The beautiful, AI-powered Pixelmator Photo for iPad launches with non-destructive editing, RAW support, a magical Repair tool & more

The Pixelmator team today released Pixelmator Photo, their new iPad-only image editor powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning that brings advanced features like desktop-class editing tools with support for editing RAW images and much, much more.

Unveiled during this year’s special iPad Pro event in Brooklyn, this photo editor brings a bunch of powerful tools in one beautiful app, like a set of nondestructive color adjustments, the AI-powered Repair tool, presets for a range of different photography styles and more. 

The app lets you automatically apply Lightness, Color Balance, Selective Color and other adjustments, thanks to a machine learning algorithm trained on 20 million professional photos.

From the blurb:

Pixelmator Photo is a photo editor unlike any other. It features a collection of nondestructive, desktop-class color adjustments. A set of gorgeous presets inspired by analog photography. A magical Repair tool to remove unwanted objects.

Full support for editing RAW images. Artificial intelligence that automatically improves photos like a pro photographer. And it’s designed exclusively for iPad, bringing the most native and intuitive editing experience imaginable.

Check out the short video embedded below for a little taste of what the app’s about.

Pixelmator Photo features an intuitive browser that makes it a cinch to sift through your entire Photos library like there’s no tomorrow. Unfortunately, the app lacks a Share sheet extension so you cannot open an image in Pixelmator Photo from another app. Instead, you must fire up Pixelmator Photo and use its built-in browser to import images.

And if you happen to have a bunch of photographs taken with a DSLR, Pixelmator Photo lets you easily open and edit RAW images right on your iPad.

Every adjustment and filter in Pixelmator Photo takes advantage of the extended range data in RAW photos, so you can recover seemingly lost detail and adjust colors with incredible accuracy.

Pixelmator Photo is built to take full advantage of the extended range data in RAW files. So you can easily recover blown details, even when using ML Enhance to improve RAW photos automatically.

The app includes all the filters you need, allowing you to edit photos to your heart’s content. On top of these, you’ll find nine truly gorgeous presets allowing you to easily emulate analog film, apply vintage and cinematic looks, enhance urban or landscape photography and more.

Pixelmator Photo fully supports the large iPad display and 64-bit architecture, taking advantage of advanced platform technologies like Metal, Core ML 2 and Core Image to deliver smooth operation even when editing large images. The app was designed exclusively for iPad.

Some people may have issues using the app on their iPad Air 3 or iPad mini 5:

We know some of you aren’t able to download the app on iPad Air 3 and iPad mini 5 devices, even though you were able to pre-order and can also run the TestFlight builds just fine.

Strangely, we’ve also had reports from a few different people that they were able to download the app on those devices without any trouble. For those affected, please email us at support@pixelmator.com and we’ll get you a copy of the app via TestFlight for now — apologies for the inconvenience, we’re doing our best to get to the bottom of this.

The Pixelmator team is already working on improvements, new features and thinking about where to take the app in the future. “It’s going to be a fun ride,” they wrote in a blog post.

Here’s the list of the key features in Pixelmator Photo:

  • Powerful tools for improving your photos
    • Edit photos using a collection of advanced, nondestructive color adjustments, specially designed to preserve detail and naturally improve photos.
    • Take advantage of full RAW support to edit high-resolution RAW photos from your DSLR camera or iPhone.
    • Effortlessly remove unwanted objects using the incredible Repair tool.
    • Crop, straighten and correct perspective with an easy-to-use Crop tool.
    • Use groundbreaking machine learning to automatically enhance photos, adjust lighting, white balance and colors, apply presets and even improve the composition of your photos.
    • Edit completely nondestructively, resetting changes made with any tool at any time you like without affecting other edits.
    • Share edited photos back to your Photos library, export to a range of different formats and easily share photos with others.
  • Desktop-class color adjustments
    • Edit photos using a collection of powerful, desktop-class color adjustments.
    • Follow all the changes you make in the beautiful live histogram.
    • Improve exposure, contrast, brightness, highlights and shadows using the Lightness adjustment.
    • Adjust color saturation, vibrance and hue with Hue & Saturation.
    • Improve the balance of colors in the shadows, midtones and highlights.
    • Selectively adjust individual color ranges using the Selecti​ve Color adjustments.
    • Quickly improve brightness, contrast and color by setting black, white and grey points using the Levels adjustment.
    • Use the Curves adjustment to adjust lighting and color with incredible precision.
    • Mix the balance of the red, green and blue color channels to create intense color effects in your images.
    • Replace any color with any other using the Replace Color adjustment.
    • Create beautiful black and whites even from your color photos.
    • Use the Fade adjustment to wash out the contrasts in your photo and give it a faded look.
    • Add beautiful, film-style grain with the Grain adjustment.
    • Use a range of additional adjustments, like Sharpen, Color Monochrome, Sepia and Invert to make any photo stand out.
  • Groundbreaking artificial intelligence
    • Use ML Enhance, trained on 20 million professional photos, to improve your photos like a pro photographer.
    • ML Enhance automatically takes care of all the subtle improvements that go into every great shot — white balance, exposure, shadow and highlight detail — so you can focus on adding your own creative finishing touches.
    • Automatically fine-tune individual adjustments, like Lightness, White Balance, Selective Color, and Color Balance using the knowledge from the same 20-million-photo Core ML algorithm.
    • Intelligently crop photos using the machine learning-powered ML Crop.
  • Stunning presets for film emulation, vintage looks and more
    • Pixelmator Photo includes extensive collections of presets inspired by different photography styles and designed for a variety of subjects.
    • Create and save your own custom presets.
    • The Black & White presets are based on classic black & white analog films for creating authentic monochrome shots.
    • The Cinematic presets emulate the orange and teal look, letting you quickly add striking color contrasts.
    • The Classic Films and Modern Films preset groups are based on some of the best-known and popular analog films from the past and present, creating subtle and tasteful analog photography looks.
    • Use presets in the Landscape, Urban and Night collections to quickly enhance your nature photos, city photography and night shots.

More information about the app can be found at pixelmator.com/photo.

Pixelmator Photo is a $5 download from App Store.

That’s a one-time purchase that gets you the full app. Pixelmator Photo is a premium app meaning there are no subscriptions nor are there in-app purchases for additional tools.