Acorn 4 - The Image Editor for Humans 4.0.5
Device: Mac OS
Category: Graphics & Design
Price: $49.99, Version: 4.0.4 -> 4.0.5 (iTunes)
Description:Everyone needs to edit images at some point, but not everyone has the time to learn complicated super pricey image editing programs. This is why we created Acorn. Add text and shapes to your digital pictures. Combine images together to create your own. Work with layers to touch up your favorite photos or make something new from scratch. Do all this and more with Acorn.Speed: Acorn 4 is a lot faster than its predecessors. And applying filters to large images is a snap.Layer Styles and Non-Destructive Filters: Acorn has all of the filters you're looking for, and even includes a great interface to chain filters together to create unique effects. You can even save and modify your filters after you've closed and re-opened your Acorn image.Curves and Levels: Use Acorn 4's new curves window and levels sliders to quickly adjust the color balance in your images.Layers: Use layers and blending modes to make the most of photo editing by allowing easy placement of text and other objects without destroying the picture underneath. Layers allow you to try things out, and change your mind later on.Tutorials and Documentation: Acorn comes with online documentation, tutorials, and a forum, so you don't have to learn by yourself.Text: Acorn's text tools give you control over text while maintaining an easy to use interface. Everything is in the text palette from bold and italic to kern and ligature. There's even spell check. Convert your text into a Bezier Path to take it to the next level. Since Acorn's text tool uses OS X’s native text engine, you get full Unicode support.Drawing: Acorn features brushes that let you draw, scribble, and sketch right on your image. Use a track pad, mouse, or even a tablet. Create your own brushes using Acorn's built in brush designer.Erasing: Powerful eraser tools like Instant Alpha and eraser brushes make removing unwanted areas of your image both fast and fun.Layer Masks: Use layer masks in your image to block out unwanted areas or to expose layers below.Gradients: Acorn's multi-stop gradients place endless combinations of colors at your fingertips. Add and remove colors simply by dragging and dropping them in and out of the gradient preview window.Vector Shapes: Acorn makes creating shapes in your image a breeze. Vector shapes let you make squares, circles and lines, and you keep the flexibility to change things later on. Add and subtract points from Bezier paths and rotate your shapes with the flick of a wrist. And if that wasn't enough- Acorn 4 introduces intersect, union, exclusion, and difference operations on selected shapes. Screenshots: As long as Acorn is open, press the Command-Shift-6 keys while in any application. Acorn will make a screenshot of your entire screen. Your image will be brought into Acorn immediately, ready for work.Selections: Make selections, invert them, feather, and even add a corner radius. Use Quick Mask mode for intricate selections. Or, if you're looking to quickly select an entire color, try using the Magic Wand.Web Export: When you need to get that image size smaller and still looking good for the web, take a look at Web Export. Acorn provides an estimate for the export file size and lets you compare the compressed version to the original.Photoshop Files: Acorn now offers improved support for loading PSD images, and for exporting your images as layered Photoshop files.Performance: Acorn goes all the way up to 64. Bits that is. Faster performance means less time spent waiting and more time for creating.Automate and Script Acorn: Automate Acorn using Automator, AppleScript, and even JavaScript by way of JSTalk. And there are plenty of examples for you to build on. You can even write custom plugins for Acorn using the Python scripting language, JavaScript, as well as Objective-C.
What's New
# Lots of bug fixes!Fixed a bug where the Save panel would sometimes show a checkbox in the middle of the file listing when you had versions turned on.Fixed a bug where the tools palette color well wouldn't update its color if you changed the color of a text box via the font palette.Change: When calling a filter via the Filter menu, it is now immediately used for the "Last Filter" menu item instead of waiting for a layer to flatten its filters.Fixed a bug where the Grid filter wasn't drawing correctly with some oddball settings.Fixed a bug when opening files via JavaScript.Fixed some various color mismatch problems with the brush and Edit ▸ Fill command.Fixed a problem where the flood fill tool was using a bad color with images which had their colorspace set to device RGB.Fixed a problem where temporary undo files weren't being cleaned up.Performance improvements when drawing on a retina display, as well as color space fixes on a retina display.Making a magic wand selection is a little bit faster now.Fixed some memory leaks when using instant alpha or the magic wand tool.Fixed an issue where using the Edit ▸ Font ▸ Bigger / Smaller menu item would cause ranges of bold text in a text area to be lost.Fixed an issue where free transform would stop keeping the aspect ratio when resizing with the shift key down.Fixed a bug where two point bezier shapes would sometimes loose their stroke width when the image was resized.Fixed a bug where the selection cursor was showing a little blurry on retina displays.Fixed a color space problem when applying Quartz Composer filters to layers.Fixed a bug with the JS scripting environment, where calling array.length() wouldn't work correctly.Fixed a bug with auto-levels sometimes moving a layer around a bit.Fixed a couple of memory leaks.Fixed a problem where the fill window wouldn't always do the right thing when filling a layer with the clipboard contents.Fixed a problem where changing the matte color in web export would also change the color of any currently selected text boxes.Fixed a problem where duplicating a bitmap layer on a RMBP display would sometimes assign the wrong colorspace to the new layer.Fixed a slowdown with the brush tool when drawing in a selection.Fixed a bug where dragging an image from Safari to Acorn's doc where the img had an href tag to / would cause Acorn to try and find every single image on your computer and stick it in the Image Browser. Which would take a very, very long time.Change: Now putting PNG data on the clipboard when using the Copy Merged command, to help out with other apps that don't bother reading the TIFF data.Fix: The zoom cursor will now update correctly when trying to zoom to an area, but you toggle the behavior with the option key (to zoom out vs. zoom in).Fixed a bug where changing the opacity or blend mode when multiple layers was selected would only work on a single layer.Change: PDF files are now opened up as Untitled documents since Acorn won't ever save them in place (export only). This also fixes a bug where Acorn would save over a PDF file on quit.Fixed a bug where the shape corner radius would silently reset to 10 when you flipped the corner radius off and back on again without any shapes selected.When adding a new shape layer when a group layer is selected, Acorn will now insert that shape layer into the group (which currently happens with bitmap and group layers).Fixed a couple of bugs where the ruler wasn't updating correctly when dragging or creating new shapes.Fixed a bug where scaling down text would sometimes clip it.Single clicking inside of a selection will now remove it (previously this only happened when clicking outside of a selection).Fixed an issue where Acorn would remove any extended attributes when saving a file.
Acorn 4 - The Image Editor for Humans