Apple to acquire popular photo editing app Pixelmator

Pixelmator Pro features could easily be integrated into Apple Intelligence in the future

• 📷 Apple is buying Pixelmator, a popular photo editing software suite 

• 📱 Pixelmator: “No material changes” coming to its Mac and iOS apps at this time

• ✏️ The company’s software competes with Adobe editing tools

• 💰 It offers professional-grade photo editing & retouching tools for a one-time fee

• ⚖️ The acquisition still has to be approved by regulators

Apple wants to have a hand in tweaking your photos to perfection and plans to buy Pixelmator, according to a statement by the photo-editing app maker. The company, which started in 2007, has long competed in the somewhat crowded field of photo editing tools against Adobe’s more well-known software tools. One of the most significant differences is that as Adobe has been pushing Creative Cloud users to a subscription model for a while now, Pixelmator’s tools are still available as a one-time purchase (Pixelmator Pro is $49.99 on the Mac App store).

Pixelmator makes both a photo editing app, Photomator, and a broader image editing tool that can also be used to create graphic designs called Pixelmator Pro. Apple had its own professional-grade photo editing tool called Aperture for macOS, along with the much more basic iPhoto app, for several years before ending support for both in 2014. Apple redesigned its Photos app for macOS and iOS, and avoided launching a dedicated graphic design tool. 

For the past decade, Apple has been content to update the Photos app with more general photo editing features. It’s still a far cry from being a professional-level photo editing tool. That may be about to change with this acquisition.

What will Apple do with Pixelmator?

Honestly, there are a few different ways this could go. First, Apple could just slowly integrate Pixelmator’s features into the Photos app and eventually kill off Pixelmator altogether - something it did with the popular weather app Dark Sky in 2022. 

Second, Apple could bring back Aperture, or some version of it, as a standalone professional photo editing app with most (or all) of Pixelmator’s features included. They already offer professional video and audio editing apps (Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X, respectively), so this isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. 

Third, and the most likely option, is that many of Pixelmator’s features (Photomator specifically) will start to show up in Apple Intelligence as some new “magical” or “revolutionary” AI-powered editing tools. If the iPhone 16 Pro launch showed us anything, it’s that Apple is also betting a whole lot on the future of AI in its devices.

Of course, the Pixelmator acquisition talks were likely happening before the iPhone 16 launch, but Apple’s been working on Apple Intelligence for a few years now. It’s quite possible at least some of Pixelmator’s features will end up powering AI-driven photo generation and editing tools to compete with such offerings from Google, Adobe, Meta and OpenAI (DALL·E 3, Adobe Firefly, etc.) That’s assuming Apple’s Pixelmator acquisition passes muster with government regulators.