Apple buys popular photo editing app Pixelmator – and Photos could soon get a massive upgrade

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• Apple has just acquired the popular photo editing app Pixelmator
• There won’t be any changes to Pixelmator’s app “at this time”
• The move could be a big boost for photo editing on iPhones and Macs

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Apple has just bought the popular photo editing app Pixelmator – and that could be huge news for photo editing on iPhones, iPads and Macs.

The news was shared by Pixelmator in a surprise blog post, which says that it’s “signed an agreement to be acquired by Apple, subject to regulatory approval”. That approval is likely to be a formality, given Pixelmator is far from the biggest fish in the image editing pool.

If you’re a Pixelmator fan, you don’t need to worry about big changes for now – the app maker says there will not be “material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time”.

However, it added to “stay tuned for exciting updates to come” and it’s hard not look ahead to what Apple could do with the apps. The obvious parallel is Dark Sky, a relatively small startup that Apple acquired in early 2020, before folding it into its own Weather app.

It looks highly likely that Apple will do the same with Pixelmator’s tech and its Photos app, which similarly exists on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. And that would be big news for photo editing on those platforms…

The new Aperture?

Apple once made a pro-level image editor and organizer called Aperture for the Mac, which existed between 2005 and 2015, when it was discontinued. This Pixelmator acquisition could potentially fill that hole – and also give Apple fans a powerful native alternative to the likes of Photoshop.

On the iPhone, many photography fans prefer Pixelmator to Adobe’s apps. TechRadar contributor Paul Hatton recently wrote that the iOS app let him say goodbye to Photoshop, partly because it’s designed specifically for iOS and iPadOS (so can take full advantage of Apple silicon).

We also rate Pixelmator Pro highly in our guide to the best photo editing apps for Mac, calling it a “great all-rounder” and better value than an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. If Apple does ultimately fold Pixelmator’s tech into the Photos app, it could become even better value – perhaps even free, for Apple fans.

The potential for that move has understandably made Pixelmator fans a little nervous. Apple won’t necessarily absorb Pixelmator into Photos, but it seems the most likely future scenario.

While Apple Intelligence does now power features like Clean Up for removing distractions from photos, the acquisition of Pixelmator suggests that Apple still thinks it’s behind the likes of Google’s Magic Editor and Adobe when it comes to native AI image editing and organizing.

That’s certainly the case when you look at TechRadar’s Phone of the year, the Google Pixel 9 Pro, but we could soon see Apple catch up

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