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Personally, I prefer Acorn to Pixelmator. It's on sale for a limited time: http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

I'm wondering the same thing. Is Pixelmator + Sketch the best indie alternative to Photoshop + Illustrator?

If you're looking for something to use for more traditional Illustrator purposes (graphics, identity design, illustration), you might want to look into iDraw, which is less UI-focused than Sketch, though both are quite powerful indie Illustrator replacements.

Pixelmator makes sense if you're actually working with photos, but just like Photoshop, I wouldn't recommend it for UI design.

I think Pixelmator is an excellent replacement for Photoshop, but right now Sketch is more of a replacement for Fireworks than Illustrator in my experience.

Probably. Pixelmator is awesome but drawing objects with it is still not great.

Can Pixelmator actually do smudging now? It's the main that kept me with GIMP instead.

Yep: http://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/retouching/smudge-tool/