Pixelmator Pro User Guide for Mac
- Welcome
- What’s new
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- Intro to automatic image editing
- Automatically increase image resolution
- Remove or hide an image background
- Automatically enhance image color
- Automatically match image colors
- Remove color banding in an image
- Automatically reduce image noise
- Automatically crop and straighten images
- Decontaminate image colors
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- Use presets from your Mac on your iPad
- Use the Pixelmator Pro toolbar
- Pixelmator Pro tools
- Use color controls
- Keyboard shortcuts and gestures
- Customize the Tools sidebar
- About the Pixelmator Pro file format
- Supported media formats
- Work with RAW files
- About Pixelmator Pro sidecar files
- Use the Pixelmator Pro Photos extension
- Restore an earlier document version
- Copyright and trademarks
Work with RAW files in Pixelmator Pro on Mac
When you take photos using your camera’s RAW setting, the camera creates RAW files that contain unprocessed data from the digital sensor. Unlike JPEG files, RAW files store all the original sensor information, giving you more flexibility when editing.
Pixelmator Pro supports RAW files, so you can edit RAW images and access their extended detail while making color adjustments. When you import RAW files, they appear as RAW layers and are identified with in the Layers sidebar.
You can open a RAW file on your Mac just like any other image file, or add one as a layer to an existing document.
See the Apple Support article Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, and visionOS 26 to learn about which RAW formats you can open and work with in Pixelmator Pro for Mac.
Export a RAW file
If you have a RAW file in your document, you can export it as a new file, in the original RAW format, without any adjustments.
In Pixelmator Pro on Mac, control-click a RAW layer.
Choose Export RAW, enter a name for the file in the Save As field, then click Export.
Reprocess a RAW file
Some tools in Pixelmator Pro apply changes to images destructively. However, when you apply these changes to a RAW layer, it’s possible to reprocess the RAW file and revert any destructive edits.
In Pixelmator Pro on Mac, control-click a RAW layer.
Choose Reprocess RAW.