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The non-destructive filters can be stacked, reordered, and readjusted If you're coming from Acorn 3, it’s not immediately obvious that anything has changed, but that’s only before you click the "fx" button and see the new Layer Filters palette for the first time. In the top half of the right-hand panel you get contextual settings for your current tool, and down below, a layers list complete with most of the features a Photoshop user would expect - grouping, layer masks, locking, and blending and opacity controls. "I try and target the people who have used iPhoto," says Mueller, giving an indication of the kind of visual simplicity he's aiming for. If you’ve used Photoshop you’ll be able to find your way around easily, and many of the keyboard shortcuts carry over, but the UI is stripped down to the bone. Over the years, Mueller has focused on making the app feel (and behave - more below) as "Mac-like" as possible, and it shows.
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#Acorn photo editor for mac update#
If you’ve been reluctant to try Acorn because you’ve heard it lags behind competitors like Pixelmator, the speed improvements in today’s update definitely make it worth another look.Īs far as aesthetics go, Acorn 4 is a good-looking app but it isn't trying to break the mold - everything is subdued, but clean and easy to navigate. Mueller says that tools like Flood Fill and the Magic Wand also got speed bumps, although the difference wasn’t as noticeable to me. Many parts of the app, like the Move tool, feel noticeably snappier than Acorn 3, but the performance of filters in particular feels like a huge step forward. Today, Flying Meat is releasing Acorn 4, the first major update for the product since 2011, and even if you’ve given the $49.99 editor a good look in the past, you’d be well advised to pull up a chair, grab some images, and check out what’s taken Mueller - the sole developer behind Acorn - the past two years to build.įirst things first: Acorn 4 is faster, and by a lot. If you’ve ever needed to edit images on OS X only to balk at Adobe’s industry-leading price tag, chances are good that you’ve bumped into Flying Meat’s Acorn, "the image editor for humans," according to creator Gus Mueller.
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Adobe Photoshop, the gold standard in image editing for print and the web, retails for $699.