Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Hardware
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Acorn 2.1

November 2, 2009 11:04 AM ET

Macworld - When I reviewed Acorn 1.0.2 ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ) back in October of 2007, I was pleasantly surprised at its capabilities, but wanted a bit more from some of its features, such as better text tools and improved performance. While not designed as a professional-grade image editor, Acorn nonetheless offers an array of editing tools for photography hobbyists and bloggers. And, it's easy on the pocketbook.

Flying Meat has now released Acorn 2.1, and I am pleased at how fast this version runs on my 13-inch MacBook Pro 2.53GHz with 4GB of RAM. Opening, saving, and editing images in the 30MB range was mostly fluid, due in part to the program's new 64-bit support.

The current Acorn program fixes most of the problems I had with the previous version, such as a finicky Text tool, and introduces a much-improved user interface as well as many new features. These include rulers, Raw support, a host of new tools and filters such as Render Clouds, and the ability to group layers.

Other new or improved features include a custom brush designer, vector shapes, improved selection tools, iSight image capture, and Web Export capability--Acorn allows you to save your image as a JPEG, GIF, or PNG while previewing the results side-by-side with the original. Save options also include familiar formats such as TIFF, BMP, and Acorn's own proprietary file format. The only thing I found lacking is the ability to save a layered screenshot as a PSD file; but with plenty of image-editing capability built in to the new version, it's not really necessary to export anything into Photoshop.

By far the most interesting new feature is the program's screen-capture capability. A quick keyboard shortcut immediately opens your screen shot in Acorn; and this is where the magic happens. Acorn saves individual elements of your screen shot on different layers. For example, the Dock appears on its own layer, as do menu bar app icons, application and Finder windows, and application palettes--all named appropriately so it's easy to turn off the visibility of elements you don't want in your image. Layers introduced this concept first, but Acorn gives the benefit of being able to further edit your screen shot without first saving it as a PSD and opening it in Photoshop, which saves valuable time. Anyone who takes a lot of screen shots for their blog or technical manuals will absolutely love this feature.

Acorn 2.1 also brings fairly extensive AppleScript and improved JSTalk support to the app. While this isn't a feature that will appeal to most users, those with a bit of "geek" in them will welcome the addition. Several helpful example scripts are available for download from the Acorn Web site to get you started.


Reprinted with permission from

For more Macintosh news, visit Macworld.com.
Story copyright 2009 Mac Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

Apple

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

What People Are Saying