After 10 years, Apple finally, once again has a photo editing app worthy of its role as an editor’s weapon of choice. Don’t bring up the Photos app. Not in this house, under my roof.
Apple reports that as of February 11, 2025, Pixelmator—and just as importantly, its team—is officially part of the Apple Empire, which seems now to slot somewhere between British Petroleum and the British Empire in terms of wealth and influence.
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Apple announced the purchase on November 1, 2024, but it had to clear regulatory approval to complete the acquisition. Just look at that, a part of the government that’s still functioning, and so deep into 2025, too. Let’s put an iPhone on the American flag. You earned it, America.
a match made in heaven
It’s been quite a while since Apple had an in-house photo editor and not just a few paltry editing tools in their Photos app. Apple Aperture was discontinued in 2015, and since then it’s been up to image editors to find a third-party app to use on macOS if they wanted more control than Photos offers.
Pixelmator was already an Apple-exclusive set of products that competed primarily against Adobe’s lineup of image-editing software, such as Photoshop. The team’s incorporation into Apple seemed natural for a company that seems to take its popularity among video and photo editors seriously.
And for Pixelmator, well, Apple is looooaded. The Pixelmator folks released this statement back when the purchase was made: “We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance.
“And looking back, it’s crazy what a small group of dedicated people have been able to achieve over the years from all the way in Vilnius, Lithuania. Now, we’ll have the ability to reach an even wider audience and make an even bigger impact on the lives of creative people around the world.”
As of now, Apple hasn’t made any changes to its product under the first day of Apple rule. The authors of the apps for iOS, iPadOS, and the Vision Pro are still credited as “Pixelmator Team,” which I’m taking as a good sign that Apple won’t mess with Pixelmator’s success, at least not immediately. Good on them for retaining the very people who made the app worth buying in the first place.
