Pixelmator Pro gains custom aspect ratios, crop presets & other improvements

Pixelmator Pro, a machine learning-powered version of the popular Photoshop replacement for macOS featuring a single-window interface and pro-grade capabilities, has received some notable improvements in its most recent update.

Pixelmator Pro 1.0.6 brings custom aspect ratios and custom presets to the crop tool, as well as a bunch of other improvements and bug fixes that improve your workflow.

Not only can you define your own custom ratios for the crop tool, but save them as presets so they can be easily imported on another computer. You can now copy, cut, paste and duplicate the components inside shapes, hold down the Space bar to move selections while using the Rectangular and Elliptical selection tools and more.

The app’s Type and Color Selection tools have received a few notable enhancements of their own, while under-the-hood performance improvements make the selection tools faster.

Pixelmator Pro 1.0.6 changelog

Here’s everything new, improved and fixed in Pixelmator Pro 1.0.6:

New features

  • Use the Crop tool to crop with your own custom ratios
  • Create and save custom crop presets
  • The Type tool will now be highlighted when a text layer is selected
  • If no text is selected, clicking a text preset will now add a new text layer with the preset style applied
  • When using the Type tool’s Color Picker, pressing the Escape key will now close the Color Picker, as it should
  • Drag shapes from the Layers view to the Shapes palette to save them to your collection
  • The selections tools will now be highlighted if there is an active selection
  • A number of performance improvements make the selection tools faster and more reliable
  • You can now copy, cut, paste and duplicate the components inside shapes
  • The Color Selection tool now works on layers with color adjustments
  • You can now hold down the Space bar to move selections while using the Rectangular and Elliptical selection tools

Other improvements and bug fixes

  • When exporting to JPEG, the more common .jpg extension will be used instead of .jpeg
  • The BMP and GIF formats have been added to the list of file formats you can export to
  • Pressing Command-I now toggles the Invert adjustment, instead of simply applying it
  • Dotted strokes now appear as they do in the original Pixelmator, improving compatibility with PXM files
  • When changing image and canvas size, guides would be repositioned incorrectly (fixed)
  • Certain fonts with high baselines would be clipped to the boundaries of text boxes (fixed)
  • Fixed an issue that would sometimes make it impossible to change the font of certain text layers
  • Applying a gradient to the layer mask of a text layer would only work at the second attempt (fixed)
  • Copying a text layer and pasting it inside another text layer would include unnecessary text (fixed)
  • Dragging and dropping RAW images into Pixelmator Pro now works faster
  • RAW layers imported via drag and drop would sometimes have incorrect layer handles (fixed)
  • Fixed an issue that would cause imported layers with transparent areas to be displayed incorrectly
  • When using the Paint tool in images with advanced color profiles, the colors in the Colors window would not match up with colors in the image (fixed)
  • Painting on an empty layer and moving a section of it would change the color of the painted areas (fixed)
  • The position of gradient fills would shift after converting text into a shape (fixed)
  • Trimming the canvas according to the color of the top left and bottom right pixels now works correctly
  • Undo steps would sometimes disappear when creating selections (fixed)
  • The Color Fill pop-up menu now correctly shows the selected blending mode
  • Occasionally, it would not be possible to save images if the Image fill effect was applied (fixed)
  • The fills of resized shapes will now be preserved more accurately
  • When using the Fill layer style on very small layers, the fill would sometimes disappear (fixed)
  • Several improvements fix flickering and positioning issues when editing shapes
  • The canvas would sometimes jump after resetting changes made with the Crop tool (fixed)
  • When exporting JPEG images without a specified color profile, one would be attached anyway (fixed)
  • If the preference for importing JPEG, PNG, and TIFF images w​as disabled, images opened via File > New from Photos would cause Pixelmator Pro to stop responding when saving (fixed)
  • Combining effects like Affine and Op Tile would sometimes produce infinite images and cause Pixelmator Pro to stop responding (fixed)
  • A number of fixes improve the stability of various tools that use gradients
  • Pixelmator Pro would sometimes stop responding after moving the app from a Retina to a non-Retina display (fixed)

This update is free for existing users of the app.

Pixlemator Pro is $59.99 on Mac App Store.