Mojave Paint 1.3 with Layer Styles
This was so much work, but also the most requested feature. When I first started using Photoshop heavily in 2003 it was primarily as a web design tool, I had a bunch of layers with boxes and lines I'd drag around, group into folders, and put Color Overlay on so I could fine tune the perfect shade of gray or whatever. That one, and Stroke and Drop Shadow should be super useful for anybody. Not sure how much Bevel is actually used in today's world, but I added that in just for completeness. Compare to: Photoshop obviously, especially Photoshop 6.0 which introduced layer styles. Also Acorn and Affinity Photo. These all have similar functionality already. Pricing: Free to download and try, $9.99 to unlock Export. https://mojavepaint.app
Collected discussion
oh that interface brings back memories!
I'm certainly taking inspiration from old versions of Photoshop, but also introducing plenty of original ideas as well. I hope you check it out! I'd say most of what you'd ever do with Preview.app you can now do in Mojave Paint, except for the vector shape overlays you'd use for annotations.
I’ll definitely give it a try when I’m back at the computer tomorrow
Based
Thanks. Roadmap now: Better text formatting like for paragraphs, then shut down for a few weeks for a complete refactor of layer positioning and the Move/Free Transform tool, then add vector shape layers.
non-destructive layer styles are the big thing i would protect here. if someone can toggle a stroke/shadow/color overlay later without rasterizing, the app becomes much safer for quick mockups and screenshots. also worth making copy/paste behavior boring and predictable: paste an image, add a shape/text layer, style it, export, then reopen and everything is still editable. that is the workflow where these small image editors either feel magic or frustrating.
This is good feedback, can you tell me more? Currently "export" just means save a flat image. Saving in native .mojavepaint format would preserve all the non-destructive editability.
yep, native .mojavepaint is exactly what i meant. the main thing i'd avoid is making export feel like the only save path. i'd make the mental model really plain: save/save as = editable project file export = flattened png/jpg/pdf/etc reopen project file = all layers/styles/text/shapes still editable then i'd test a few boring round trips: add text, add stroke/shadow, resize canvas, close the app, reopen, change the text and shadow, export again. if any of those silently rasterize, people will stop trusting it for mockups. one small UI thing: if export is the paid action, maybe still make save editable file obvious/free so people understand they are not losing the work-in-progress when they have not unlocked export yet.
Really great to see this app developing so well and so quickly. I'm using it more and more because it does >95% of what I need and it's both fast and easy to use.
Love it! I'm fixing a memory leak now where documents you close don't free their memory, not a big deal if you only work on one document, but that fix will be in 1.3.1 soon
Check out the 1.4 release from today, rich type control now (leading, kerning, etc).
How does this compare with Acorn, which I’d position as “Paint+”?
Good question. In my view the main difference (other than Acorn being a lot more mature and having way more filters) just comes down to UX preference. Just one example: Mojave Paint tends to expose things a little more with buttons, like there's a button to add a layer mask (in Acorn I believe you have to do that from a right-click context menu.) There's a button to toggle in and out of Quickmask (I think in Acorn the Q key is the only way.)
Good answer. More and more, I'm looking for apps that are focused on doing one thing very well instead of the kitchen-sink approach. Good luck with the app!
Also, I'd add, I think my typography handling is quite a bit more intuitive. I just revamped that in today's release, see the blog post at https://mojavepaint.app/blog/character-paragraph-styles
Awesome work!
Here's something for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSApps/comments/1uv2vr8/retromac_turns_your_mac_into_windows_98_windows/
Mac OS 9 still looks good today! I should go shopping on Marketplace for a G3 iMac.
🤣
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/14/lego-imac-g3-set/
This dev is super nice! He's letting our digital art students try his app! We're trying to keep them from getting sucked into subscription apps and Adobe's nightmare (even though we get those for free for students to try too). It's great to see students gravitate toward the smaller apps that can do 99% of what they'll ever need. I always teach my students that you only need to be competent with a few editing tools to accomplish anything. There may be fancy new ways of doing things, but the classics are always the best. It reminds me of when I switched from power tools to hand tools for woodworking. You can do 99% of everything with about ten hand tools, and as long as you're not doing it all day professionally, they'll get the job done!
Agreed. There shouldn't even be "how to achieve this effect in PS" or "how to do this in Affinity" tutorials, just "how to do this with standard primitives (masks, blend modes, etc)", in my opinion.
Also: Reading your site and this: "No AI tools here – plenty of other apps do that. We focus on deterministic and mathematical mutations rather than stochastically generated slop." HILARIOUS! I appreciate this.
Check out today's release, now with much more control over character and paragraph styles.
WooHoo! I'll check it out and add it to the feature book!