Try Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com/). It is a new program that does a very good job of photo manipulation. What's really nice is that it uses the Mac's GPU (instead of the CPU) so filter effects are very quick with no redraw.

A friend of mine uses Pixelmator. Also, here (http://www.theaftermac.com/hands-on-with-pixelmator/) is a short review from the after Mac.

Other areas of interest are on their weblog (http://www.pixelmator.com/weblog/) and the latest update information (http://www.pixelmator.com/support/updates/). And finally, a review (http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/10/pixelmator) from Wired magazine.

What's interesting is that the latest Pixelmator 1.1.2 update (as of January 22, 2008), already addresses some issues as pointed out by Wired magazine including:

• Layer via Copy (Contextual menu or Command+J shortcut) added

• Layer via Cut (Contextual menu or Command+Shift+J) added
• Transform > Scale now scales proportionally when Shift key is pressed

Ars Technica reviewed the latest version of Pixelmator, ver 1.6.2. It's not going to replace Photoshop anytime soon, but it's a sleek photo manipulation app, but still great for editing (it even has Curves adjustments etc). It's meant to compete against Photoshop Elements.

Read the review here (http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/02/pixelmator-162---the-ars-technica-review.ars/).

another good alternative is GIMP... it's free though it's not as powerful as the photoshop...

I got the latest Pixelmator 2.0 at the introductory price of $29.99. I'm still learning how to use it since I never really used a photo editing tool except for iPhoto. I was supposed to get Photoshop Elements 10 but I'm having a hard time finding it locally. I see some good reviews about Pixelmator so I thought of downloading it.

Any other Pixelmator users here? Maybe we can post some pictures edited using the application and share some tutorials on how you did it.