Acorn 3.2

Everyone needs to edit images at some point, but not everyone has the time to learn super pricey wizbang 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 favorites or make something new from scratch. Do all this and more with Acorn.

Straightforward, convenient, and easy.
All of the tools condense into one easy to use palette to keep your screen uncluttered and inviting. Easily move the palette around if it gets in your way, or press the tab key to make it hide.

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 and tutorials, 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 you expect from Acorn. Everything from bold and italic to kern and ligature. There's even spell check, because we need it.
Since Acorn's text tools build on top of Mac OS X's, you get full unicode support, and rich text formatting.

Drawing
Acorn features brushes that let you draw, scribble, and sketch right on your image. Use a trackpad, mouse, or even a tablet. Acorn has everything you need for making pretty doodles, and even has nifty math to keep those lines looking smooth.
The Brush Designer in Acorn will help you make custom brushes, and will even redraw your test lines in realtime- watch your brush strokes change as you change settings such as flow and size.

Layer Masks
Use layer masks in your image to block out unwanted areas of your image or to expose layers below.


Filters
Acorn has all of the filters you're looking for, and even includes a great interface to chain filters together to get unique effects. Perform the same filter chain again by choosing "Last Filter" or save your filter as a preset for later use.

Vector Shapes
Vector shapes let you make squares, circles and lines, but keep the flexibility of changing things later on. Don't like the color of the border? Swap it out. Do you want to make that rectangle have rounded corners after you've made it? Don't worry about it, just click some buttons and it is done.
You can also scale vector shapes easily without having to stress about the shape getting pixelated or looking funny. Acorn makes adding shapes to your image a breeze.

Screenshots
Acorn makes it easy to create mock-ups and work with screenshots. As long as Acorn is open, press the Command-Shift-6 keys while in any application,and Acorn will make a screenshot of your whole screen.
Your image will be brought into Acorn immediately, ready for work. You can even turn on a preference to make every window in the screenshot its own layer. Use this in combination with the vector and text tools to create amazing mock-ups quickly.

Selections
Make different shaped selections, invert them, feather, even add a corner radius. Or, if you're looking to quickly select an entire color, try using the Magic Wand for some quick changes.
Selections can also limit the effects of filters and adjustments. If you have a picture that is a little dim in the corner, try selecting it, feathering the selection, and bumping up the colors using the Levels command under the image menu.

Web Export
Acorn supports many file formats, but 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.

Performance
Acorn goes all the way up to 64. Bits that is. And along with running on your computer's 64 bit Intel chip, Acorn utilizes your graphics processor unit (GPU) for additional graphics power where appropriate. Less waiting equals more time creating.

Requires Max OS X 10.6.6 or later.

Version 3.2:
New: A new pref to ignore rotation gestures has been added.
New: Individual points in a bezier curve can now be selected and moved with the arrow keys.
New: Clicking on the gradient preview where you'd like a new color stop to show up will now add one.
New: Performance improvements with very large images.
New: The brush designer can now make brushes up to 400px in size.
New: The "Layer on Images in Acorn" Automator Action now has an opacity option when adding a new layer, making it easier to add watermarks to your images.

Change: If you add a new group layer using the tool palette + button (hold down the command key when pressing) Acorn will automatically being editing the layer name for you so you can give it a better name than just "Group"
Change: Text now has it's own setting for stroke with. Previously, setting the stroke from the shape palette would work on text, now it only works from the text palette.
Change: The hidden pref for adding a "Save A Copy As…" has been removed, since it caused problems on 10.7 with autosave and versions turned on. Since this operation was basically an export, we've assigned the keyboard shortcut for that option to the Export… menu item (cmd-option-s), so everything should be just as awesome as it has always been. However, make sure to let us know if this ruins your day.
Change: The system font palette (the one that comes up with cmd-t) no longer shows the text shadow widgets. To add a shadow to text, use the shadow widget under the shape palette, or add a drop shadow layer style.
Changed the for how paths to your workspace documents are saved. This means on the first launch of 3.2, your workspace won't be remembered if you are on 10.6 (this does not effect 10.7 folks). However, later workspaces will be remembered.
The "Layer on Images in Acorn" no longer automatically closes documents.

Fix: Fixed a crasher when applying a layer style preset.
Fix: Fixed a bug where your selection was lost when performing a transform on a layer with a selection.
Fix: When dragging an image out of the layers list to the desktop, a PNG was written without the correct DPI. This has been fixed so it writes the correct DPI to the image now.
Fix: Sometimes when you rotated rectangle or oval shapes that were rotated, the location in the canvas would change. This has been fixed.
Fix: JPEG 2000 files now save and export with transparency.
Fix: Fixed a problem where moving a rotated shape would cause strange drawing.
Fix: Acorn would switch spaces on 10.7 when you were in full screen mode on 10.7, and you tried to move a canvas guide. This issue has been squashed.
Fix: Some filters (such as the sunbeam filter) did not show the correct results in the canvas preview. This has been corrected.
Fix: Drawing on a quickmask or layer mask when you had the opacity slider set to to something other than 100% would delay the showing of the output. This has been fixed.
Fix: Corrected an issue where sometimes free rotating a canvas exactly 180 degrees would increase the size of the canvas unexpectedly.
Fix: Undo was sometimes broken after using various Automator actions in Acorn. This has now been corrected.
Fix: Acorn would crash when opening up PSD files which had more than 190 layers. In cases where a PSD has more than 190 layers, Acorn will now open up the image as a single layer.
Fix: The bezier tool works a lot better when snap to pixel is turned on.
Fix: Numerous drawing and behavior fixes when using the bezier tool + zoomed into the canvas.
Fix: When zoomed way in on a selection, the marching ants now correctly draw in straight lines between adjoining pixels.
Fix: The View ▸ Enter / Exit Full Screen menu item now correctly updates depending on what state the window is in for 10.7 folks.
Fix: Fixed a crasher when selecting the Depth of Field from the filters sheet.
Fix: Fixed a crasher when using the instant alpha tool. My undying gratitude to Jeff Buck for finding a reproducible case for this.
Fix: Fixed a crasher when opening up a malformed PDF file.
Fix: Now reading in the correct color space when opening a PSD file.
Fix: Fixed a crasher when using the magic wand tool with bitmap layers of a certain frame.
Fix: Fixed a bug where sometimes the sliders on the gradient preview would become unresponsive.
Fix: Fixed a crasher when opening up certain PSD files.
Fix: Improvements to the bezier tool when snap to pixels is turned on.

Other: Acorn is now building in Xcode 4.2, various framework bits have been moved around, and there's even an experimental sandboxed version of Acorn on the latest downloads page if you want to play with it.
Other: There's a new hidden pref, using a different text rendering path for Acorn. To enable it, open up Terminal and paste this in:
defaults write com.flyingmeat.Acorn nsTextDrawing 1
It hasn't been fully tested yet, but it does fix some issues with the current text path.