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Pixelmator has come a long way since it was introduced back in September of 2007. It has become a full feature photo editor and graphic creation application. Yet, there are still some important features missing.

With Pixelmator 2.0 coming out earlier this fall, the developers have plugged up many of the holes for features that were missing, but not all. One of the holes they didn’t add was layer styles. While everything in layer styles can be done in Pixelmator, layer styles offer two big advantages over the manual methods. Layer styles are editable and are much faster to create. Duplicating layers is an easy work around for future edits. Are there work arounds for speeding up the process?

Pixelmator can run user-created Quartz Composer filters to modify images. Quartz Composer is a tool that comes with Apple’s free Xcode development application. It uses the same Mac OS built-in frameworks as Pixelmator, like Core Image and Core Video. Now Cykepro has created a filter to add a drop shadow to a standard Pixelmator layer. While it is not editable, it is much faster than the manual method. He also created filters for inner shadow, outline, and smooth edges. They are easy to install and use, so check them out.

Pixelmator is continuing to develop at a rapid rate. Yet, there is still more work to do. Hopefully, the developers of Pixelmator will come out of a layer style solution, but until then, Quartz Composer filters help fill the gap.

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