSD files – in a nutshell, everything to do with PSDs. And we've completely rewritten it to be faster, safer (crash-free!), and much more advanced.This was a really big project and took us almost a year to complete. A cool note is that for the reading and writing part of this project, we used the Rust programming language. Also, we dived really deep into the PSD format itself and have a much better understanding of it, with some fantastic internal documentation and a great foundation for even more improvements in the future.
Pixelmator Pro now supports PSD shapes as vector shapes, no longer opening them as image layers. Other improvements include support for PSB files, layered TIFF files, and more, as well as optimization for taking PSDs from Apple's Pro apps like Final Cut Pro and Motion.
Pixelmator was updated last year for support with Apple silicon, bringing immense performance upgrades when used with devices like the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 and MacBook Air with M1. You can see everything that's new in the latest release here.
