Ever since I’ve started creating XHTML/CSS for the most part have always started with a Photoshop PSD and chopped it accordingly to create a valid layout.  I initially purchased two full version copies to cover the licensing of my own machines which has a pretty large initial fee.  Over the years I have purchased lower priced upgrades in order to keep up to date and compatible with my latest Mac OS X machines/operating system.

For the most part, Photoshop continues to be the industry standard as far as graphic/web design goes and PSDs are usually what is delivered to be from a graphic designer.  Sure there have been times where I might get an Illustrator or a Quark file, but that’s usually not the norm.  It does a great job for what I need to do which is mostly resizing, measuring, and pulling pieces out of layers.  I could have a graphic designer send me the cut up images from ImageReady, but that doesn’t always give me the best results.  I’m much more comfortable having the designer send me the PSD and do my own cutting and optimizing for what I feel best fits the code/layout for the web.

I’ve always tried to look for alternatives that are better suited for my needs.  This lead me from Dreamweaver to SubEthaEdit to Coda which I use exclusively for development.  I was never really happy with Dreamweaver, but got the job done.  I am much happier with what Coda has to offer and it feels like it’s built for Mac OS X.  Also it’s cheaper at $99 vs. $399 ($199 upgrade).  When smaller companies develop the software it seems like there’s quite a bit more free updates before a full upgrade which also tends to keep price down.  Price is a small factor, but if a program is much better than I would consider paying more for it.

This is one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Photoshop for so long.  I followed the same progression with the graphics tools as I had with the development tools.  When Pixelmator first came out, it just didn’t have enough of the features that I needed for web development.  It probably had a good amount of graphic tools to help graphic designers, but wasn’t enough for my daily tasks.  The software has been out for a little while now and they are soon to release their 1.3 version which I’m currently using in beta mode.

They’ve done a much better job as far as adding features to get me to switch.  For the most part I am able to the work and it seems to run quite a bit faster than Photoshop.  Some things still make it a little difficult for me to use.  For example if you zoom and image it’s hard to tell what percentage you are actually at.  In Photoshop it shows a percentage at the bottom of the window.  Also if the image is larger than the screen, it doesn’t really do a great job of fitting it around the tools, it just puts the tools on top of the image.  I almost always have to resize the image to fit an open spot inside the tools.  When I’m cutting the PSDs I like to use the Marquee tool to cut my images for the web and sometimes like to crop there.  There’s a crop tool in Pixelmator, but at times it’s a little difficult to position.  It does however let you edit the crop area before actually cropping.  I would also like to see a live preview so I could compress the images as small as possible without losing too much quality.  Right now it’s more of a guessing game.

I’ve been using Pixelmator for about two weeks now for normal tasks.  I haven’t really had to do really complex PSDs.  I mostly just have basic layouts or image resizing for different sites.  I think I’ll have to use it for a little while longer and see if I run to any trouble with it.  For right now using Pixelmator and keeping CS3 on the back burner will keep me from upgrading to CS4 next month.  What’s more important to me right now is if I can be more productive.  Right now I think I’m just as productive, and if this keeps up at a lower cost.