Apple is buying popular photo editing app Pixelmator – and Photos could soon get a huge upgrade
- Apple just acquired the popular photo editing app Pixelmator
- There will be no changes to the Pixelmator app “at this time.”
- The move could be a big boost for photo editing on iPhones and Macs
Apple just bought the popular photo editing app Pixelmator – and that could be big news for photo editing on iPhones, iPads and Macs.
The news was surprisingly shared by Pixelmator blog poststating that it has “signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval.” That approval will likely be a formality, as Pixelmator is far from the biggest fish in the image editing pool.
If you’re a Pixelmator fan, you don’t have to worry about any major changes for now; the app maker says there will be “no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time.”
However, it added: “Stay tuned as exciting updates are coming” and it’s hard not to look ahead to what Apple could do with the apps. The obvious parallel is Dark Sky, a relatively small startup that Apple acquired in early 2020, before folding it into its own Weather app.
It seems very likely that Apple will do the same with Pixelmator’s technology and the Photos app, which exists similarly on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. And that would be big news for photo editing on those platforms…
The new aperture?
Apple once created a professional image editor and organizer called Aperture for the Mac, which existed between 2005 and 2015, when it was discontinued. This acquisition of Pixelmator could fill that gap – and also give Apple fans a powerful native alternative to the likes of Photoshop.
On the iPhone, many photography fans prefer Pixelmator over Adobe’s apps. Ny Breaking contributor Paul Hatton recently wrote that the iOS app allowed him to say goodbye to Photoshop, in part because it was designed specifically for iOS and iPadOS (so it can take full advantage of Apple Silicon).
We also rate Pixelmator Pro highly in our guide to the best photo editing apps for Mac, calling it a “great all-rounder” and a better value than an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If Apple eventually integrates Pixelmator’s technology into the Photos app, it could become even more valuable — perhaps even free, for Apple fans.
The potential for that move has understandably made Pixelmator fans a little nervous. Apple won’t necessarily include Pixelmator in Photos, but it seems the most likely future scenario.
While Apple Intelligence now supports features like Clean Up to remove distractions from photos, the acquisition of Pixelmator suggests that Apple still thinks it’s behind Google’s Magic Editor and Adobe when it comes to editing and organizing native AI images.
That’s certainly the case when you look at Ny Breaking’s Phone of the Year, the Google Pixel 9 Pro, but we could see Apple catching up soon