Although the lack of chrome serves the app’s design goals, this is one spot where Pixelmator Pro’s design hampers its usability. The design achieves a clean look, but if you mouse over the boundary too fast, you may never discover that the panel is resizable because the line only appears if you pass your mouse over the boundary slowly. There is no visual boundary between the panel and the image viewing area of the window until you mouse over an invisible line that causes a thin gray line to appear that can be dragged to resize the layer panel. The left-side pane organizes the layers of your project. Although the dark interface and gray type make smaller elements like the Info Bar harder to read, the overall result is a big win that lets users work with few distractions and with their tools anchored in set positions where they are easy to find. The redesign gives Pixelmator Pro an expansive feel and image-centric emphasis that its predecessor didn’t have. The image you are editing is in the spotlight and dominates the app’s window thanks to the dark interface, monochrome icons, sparse chrome, and ability to hide interface elements. The impact of the redesign is as striking as it is functional. Above the tool panel, are document-level tools like cropping and straightening, image settings, sharing, and a toggle to hide the tool panel. Above the layer panel are tools to show and hide different layer views, rulers, grids, and guides along with the Info Bar, which presents information about your image in small, light gray text that stays out of the way of your image, but can also be a little hard to read against the app’s black background. The toolbar has been cleaned up too – reduced to a handful of icons above the panels. From the View menu, you can also hide individual elements like the layer panel, the toolbar, the tool panel, or just the tool options, which are the descriptions next to each tool’s icon. The mode looks like a simple image previewer, but every tool remains available from Pixelmator Pro’s menu so you can continue to edit in a distraction-free environment. At one extreme, there’s a ‘Hide Interface’ option under the View menu that eliminates every interface element. Both are resizable and can be hidden as can other interface elements. The panels are designed to stay out of the way.
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