Pixelmator has pushed a point update to the Mac App Store. Despite its minor bump in version number, the update brings a lot of helpful changes. The timing is ‘intriguing’, as it coincides with Adobe’s announcement of a new version of Photoshop Elements from this morning.
Pixelmator quotes a 2x performance improvement when saving documents, as a result of a move to a new file format. For instance, when saving to iCloud, Pixelmator can now push small deltas of what has changed between saves, rather than saving the entire image every time. This speed up is noticeable in use, with projects saving nearly instantaneously on a Retina Macbook Pro.
The company is also highlighting support for modern features such as autosave. The app now persists changes to disk as you edit. In the previous version, autosaves would take place much more infrequently, such as on application exit only.
In addition, Pixelmator 2.2.1 integrates with Quick Look, to let users preview Pixelmator documents as fast as any standard filetype in the Finder. The Effects browser has also been redesigned, with better organisation of third-party filters, new thumbnail previews and the addition of keyword search, to find effects much more quickly.
Pixelmator costs $15 on the Mac App Store.
