u/banana_zest

For Mojave Paint I've had an anti-subscription stance from the start, it being an installed binary not a service that has ongoing infrastructure costs.

But I recently installed Final Cut Pro and instead of $300 to buy it I do the $13/month subscription. In that case it's nice to have the option and it's made me rethink hating on subscriptions. Maybe subscription is fine if:

a. It's an alternative to buying outright
b. It's priced cheap enough

Most people's subscriptions are simply way too expensive. For FCP, the break even point is about two years, which makes the subscription seem like kind of a deal.

So for Mojave Paint, say I get the feature set rounded out and start charging $20 for it, the right price for subscription would be $1/month. I'm sort of leaning to this model because the Mac App Store has no free trial option, so you're stuck with IAP or Subscription and I pretty much hate IAP and the huckster marketing you have to put in there of "Go Pro!" So what I'm kind of leaning to is selling: 1. On my website via lemonsqueezy or whatever, perpetual license with 2 years of updates (Sublime Text style), and 2. The only version in the Mac App Store is the cheaply priced subscription version, which you can consider to be like a free-ish trial.

Has anyone had success with such a pricing scheme?

https://preview.redd.it/rn75urrvop6h1.png?width=2870&format=png&auto=webp&s=ce772df599d05b2fbab742ed93138591801b0010

Lots to share from the last month!

Mojave Paint is my Mac-first professional image editing software with the credo that "90's software was the best software" and also that "AI can shove it."

The app itself now has Adjustment Layers, just the basic six so far (solid fill, gradient fill, curves, levels, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation) for non-destructive adjustments to the layer stack below. See all the release notes on https://mojavepaint.app/release-notes

Those release note are on the new website, very much under construction, but it does have the start of a video gallery (thanks to u/MaxGaav for suggesting I keep them on the site instead of linking out to YouTube). https://mojavepaint.app/

That site features an "Interactive roadmap" with easy one-click upvoting on which features you'd like to see next, haven't gotten much traction with that yet so I'd be grateful if anyone goes there and submits a vote.

And, 1.2 switches to an In App Purchase model, $9.99 tier to unlock file exporting. The free version has all features except for exporting. I'm a bit opposed to IAP since you don't know up front how much it'll cost, but this does seem like the only way to offer free trials through the App Store, so be it.

Next for me: ad compaigns, making marketing materials like lots more videos (I want to reconstruct the WWDC 26 logo in Mojave Paint, in tutorial form, for example).

To satisfy the template:

Problem: Adobe sucks as a company, GIMP is hideous to look at, I think there's room in the market for another option for image editing.

Comparison: Similar products would include Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Acorn, GIMP, Krita. I did a little comparison spreadsheet of the various apps and their shortcuts here, gives you an idea of how similar these product all are. https://mojavepaint.app/shortcuts

Pricing: Free to download, includes all features except export. You can save in native .mojavepaint file format, but to export as JPEG, PNG, etc, it's a one time purchase of $9.99.

I'm building Mojave Paint, for the Mac. I'd love to find people working in a similar space (whether it be GIMP contributors or whatever) to talk about Porter Duff and what interpolating spline is best for upsizing and downsizing, what "antialiasing" even means with the magic wand tool, etc, etc.

Right now I'm thinking instead of adding Photoshop style clipping masks, I can simply add the "src-in" blend mode, and call it "Clip" to make it less technical sounding.

https://preview.redd.it/7z8p2csfmdzg1.png?width=1032&format=png&auto=webp&s=7195faa23aa1768eea8c720070f1333004fa2edd

Problem/Comparison: It seems like all the image editors out their are either a) AI obsessed, b) too content-forward (see https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/03/06/window-chrome-of-our-discontent), c) expensive and/or subscription, d) not respecting the UI paradigms built into everyone's muscle memory from decades of using Photoshop.

So I started a new one.

I was going to price at $20 but based on prior feedback in this subreddit I'm thinking $10 is better. Maybe it can increase as it gains more features.

Pricing: $9.99, get at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mojave-paint/id6759276677?mt=12

Target audience: designers and frontend developers, people with fairly advanced Photoshop skills, people who use layers, channels, masks and blend modes. Heck even other macOS app developers could be customers, if they're building custom looking components instead of relying on native SwiftUI for everything. And in fact all the tool icons and custom tab graphics in Mojave Paint were made in Mojave Paint. As was the "About" screen graphic, and the screenshot images in the App Store.

Thanks for looking!

Hello, I'm building my first macOS app, it's a layer based image editor. Sort of like Acorn, but aiming for a higher level of Photoshop UI compatibility. I won't mention the name since I'm not approved for self-promotion.

I'm currently Apple Silicon only, and macOS 15 or greater. That allows Macs going back to M1, circa 2020 or so. I'm debating whether to loosen this up to allow Intel Macs and possibly also back up to macOS 14 Sonoma. My thinking is, this really only gets me a couple more years, maybe 2018-2020 Macs, and probably isn't worth the trouble. I'd have to buy an Intel Mac for testing.

How do you decide which macOS versions and chip architectures to target?