Pixelmator1 was nice because it was a bug-for-bug clone of Photoshop 5 (not CS5, v5) including shortcut keys. Pixelmator2 was a step backward, IMO, without adding many new features except stability.

If you're going to throw away all your muscle memory anyway, I'd suggest looking at Acorn. http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/

I'll second Acorn. It is weird compared to other image editing interfaces, but it's actually quite usable for most people's needs (or at least what I imagine are most people's needs) and it has really nice polyglot plugin support that should please developers.

Thanks for mentioning this, I've been developing a mac plugin (http://thimbleup.com) and didn't realize Acorn also had plugin support.

I'd also recommend Acorn[4]. It's a phenomenal app, has recently received a major update (early bird pricing until end of May) and is, in my opinion, much more "Mac-like" and pleasant to use compared to Pixelmator.

It's my go-to app for fast tasks while still being powerful enough to do more serious things. Not to mention it has rock solid scripting support too.

[4] http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

what about Gimp and Inkscape for alternatives? Both are free software.

Gimp - Raster Graphics - http://www.gimp.org/ Inkscape - Vector Graphics - http://inkscape.org/

Gimp is really one of the most incredible pieces of open-source/free software I have used.

But, it's primary advantages (open source, powerful) are what have led to its limited use. Like many open source projects, the interface is designed pragmatically, like emacs or vi, but this is a problem -- no professional has the time or the money to learn a complex UI.

The same goes for LibreOffice. Extremely powerful with a ton of untapped potential, but untapped nevertheless due to a dated and unintuitive UI. Inkscape and Scribus are better in this regard, and I've seen many professionals use them with outstanding results.

I've been able to create vectors with Inkscape without much difficulty. I can't say the same about Gimp. If someone really had the time and the dedication, they could re-engineer the entire frontend of Gimp from scratch for each platform, while leaving the excellent backend in place, but I doubt any sane individual would be able to do so without the help of the original developers due to the lack of full documentation available.

Still, it's worth trying. It's got 90% of the features of Ps but with 100% fewer dollars paid for it.

It's that godawful UI that kills it for me. It's plenty powerful and since I don't do print anymore, having or not having CMYK doesn't really matter as much. But I'm not going to waste the time learning a UI that's not native to any platform when platform alternatives are available.

One might be able to say the same thing of PS, but it has the weight of history and industry acceptance behind it.

Also, the name is not liable to cause embarrassment in some circles. At least PS is a marketable name.

But mostly it's that UI.

The UI is native to Linux based Operating Systems using a GTK based Desktop Environment (Gnome Shell, Ubuntu Unity and a few others).

Honestly, I've used both for about as long as each other, I find both to be equally annoying to use. Much prefer to use Inkscape or Fireworks, but fireworks doesn't come installable as a Deb and doesn't work natively on a Linux based Operating System so I don't care for it.

I had to use Gimp professionally once (long story short, a sudden web banner EMERGENCY came up and Gimp was all I had available) and it was terrible. I don't doubt it would've been easier and less painful had I been familiar with the UI but it just seemed so poorly designed. It is the best free graphics software out there, maybe, but it's hardly a worthy replacement for photoshop yet (although it is getting better.)

Yep.

I think that it is more of an issue with conditioning. As you and others have mentioned, one could indeed learn Gimp's UI with enough practice. However, I'd say that someone who picked up Photoshop, or MS Word, or any complex piece of software for the first time, then it would be a horrible UI.

The education system (at least here in Australia) heavily focuses on Adobe and Microsoft products, so high school kids are familiar with them from a youngish age. If they were taught general principles of word processing or photo editing, perhaps with a few different programs, then I feel that everybody would be better able to cope with different UI's much more easily.

Incidentally, (as a non-professional) I found Gimp much easier to grok than Inkscape or Scribus (coming from a Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign education/background).

It's probably the same in other countries but to provide some perspective on the situation: A teacher will say "Microsoft Word" and not "Word Processor". When and if you refer to the software as "Word Processor" and not "Microsoft Word" said teacher generally gets upset or confused. Same goes for Spreadsheet, Presentation and Database.

It's not just a UI issues. Gimp is missing features I use in Photoshop all the time. live real time Layer Effects are one of my most used features in Photoshop. Without them I can't get work done. AFAIK gIMP has no similar feature.

I feel like Krita is unfairly overshadowed by Gimp; Gimp is probably more powerful for advanced use cases, but Krita has a much more familiar UI and I've found it perfectly adequate for home use.

The excellent Sketch does it quite well, better than Pixelmator IMO

http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/

It's not a look alike of photoshop, it's entirely redesigned and is fabulous and worth it.

Pixelmator is a bitmap graphics program (like Photoshop and Acorn), while Sketch is a vector graphics program (like Illustrator and Inkscape). Both have different uses.

I used Fireworks for half my career, and when it became obvious that Adobe was letting Fw rot, I went looking for alternatives. It took a little while, but Sketch has finally gotten there. Sketch a purely vector app, whereas Fireworks was a strange but workable hybrid of bitmap and vector. When I need to throw down some raster graphics, I fire up Pixelmator.

I too find Fireworks CS4 too useful to dump entirely. Particularly canvas resizing.

I also like Sketch -- it's a very powerful app and very polished, though I find I use it a lot less than I thought I would since it seems to occupy an uneasy place between OmniGraffle and Acorn in my workflow. I wouldn't be surprised if I use it a lot more after another few versions...

I like Sketch, but it has really poor performance on my MacBook Air. A file of comparable size is way smoother in Illustrator than it is in Sketch from my experience.

If you're on windows XP or higher, give Paint.net a try: http://www.getpaint.net/

They even have a PSD plugin: http://psdplugin.codeplex.com/

A big problem with Paint.net IMO is that they don't support pressure-sensitive tablets at all (like Wacom tablets).

This is an absolutely essential feature for any serious graphics work. GIMP is far better at the same price (free) and also supports PSD.

I got the impression that Paint.NET was abandoned.

It's not, it's just that progress towards 4.0 has been slow:

http://blog.getpaint.net/2013/03/30/paint-net-4-0-brushes-an...

*Replaces if you only use the most basic features

Sadly the XAML export plugin no longer works in Illustrator CS6, I've spoken to the dev, Mike Swanson and apparently it'd be a nightmare to upgrade. I keep a copy of CS5 installed just for this reason.

Inksckape has XAML export capabilities, depending on what kinds of files you're working on this could be useful.

Is Pixelmator ever coming to Windows?

I wouldn't bet on it soon. It was designed as a Mac app from the ground up. Porting to Windows would be a pretty big endeavor not much smaller than building the app in the first place, and they're currently doing pretty well as the big fish in the Mac pond.