A Life Reset

When I bought my iMac last summer, I was fortunate enough to receive some software with the computer. As with all new Macs now, I received the multimedia iLife suite from Apple which is quite good though I rarely use any of the programs right now. I expect to use the iMovie and iDvd more in the future.

As well, there are quite a few utility programs that i found useful for occasion use especially those that address cross-platform file formats like WMV files for videos.

There are other programs that I have downloaded as trial versions to see if they were useful to address certain needs of mine.

One of my needs is a software development tool for personal use. At work, I use a variety of IDEs like Eclipse, Dreamweaver, IntelliJ but those are paid for by the company if required though we tend to use a multitude of open source software like Eclipse and MySQL among others for small and medium size projects. There are ports of these programs for the Mac but there are some commercial programs that are worth a look too.

The best of the lot is Coda. For web development that relies on PHP, MySQL and Apache as the primary development environment, this tool hits all of the marks. While it has all of the necessary elements of a good text editor (code completion, syntax highlighting etc…), it has much more. It has a built in FTP program that makes switching back from local to remote sites a simple matter. You could go into Terminal mode if you wish. A previewer of images and the webpages is built right in the program. An integrated library is there for accessing information on programming languages such as PHP. There is a CSS editor with built in previewer for text and block items. A Clips applet is at the ready to insert common bits of code and text and so it goes.

Now most of the functionality within Coda is readily available elsewhere as open source software or standalone packages. But there is nothing out there that readily combines all of the necessary elements for software and web development into one package. The application is gorgeous and well laid out in a tabbed single window layout.

Now it is not a cheap program to buy at $99 considering the free alternatives out there but there is question of perspective. If you only dabble in software development, then the alternatives may be more appropriate. But for productivity, this program can not be beat. Much better than switching back and forth between different programs. You can focus on the code rather than trying to manage your development environment.

There are some things that Coda can not do such as photo editing. Macs come with iPhoto as part of the iLife suite of multimedia applications but it is just a basic editor. Lightroom by Adobe handles the processing of all of the shots I take with my camera in getting the exposure, sharpness and colors right but on occasion I have need for a specific functionality like cropping an image or adding text to it.

Now there is the Photoshop line of photo editors with Photoshop CS4 available at an astronomical price along with the more affordable Photoshop Elements. I have used Elements extensively in the past on Windows. Indeed all the way back when it was called Photo Deluxe with capabilities that are quite laughable now but considered to be leading edge at the time. Generally I have been satisified with it but as I have been using Lightroom to handle my requirements to get photo just right, I have less of a need for all of the functionality of Elements which makes its $90 price tag a bit too much.

So a search of alternative photo editors brought me to Pixelmator. At $59, it was cheaper than Elements. It certainly has an attractive interface and for editing photos, it leverages the OS and the underlying graphics engine to deliver outstanding performance. There are some effects like Swing I never seen before but are capable of being done in Pixelmator as it is replicated elsewhere in the OS. Really snazzy. The selector tools are top notch and much of the tool set is familar to anyone who ever used Photoshop or Elements.

So what is the problem with Pixelmator?

Well, it may be the product of using Elements for such a long time but some things I have come to take for granted like text effects and noise filtering are not there in Pixelmator. While the cool filters are really nice to play around with in Pixelmator, I will rarely ever use them as I stick to more traditional rendering of photos. The lack of a History panel to jump to different edits of a photograph is a bit unsettling and irritating as that is something I use extensively to revert to a different point in the editing to view the changes. continually using the undo function is tiresome when you are several levels deep in the editing process.

So the position I am in is choosing between an inexpensive program that is lacking in some features as opposed to a program that plenty of functionality for a price but functionality that will be used only intermittently. As it stands now, I am leaning towards the Pixelmator with the hope that it acquires additional functionality in the near future that addresses my needs for a first class photo editor. Given its history to date over the past year in rolling out updates, I am reasonably encouraged that it will be done.