What does Apple’s Pixelmator purchase mean for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac? This is the most likely scenario

• Apple recently bought the popular photo editing app Pixelmator
• A new theory suggests it may ultimately become Apple ‘Photos Pro’
• Pixemator’s apps will continue in their current form “at this time”

Last week, Apple used some of its spare change to buy one of the Mac’s best photo editors, Pixelmator – and since then, theories have been flying about what the deal means for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

For now, the answer is not a lot, because the app’s maker says there won’t be “material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time”. But now Bloomberg’s respected Apple commentator Mark Gurman has shared what he thinks the plan is in his Power On newsletter – and it’s not quite as wallet-friendly as we’d hoped.

Gurman’s Pixelmator prediction is that it will become “something like “Photos Pro” and gets offered as a subscription on the App Store alongside new iPad programs like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro”.

That move would dash hopes that Pixelmator’s many appealing talents, including a powerful repair tool, AI background masks, and more, might be folded into Apple’s free Photos app. However, it would also make perfect sense in the context of Apple’s other creative apps.

As Gurman notes, creating a ‘Photos Pro’ would mean that Apple would “once again have both consumer and higher-end iterations of its video, music, and photo-editing apps (with Photos, GarageBand, and iMovie serving as the free downscale versions)”. The Pro versions of the latter are Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro.

Lastly, he adds that “given Apple’s push to boost services revenue, I think you can rule out it giving away Pixelmator features for free in its current Photos…