Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello chums. Whenever I currently do any image editing I load up Parallels and use Paint Shop Pro. Although it's become bloated down the years it's quite cheap and works really well for what I need (generally doing basic image manipulation so stuff ends up looking good in Final Cut).

But the whole Parallels thing is a pain. Is there a good Mac paint package that isn't bloody Photoshop or the appallingly bad GIMP. I am prepared to pay cash money for the right package.

Cheers.

What sort of things do you do with your images?

And why not Photoshop? Very few could argue that it's not top of its game, and it runs fine on a Mac.

Photoshop is expensive bloatware that I don't need. I admit it does everything very well but it is a total resource hog that would be running on a machine that already has total resource hogs on it (Final Cut, Motion, etc). OK on the tower that isn't so much of a problem but on the laptop it is. I quite often need to edit images with Final Cut and Motion open. Even running Parallels at the same time is probably a picnic compared to Photoshop and it's grab everything and more approach.

But I simply don't need the features. All I need to do is tidy up logos or stuff sent by clients, resize things, annotate diagrams and sometimes create matte shots that I can key stuff into. No retouching, nothing fancy. Exactly the kind of thing Paint Shop Pro does splendidly.

Designy-mac-friend suggests Pixelmater for ~£50.

And, of course, there's Aviary, if you are always online: http://aviary.com/tools

Cheers. Looks sweet. Downloading the trial now. Price looks good as well so I won't be moaning if I have to buy 2 licences.

I've no experience but have heard good things about Pixelmator.

We should set up a rival to Experts Exchange where all the answers are either 'dunno' or just completely wrong advice.

Or just Kalmar screaming "STEP AWAY FROM THE WIRING!!!"

...

Too easy.

Am having a play. Looks good.

Aha! Useful. I've always bemoaned the lack of a decent and free paint package on the Mac. For the PC I always used something which came with a Canon scanner, which was surprisingly good.

Photoshop is just a pain in the neck if you want to do something quickly


I want ImageFX.

LOL

I like this new Chinny. Very relaxed and joiny-inny.

I suspect it's all that 'new house with a gorgeous view' stuff.

Either that or he's discovered the "ignore user" function

Maybe. Hi Chinny!

There's always that Photoshop Lame Version(TM) as well, which is considerably less bloaty.