Tag: photo

Is there an alternative to Photoshop on the Mac?

Is there an affordable alternative to Photoshop for macOS? Something with deeper features than Photos, like layering.

I like and admire Pixelmator a lot, but its interface is way different from Photoshop, and with all the time I’ve spent mucking about with it, I haven’t gotten as fluid as I am in PS.

The closest I’ve gotten is Acorn. It’s like Photoshop 6, which appeals to my nostalgia, but even better to my desire for elegant software to stay that way. I always get what I need, in and out, in minutes, without thinking about how-to.

That said, if you need to get truly jiggy wid it, Affinity Photo is a go-to for pros.

GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is worth mentioning, because free. But I haven’t used it in forever; whenever I have tried it, I run into the usual non-Mac-like behavior of ported open-source packages.

 

Annotate images on the Mac

In the announcement of Yosemite, Apple touted the new Markup feature in Mail. Users of Apple’s email app can now annotate images right in the New Message window. Nifty, but (wanh wanh) I don’t use Mail.

Preview can handle all kinds of image manipulation and annotation, but Preview is not by nature a tool for creation.

Poking around System Preferences, I found this section of the new Extensions pane:

What’s that about? Turns out that’s how Apple Mail gets its new Markup feature, wherein you can annotate and draw on a picture right in New Message window. And other apps, such as Pixelmator, can tack features onto other apps. This is the same thing Apple did for iOS, letting you edit an image in Photos, using tools provided by third-party apps.

On the Mac, that means that apps have a way to add functionality to other apps, without resorting to hacks. So, for example, I can put a photo in TextEdit…

…and cilck this little arrow that now appears at the corner…

Click Markup to get a window like this…

Wherein I can annotate the image with text, circles, arrows, what have you; and also in some surprising ways, including adding a loupe effect…

That has a lot of potential, and very easy to access. I don’t know why we don’t see more apps adding these extensions. Currently, the only additional one I have is a Repair Tool by Pixelmator…

…which I can use to make things disappear…

(Not the most artful job, but you get the picture, as it were.)

This is all in TextEdit, the modest word processor that comes with every Mac. Since I don’t use the Apple Mail program, I just tried pasting this entire article into Gmail, in a web browser, and it worked!