A simple yet powerful photo editor

At first sight, Pixelitor doesn’t seem a promising app. But after using it for a while, you’ll soon discover this free image editor is in fact quite powerful.

Pixelitor includes all the tools you need to edit your photos or create new images from scratch. The program can work with layers and includes drawing tools, predefined shapes, color picker, selection tools, and more. Pixelitor also includes several brush types, and a fun Mirror feature that replicates brush strokes automatically.

But that’s not all. Pixelitor surprised us with a bunch of special filters and effects to edit, fix and optimize your photos. They’re organized in categories and include a bit of everything, from the simple blurring effect to the more artistic Pointillize filter, which transforms your image into a piece of pop art.

On the downside, Pixelitor doesn’t support many formats, and it lacks documentation. The program is fairly easy to use, but it requires some basic photo editing knowledge – concepts such as layers, blending modes, masking, etc.

Pixelitor is a surprisingly rich-feature photo editor with support for layers and a lot of interesting filters and special effects.