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
Lighten or darken areas of an image in Pixelmator Pro on Mac
Use the Lighten and Darken tools to adjust the brightness of specific areas in an image. Both tools are particularly useful for isolating changes to a specific tonal range. For example, you can lighten shadows or darken highlights.
In Pixelmator Pro on Mac, select a layer in the Layers sidebar.
Choose Tools > Retouch > Lighten, or Darken.
You can also select
or
in the Tools sidebar.
In the Lighten pane or Darken pane, adjust the settings:
Brush Size: Drag the slider to change brush size.
Softness: Drag the slider to soften brush edges for blending.
Strength: Drag the slider to adjust the intensity of the effect.
In the Lighten pane or Darken pane, select which tones the tool will affect:
All: Affects shadows, midtones, and highlights equally.
Shadows: Affects only the darkest areas.
Midtones: Affects only the middle tones.
Highlights: Affects only the brightest areas.
Drag in the canvas over the areas you want to lighten or darken.
Note: You can see a before-and-after comparison of the adjusted image. To remove the adjustments you just made, click Reset at the bottom of the Darken or Lighten pane.