The latest update from the Pixelmator Pro team is version 3.0, featuring a whole new way to create reusable templates for your Pixelmator projects. The update ships with 200 premium design templates and mockups, and the integrated placeholder features allow users to create their own.
The templating features allow for a particular layer content to be marked replaceable, which adds a little plus button for one-click swapping of one image for another. You can also set up a predefined group of alternatives and Pixelmator will present the user of the template with a menu of options to pick from.
Colors used in a Pixelmator document are now located centrally, under a new Document Colors button in the toolbar. Simply edit a shared color in that panel to change all references to that color in your project in one go.
The app now ships with 200 templates integrated into the new project browser, taking advantage of these capabilities. There are a wide variety of bundled templates, including poster designs, shareable social media square and portrait formats, and screenshot mockups with Apple device frames for Mac, iPad Pro and iPhone 14 Pro. The bundled templates are very high quality and grouped by brand, where every template in the group shares a common design language and theme.
In my testing, it was quite straightforward to create a custom template of my own, although I did encounter some layout bugs: replacing an image larger than the canvas size would make it automatically center itself and therefore misaligned in the template (the Pixelmator Pro team said a bug fix is in the works to address this). I also couldn’t find a way to add a custom template to the in-app template gallery for easy retrieval later.
The new Pixelmator Pro templates are available as part of a free update in the Mac App Store rolling out today. For new customers, Pixelmator Pro is priced at $39.99. Find out more information on the developer’s website.
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