Review: Pixelmator Photo for iOS. A Lightroom alternative?

Though I have my set of iPhone photo editing apps that I've been using for years, I have a few photo editing apps on my radar that I continuously evaluate. Pixelmator Photo is one of them. In this Pixelmator Photo review, I'll try to find out if Pixelmator Photo is an alternative for Lightroom Mobile.

Table of Contents

• Pixelmator App vs. Pixelmator Photo
• Pixelmator Photo is available for iPhone and iPad
  • Pixelmator Photo Library
  • Non destructive editing
  • Supported file formats
  • The User Interface
  • Overview of adjustments in Pixelmator Photo
  • Selected photo editing features
    • Cropping, Straightening, Perspective Correction
    • Healing Brush
    • ML Super Resolution
    • Presets
• The verdict

Pixelmator App vs. Pixelmator Photo

The Pixelmator team currently sells two apps for iPhone and iPad:

• Pixelmator App, which is a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop
• Pixelmator Photo is an app for developing photos like Adobe Lightroom.

They also sell desktop photo editing software, most notably Pixelmator Pro.

So comparing Pixelmator to Adobe: the original Pixelmator App relates to Pixelmator Photo just like Adobe Photoshop relates to Adobe Lightroom. Pixelmator Photo is not an app that replaces the Pixelmator app. It supplements it. In simple words: Pixelmator App is for retouching, and Pixelmator Photo is for "digitally developing" a photo.

Pixelmator Photo is available for iPhone and iPad

As of August 2022, Pixelmator Photo is available for iPad and iPhone and will soon be available for Mac OS. Pixelmator Photo iPad supports the Apple Pencil on iPad.

Pixelmator Photo Library

One notable difference if Pixelmator Photo to Lightroom mobile is the photo library. While Lightroom uses its own photo library synced between devices via Creative Cloud, Pixelmator Photo uses the iOS Photo Library. I've to admit I like that.

To edit a photo, you simply open it from the photo library, apply the desired adjustments and then save it back to the Photos App, where you can choose if you want to modify the original photo or save it as a copy.

Note that if you chose to modify the original, Pixelmator Photo does not overwrite the original. It uses a feature introduced in iOS a while ago to save the modified copy as a new version.

So you can always revert to the original photo you need or want to.

Additionally, Pixelmator Photo saves all adjustments in iCloud using its own file format, called "Pixelmator Photo Edit Document."

Non destructive editing

As the Pixelmator Photo Edit Document file contains all the adjustments you applied, photo editing in Pixelmator Photo is non-destructive. You can always reopen an edited photo and selectively remove adjustments.

Supported file formats

Regarding importing photos, Pixelmator Photo imports and exports many photo formats. I've successfully tested importing some old RAWs from my Nikon, DNG files shot with ProCamera, JPGs and photos that were taken in iOS HEIF format.

You can export photos in any popular photo format like JPEG, PNG, HEIF, and TIFF to either any cloud storage or save it to the camera roll. Suppose you chose to save it to the camera roll. In that case, you can either save it as a modification (and revert back to the original photo anytime) or as a copy.

The Pixelmator Photo User Interface

The Pixelmator Photo user interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use. You browse your photo library using the iOS photo picker, then tap an image to enlarge it, and finally tap edit in the upper right corner to apply adjustments.

Next, choose what you want to do by selecting one of the icons in the upper toolbar, which are (from left to right):

1. Apply automatic adjustments based on machine learning
2. ML Super-resolution (more on that is further down the article)
3. Healing Brush
4. Cropping, perspective correction, and straightening
5. Adjustments
6. Info about the photo and sharing
7. As the name suggests, "Done". This will save your edits.

Pixelmator Photo groups the adjustments a bit different than Lightroom:

At the bottom of the screen, you'll see all the built-in and custom presets.

Overview of adjustments in Pixelmator Photo

Pixelmator Photo offers an impressive list of adjustments:

• White Balance contains grey, temperature, and tint
• Hue & Saturation contains hue, saturation, and vibrance
• Lightness, which contains exposure, highlight, shadows, brightness, contrast, and black point
• Color Balance allows you to adjust colors for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights
• Selective Color enables you to adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of 8 individual tones
• Levels
• Curves
• Replace color is an easy way to replace the color (orange) in a photo
• Black and White Conversion
• Color Monochrome Conversion
• Convert your photo to Sepia Tones
• Fade setting
• Channel Mixer
• Invert
• Add a vignette
• Sharpen
• Add and remove grain

Note that it looks like the grain slider can be used to a certain extent for denoising. Just open the adjustment group and move the intensity slider to the left. Use the size slider to define the amount of grain that should be removed.

All of these adjustments are equivalent to their counterparts in Lightroom Mobile.

For editing a photo, Pixelmator Photo offers the following features:

• Cropping, Straightening, and fixing perspective distortions
• A healing Brush
• ML Super Resolution

I miss one feature in this list that I have in Lightroom mobile: Local adjustments. Unfortunately, there's currently no way to apply adjustments to only a part of the photo. As I often use this feature in Lightroom, Pixelmator Photo is no suitable Lightroom alternative for me yet; But it may be for you if you can live without local adjustments).

Let's look at a few other editing features and how they compare to Lightroom mobile.

Selected photo editing features and how they compare to Lightroom Mobile

Cropping, Straightening and Perspective Correction

Behind the cropping icon in the main toolbar are actually three features:

• Cropping
• Straightening
• Perspective Correction

To access these three features, tap the icon in the lower-left corner once you've tapped the crop icon in the upper toolbar.

Cropping and straightening are pretty straightforward and work similarly to other apps. However Pixelmator Photo supports an ML (machine learning) feature for cropping and will suggest a crop for your photo.

Perspective correction is limited. It only works for two-axis: horizontally and vertically. Comparing Pixelmator Photo vs. Lightroom Mobile, I miss a few additional features like the guided perspective correction mode in Lightroom or the ability to adjust the aspect of the corrected photo.

If you don't need the aforementioned Lightroom features, you may want to supplement Pixelmator Photo with SKRWT app, an excellent app for perspective correction on iPhone. Learn more about SKRWT app in my SKRWT app review.

Healing Brush

A healing brush is a tool to remove smaller objects and imperfections from a photo. To use the healing brush, you just paint over the object you'd like to remove, and Pixelmator Photo will do the rest.

While the healing brush in Pixelmator Photo works well according to a few tests, I miss some Touch Retouch features, such as the clone brush's various follow settings.

Touch Retouch is an app for retouching that I've used for years. To read more about this app, please head over to the Touch Retouch Review

ML Super Resolution

In September 2020, the Pixelmator team released a new version of Pixelmator Photo that caught my attention. It has a new feature called ML super-resolution. It's an AI-based algorithm that will increase the overall resolution of any photo. I got a resolution of 43 megapixels from a 12-megapixel photo shot on iPhone 11 Pro. That's just awesome.

I've also tried ML super-resolution with a few DSLR photos from 2005. I lost the original 6 MP RAW files from a trip to Norway due to technical problems and was left with scaled-down JPEGs with 1024x768 pixels.

ML super Resolution increased these photos' resolution to almost 7 megapixels without any loss of detail. I was blown away by the results. Here's a screenshot of one of the photos I'm talking about:

To use ML super-resolution, tap the icon marked in the previous screenshot.

And here's a before and after screenshot of the resolution of a photo taken with the iPhone 11 Pro.

You may (or may not) wonder why I don't use a DSLR if I want photos with a larger resolution. Suppose you've read this blog for a while. In that case, you already know the answer: I prefer to travel light, and I'm on an everlasting mission to slim down what I carry and reduce what I own.

Presets

Like Lightroom, Pixelmator Photo supports presets, and you'll find these at the bottom of the screen once you've tapped the adjustment icon in the top toolbar.

If you swipe over the presets toolbar to the left, you'll notice a little "+" icon. Tap it to save the current adjustments as a preset.

The verdict: Is Lightroom Photo a Lightroom mobile alternative?

Initially, I recommended Pixelmator Photo because it was available as a one-time purchase. As of August 22nd, 2022, Pixelmator Photo was still available as a one-time purchase. But that will change. In August 2022, the Pixelmator team announced that Pixelmator Photo would also go the subscription route.

If Pixelmator Photo can be a Lightroom alternative for you depends on your needs. This app works with the built-in photo library and has a lot of excellent features, including features like more granular denoising but also lacks some features compared to Lightroom Mobile.

If you don't need the extra features of Lightroom Mobile, then Pixelmator Photo may be a good alternative given, that it integrates well with the latest iOS technologies and will soon be available for the Desktop.

You can get Pixelmator Photo from the App Store.

If you're already a Lightroom Mobile Premium user like myself, you may want to look at Pixelmator Photo, primarily because of the ML Super Resolution Feature. Because of this feature, I've integrated Pixelmator Photo into my workflow before importing a photo into Lightroom and using it to enlarge it for e.g., printing.

Let's see how long I can use Pixelmator Photo without paying for a subscription.