I haven't been a person who uses a photo editing program. When working on images for the site, some of my colleagues have used a combination of the two Adobe software programs. I have always done my best to stick with only one Adobe app. As part of my effort to avoid the powerful software, other software has become essential.
There are several reasons for this. It can feel like a lot of work when I don't really need to do anything else. There is also a cleaner version of the program. It is available directly from the Mac App Store and can be installed quickly. It is as easy to remove if I want to. It's the same for Windows. Installation of Adobe's overarching Creative Cloud desktop software for license validation, app updates, and so on is required for usingPhotoshop. There is something about Creative Cloud that I like to keep off my Mac. That's right, it is.
My dislike of Adobe's editing software has led me to use other tools, like the app called Pixelmator Photo. The repair tool is at the top of that list and it has been a joy to use across both my Mac and iPad Pro when trying to remove dust or other flaws from the images I shoot for my reviews. I tap on whatever I want to disappear, and it goes. I would consider this fun when using the Apple pencil. Automatic tweaking for exposure, color balance, and other image adjustments are made better thanks to machine learning.
It has always felt more difficult to find another area of the photo to blend into than it has been to find a section of the picture to heal. This does the job most times, but it is slower and can be a challenge if I am working along a curve. I have gotten into the one-two punch of making exposure and other adjustments in Lightroom and then doing a run of repair fixes in Pixelmator Photo because it has proved easier and faster than before.
Adobe brought some of their best tricks to the program. I was most excited about the content-aware heal tool. It works the same way now as it did previously. A single click or brush stroke is all it takes to eliminate extraneous elements from a picture. I don't have to look for a perfect match somewhere else. I don't think I'll have to hop between apps anymore.
The October update has masking capabilities that are powered by artificial intelligence. Portrait photographers seem to like the option of selecting people. Adobe claims to use artificial intelligence to automatically select people in your photos, as well as allowing you to easily target edits to individual parts of a person. The app already offers a number of methods for highlighting the subject of a shot, but this takes things to a new level.
All of a sudden, I have everything I need in a single place. Is my use of the apps over? It's doubtful. I will use them in other ways to benefit from them. Smaller developers are supported by me. I am pretty sure that the recent wave of advancement is due to increased competition from other software programs.
It is worth a try if you haven't tried it before. Adobe is trying to make it more efficient. There are further improvements to memory utilization and export speeds. I'm happy that I can use Lightroom alone and not feel like I'm missing out on the best features of Adobe's software. I now care about all of them.
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