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4 August 2016
Flying Meat has updated Acorn, Gus Mueller's image editing software for OS X 10.10 and later, to version 5.5. The new version features a new color picker, more dithering options, a new spacing option, layer alignment and rotation options and bug fixes.
The release notes detail the new features:
- New color picker. Hold down the option key (while in the canvas) when using the brush, pencil, gradient or fill tools and you'll get a fancy new loupe to select a color from anywhere on the screen (just click to pick your color). You can also scroll in and out with your scroll wheel (with shift+option down) to change how far in the loupe zooms. And finally if you'd like to get finer control when choosing your color, click and drag the mouse and let up when you've chosen your color. (You can also use the arrow keys to move it by single pixel increments). This is amazing. And if your hands are on the keyboard instead of mouse, you can use the keyboard shortcut Control-C to pick a color out.
- Two new dithering filters under Color Adjustment: "1Bit" which will turn your layer in a (seemingly) one bit, black and white image. As well as "Dither," which is a filter which lets you choose from four different types of dithers: Atkinson (old school Mac OS), Floyd Steinberg, Gaussian Blue and Ordered Reproducible.
- Color profile, bit depth and DPI of an image are now listed in the Metadata window.
- New Spacing option in the "Arrange Shapes in a Circle" shape processor. A setting of 0 will mean shapes are auto-spaced around the circle evenly. Any other value between 1-360 is the distance (as an angle) between shapes. This means that shapes can either not make it all the way around the circle or even go around multiple times. Bonus- combine this with the Translate shape process to make shapes do a loop across your canvas.
- Layer alignment options: Select multiple layers and use the various options under Layer>Rotate and Transform>Align to have edges line up or center in canvas or so on. Hold down the option key for more menu items.
- The Layer>Rotate and Transform>Rotate 90° layer menu items now work on a selection.
The $29.99 image editor is available as a 14-day free trial and may be purchased directly from Flying Meat or through the Apple App Store, with a few less tricks up its sleeve.