Pixelmator Photo for iPad offers machine learning-based editing tools for photographs

Rather than providing a full image creation and editing experience as offered by Pixelmator Pro for macOS and Pixelmator for macOS and iOS, Pixelmator Photo instead will focus more on adjusting photographs. Supporting RAW images from over 500 cameras, the app will provide ways to alter images in a non-destructive manner, preserving the original photograph.

Foundational adjustments to brightness, exposure, and saturation will be offered alongside other changeable items, such as levels, curves, grain, and many others. The added Repair and Crop tool will allow users to make more substantial changes to create the perfect image, such as by removing blemishes or even entire objects from the scene.

The app will take advantage of Core ML, with machine learning used to power a number of features, including ML Crop's suggestions to improve the composition of a photo. When users elect to change the aspect ratio, ML Crop will offer a potential place to position the cropping box, which can be further tweaked before finishing the editing process.

Trained on 20 million professional photographs to learn how to use exposure, white balance, and color ranges, ML Fix can be used to perform basic changes to an image quickly and automatically. The use of photo-based training was previously provided to Pixelmator Pro users in the 1.2 update earlier this month, with similar automated changes provided by ML Enhance.

Machine learning-enhanced film presets can be used to emulate the appearance of analog film, developed by analyzing photographs using classic films such as Kodak Porta, Fujifilm Superia, and Ilford HP5. Another tool, ML Presets, can balance the lighting and colors in a photo before applying selected presets, to preserve the styling of each film type.

Pixelmator Photo will be arriving on iPad later this year. Pricing for the app has yet to be announced.