I love seeing smaller companies take on Adobe, but branding this as a replacement for Photoshop is a mistake.
Photoshop is such a large and complex beast that nothing small and focused could ever replace it. That's Photoshop's true strength. It manages to be the industry standard across a whole slew of slightly different industries.
Nobody uses the whole thing. Few people use even half of Photoshop's features. Competing against it on a specific feature may be possible, and that's precisely what this app does.
But even matching what Photoshop does for one segment of users won't be enough. To beat Photoshop, you have o be 10x better at that one feature---otherwise users will stick with the industry standard.
I bought SnapHeal a few weeks back, but is nothing like an inexpensive photoshop alternative. Photoshop is extremely powerful, snapheal feels extremely underpowered.
In fact I used snapheal in a few photos, with such terrible results that I deleted the app. My experience certainly didn't match the results that the app screenshots showed, even after spending hours trying to do so.
It recently got a big update, and now happily runs without X11. So it's better than it's ever been. If you've used Gimp on other platforms, I'd recommend it, but if you're just starting out I'd recommend something else.
Better (though paid) alternatives for OS X are Acorn and Pixelmator. Pixelmator is a more traditional Photoshop-like UI, while Acorn (in my opinion) is nicer, with a one-panel design that gets out of your way, while still having a host of powerful tools and scripting support (with a choice of languages: AppleScript, Python or JavaScript/JSTalk).
I can't stand pixelmator. And the last few releases have done nothing to improve it. Thanks for reminding me about the big Gimp release - I can't wait to switch it in!
I recently moved from Windows to Mac and this was one of my top 5 problems - not having a decent image editor. I used Paint.NET while on Windows for the occasional "magic wand" work but on Mac every app was either too limited to use or . I've tried GIMP (pre-2.8) but its "multiple windows" and crooked X11 was a huge turn-off. With all that being said, the new GIMP (which is in a single window) was a huge surprise. Since I installed it, I haven't looked back at my old Windows desktop machine.
They each have their limitations. For instance, I can't use Gimp for importing my existing Gb of layered psd files - it flattens them into a bitmap. Gimp's support of other file formats seems to be limited to importing them without any of the metadata.
I think every alternative is going to have its limitations, especially when dealing with alien file formats, but I think they are closer to an inexpensive alternative then the original submission.
But Gimps whole point is to wean you from another tool. So 'alien file formats' should be a priority, I would think. Anyway that's what I expected when I tried it, so its failure to support pretty much anything was surprising.
Paint.NET is the only relatively feature-complete tool I've used that is remotely on par with Photoshop. I actually prefer it to Photoshop in some ways because the UI is more intuitive.
The GIMP is good, but it's less stable than I would like in my experience.
"Mashable does not condone altering images to sensationalize news stories."
Which is why in opposite world they don't start every article with a giant picture they found somewhere on Flickr that is usually barely related, like this one.
"If you already own and are comfortable using Photoshop, you have no use for Snapheal, which is in no way a replacement for professional editing software."
An odd way to end an article that claims it is exactly that.
Pixelmator is going to be your best bet for a Photoshop alternative on a Mac. It's far faster, more beautiful and all-around pleasant to use, not to mention the original was built by just two brothers and I like supporting smaller teams that actually use their products (something I wonder if a lot of Photoshop developers do given the issues that are consistently not addressed with each release).
It imports PSDs, but last I tried, it had trouble with layer styles.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 41.5 ms ] threadPhotoshop is such a large and complex beast that nothing small and focused could ever replace it. That's Photoshop's true strength. It manages to be the industry standard across a whole slew of slightly different industries.
Nobody uses the whole thing. Few people use even half of Photoshop's features. Competing against it on a specific feature may be possible, and that's precisely what this app does.
But even matching what Photoshop does for one segment of users won't be enough. To beat Photoshop, you have o be 10x better at that one feature---otherwise users will stick with the industry standard.
Better (though paid) alternatives for OS X are Acorn and Pixelmator. Pixelmator is a more traditional Photoshop-like UI, while Acorn (in my opinion) is nicer, with a one-panel design that gets out of your way, while still having a host of powerful tools and scripting support (with a choice of languages: AppleScript, Python or JavaScript/JSTalk).
This one looks like a tool to easily do a very limited set of tasks.
The GIMP is good, but it's less stable than I would like in my experience.
Which is why in opposite world they don't start every article with a giant picture they found somewhere on Flickr that is usually barely related, like this one.
"If you already own and are comfortable using Photoshop, you have no use for Snapheal, which is in no way a replacement for professional editing software."
An odd way to end an article that claims it is exactly that.
It's hard to take Mashable seriously.
It imports PSDs, but last I tried, it had trouble with layer styles.