Last week we gave you a sneak peek of the next major version of Pixelmator — today it has been officially released. As we outlined last week, Pixelmator 1.6 adds many new features and enhancements including major performance improvements, 64-bit support, layer groups, an Import feature, Flickr support, Facebook support, Picasa support, and redesigned transform tools, among other changes.

“Pixelmator makes it incredibly easy and fun for anyone to enjoy the best of image editing,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Now, with Pixelmator 1.6’s Nucleus foundation, which takes advantage of the latest Mac OS X technologies, Pixelmator delivers the greatest-possible image editing performance ever.”

One of my favorite new features is the ability to do watermarking using Apple’s Automator workflows.

Pixelmator is a free update for existing users and costs $59 for new users.