Acorn 2.2 is out. It took a little longer than I had hoped, but it's ready now and that's good. Go grab it.

Here are the big changes (you can find the full list in the release notes):

• Lots more documentation.
  Christie, my new support ninja + graphics design student has been hard at work adding lots more tutorials, which should help out anyone new to Acorn.


• Bézier Shapes!
  Acorn finally adds Bézier curves to it's vector tools. Right now, it's pretty bare bones, and I know everyone is going to want to do more with them. Just give me time, and your features will probably end up being added.


• Newer, faster, better, stronger flood fill implementation.
  The flood fill that Acorn used previous to 2.2 was kind of flaky. It screwed up colors sometimes (yay colorspaces!), was super slow on big images, and even crashed on occasion. I hired Guy English to redo it in OpenCL for Acorn 2.2, and it works much better now. (Guy doesn't work for Flying Meat, this was just a contract job).


• Lock Layers
  You can now lock layers using the layer contextual menu item, or the Layer ▸ Lock Layer menu item.


• Precision Mode for brushes
  A new "Precision Mode" button for the brush tool, which lets you make your brush strokes in slllllooooooowwwwww mooooooootttttttiiiiiooonnnn. This is handy if you want super fine accuracy when touching up an image.


• New advanced prefs pane, with fancy 'advanced' stuff.
  Change the full screen background color, how fast the precision brush moves, and some other nifty options.


• New "Scale Transform"
  An additional Transform operation "Scale Transform" has been added, bringing the total up to 3. All the transform commands have been moved under a new Layer ▸ Transform menu, and the Scale Transform now uses the ⌘⇧T shortcut, since this is the most common type of transform that folks are trying to do. I've already had some positive feedback about it, so I think this was a good choice to make.


• New UI for canvas rotate + scale transform
  Controls have been moved into the palette when you rotate and scale your image. I find it makes a nicer experience


• Crop Improvements
  Select All now works while you are cropping, and sets the crop to the whole canvas.


• Shape Tool Improvements
  You can now change the bounds of a selected shape from the tools palette. This is a welcome comeback from Acorn 1.x.


• Trackpad Gesture Support
  Trackpad support for zooming, rotating the canvas, three finger swipes for undo and redo, as well as changing the current layer.


• Canvas "Ghosting"
  I'm really not sure what to call this new feature. Shape handles are now drawn outside the canvas when the frame of the graphic are outside the canvas bounds, and bitmaps falling outside the canvas are given a ghost of their bounds.

There's a couple of more little new features, as well as bug fixes of course. All the gory details are in the release notes. If you run into bugs, have suggestions or feature requests, make sure to mail support@flyingmeat.com so we know about them!

VoodooPad 4.2.3 has been released into the wild. You can update it by using the built in updater (using the VoodooPad ▸ Check for Updates menu item), or by downloading it off VoodooPad's website.

This release is mostly for bug fixes, but it also comes with updates to JSTalk and new support for VoodooPad Bookmarklets (these bookmarklets run in VoodooPad, as opposed to running in your web browser). The full release notes are available.

Sam Charrington has a nice writeup on how to run a WebDAV server on your Mac to sync your VoodooPad documents. So if you'd like to sync your docs, and you don't have a MobileMe account, then this is a good way to go.

Acorn 2.1 won a Macworld Eddy!

Acorn 2.1 is out, with bug fixes, a new hex color picker, optimized png web export (via pngcrush), and AppleScript support. All the gory details are in the release notes.

Did you know you holding down cmd-option-shift when moving a selection in Acorn will repeatedly copy + move your selection? This is great if you want to change the size of some UI elements: Command-Option-Move.mov. Holding down the shift key moves it by 10px each time. Letting up on the shift key will move it by 1px each time.

And new to Acorn 2.0.2; when using the brush tool, hold down the spacebar and Acorn will draw 3x slower than it normally would. This is great if you want to be a little bit more detailed when drawing with your brush.

Jeff Schilling : JSTalk, Acorn and iPhone Screen shots.

Jeff put together a JSTalk script to automate part of his workflow, which crops and then saves the image to a new file.

Leroy Campbell shows us how to embed files into a VoodooPad document from LaunchBar. Very cool!

Acorn 2.0 has been released, and it's got a ton of great new features. You can read all about them on the product page, or visit Gus's website for a rundown on what he thinks is best about it.

Ian Beck: In search of a scratchpad, part two:


Ian talks about how he uses VoodooPad.

VoodooPad 4.2 is out, and you can read the full release notes if you'd like.

Besides fixes for a couple of 10.6 bugs, the biggest change is that all the features of VoodooPad Pro have been rolled into VoodooPad regular. The price of VoodooPad has been raised to the halfway point between the two versions as well. So you get all the power of VP Pro, while spending less.

So why kill VoodooPad Pro? It's about simplicity, and wanting to reduce confusion. I just wasn't happy with having 3 different versions anymore, and honestly I'm not happy with 2. I can see a day off in the future (not any time soon!) where there's just VoodooPad, and no longer VoodooPad Lite. You'd still be able to run it for free, but it would be a single binary and go into "free mode" after 14 days or so. I originally got this idea from what Red Sweater did with FastScripts (which also used to have a free Lite version).

If you've got some AppleScript or JSTalk scripts setup to use VoodooPad Pro- don't worry, you won't need to change those to point to VoodooPad. The Pro version is still being built, and is updated along side VP- but they are exactly the same, with the exception of the name. The auto update mechanism will download version 4.2 of VoodooPad Pro, and everything will behave exactly as it always has.

Macworld reviews VoodooPad Pro:

AppStorm: Acorn: A Photoshop Alternative for Mac.

A nice writeup from AppStorm, showing some of the great features in Acorn.

Acorn is in the MacHeist 3 bundle. You can pick it up, along with a bunch of other great apps for a super sweet price: $39.95.

The retail value of all the apps in the bundle is over 600 bucks, holy crap!

VoodooPad has had the ability to install script plugins (written in Python or Lua) right off the Flying Meat website (and only from the FM website) for a while, but I've never actually set up a reasonable place to store those scripts. Well, until now that is.

Grab some 3rd Party Script Plugins for VoodooPad.

There's a handful of scripts that have been used and created over the years, which you might find useful. If you have one you'd like to contribute, or an idea, make sure to let us know by emailing support@flyingmeat.com.

VoodooPad 4.1.1 has been released, and it's all about bug fixes. You can read the release notes, but what you really want to do is just download it because you love fresh bits.

Or use the auto-update built into VoodooPad (under the VoodooPad application menu).

VoodooPad 4.1, and VP Reader for the iPhone have been released!

With VP Reader, you can now download your VoodooPad documents straight to your iPhone or iPod touch, taking your documents with you wherever you go. It's also free!

VoodooPad 4.1 has a bunch of bug fixes, and a couple of new features- including a new Tasks palette which replaces the old floating Tasks window. People got sick of seeing that whenever their document synced.

The full release notes are available for your reading pleasure.

As always, if you run into any problems let us know by mailing support@flyingmeat.com, or using VoodooPad's built in feedback window under the Help menu.

Mitch Chapman has a couple of posts up describing a new bookmarklet feature coming in VoodooPad 4.1, as well as how he's using it with TextMate:

• VoodooPad bookmarklets now support HTML.
• VoodooPad and TextMate.

Mitch has a neat workflow with TextMate + VoodooPad.

To use the new bookmarklet feature, you'll have to grab a development build of VoodooPad.

Alana Post has an Acorn tutorial on her website: How to Dogear a Corner Using Acorn and CSS.

I forgot to mention a feature in the release notes for Acorn 1.5, that there are a couple of new blend modes for layers and brushes (for folks running Mac OS 10.5 or later) . To me, the more interesting of these are the "Plus Lighter", "Plus Darker", and "Destination Out" modes.

If you set your brush's blend mode to Destination Out, you'll get a nice eraser:

Then you can save it using ⌘S, and give it a category of "Erase" like so:


And then it'll show up in your brush list with any other ones you've created:


Another trick you can do with Destination Out is to use a layer as a mask. Here's an image with some alpha in it:



I'm then going to paste that into an existing image in Acorn (which will create a new layer), and then set its blend mode to Destination Out. Here are the results:


Acorn then erases from the image wherever an opaque (or semi-opaque) pixel is, and you can see the checkered background of the canvas through those areas.

I was reading Cocoia Blog's iLife UI Roundup earlier today, and I noticed that Sebastiaan had put some neat little drop shadows on his images, along with a nice border to them. I had also seen a similar look in the latest iPhoto tour, where it had created a nice little polaroid border with curved drop shadows for the print products.

Of course, I want to be able to do that in Acorn. And so I wrote a Python script to achive the effect.


This is Stevie and Jimi before the effect.



And here they are after it is applied
Download the Curved Drop Shadow filter.

To install, unzip the archive, and then place CurvedDropShadow.py in your ~/Library/Application Support/Acorn/Plug-Ins/ folder and restart Acorn if it's already running. It'll show up in your Filters menu with the name "Create New Image with Curved Dropshadow".

Acorn 1.5b1 is ready for testing, for those who like to test such things. You can download it from Flying Meat's latest builds page, and you can also read the beta release notes for the gory details.

The big new feature of 1.5 is a new brush tool, along with the "Brush Designer". The designer lets you make new brushes and change existing ones. It also provides its own little canvas to try out your brush, and as you tweak the settings it will dynamically update your last brush stroke. It's pretty fun to play with and you can find it under the Window menu, or by clicking the new brush selector.

Here's a little movie of me playing with it, using a Wacom tablet.

If you've got any feedback, use the built in reporting tool under the Help menu. And I'd appreciate any you've got!

Here's a little movie on how to make a new "bristly" brush in the current Acorn 1.5 preview. I think this type of brush would be known as a spatter brush in other applications you might be familiar with. (Disclaimer 1: this is from an alpha of Acorn 1.5, and things will certainly change a bit before it ships. Disclaimer 2: I'm narrating the movie and it's not one of my greatest strengths. You've been warned!).

Watch how to create a brush in Acorn.

When Acorn 1.0 shipped it only had a "draw" tool, which is sort of like a traditional pencil tool but with antialiased edges. It worked OK.


I've been wanting to add a real brush tool for a while, and I'm pretty close to getting it in Acorn 1.5. It's been a ton of fun working on and I've had a blast playing with it. It probably goes a little overboard on the configuration options, but most people probably won't ever see Acorn 1.5's "Brush Designer" if they just stick to the included presets.

Here is a movie of Acorn's in-development brush designer: AcornBrushTech.mov
Things will certainly change before the brush designer is finished, so don't get attached to all the options and layout just yet. But it's neat and I wanted to share it with everyone.

VoodooPad 4.0.2 is out, and is a recommended upgrade for all users of VoodooPad 4.

The release notes are available for the gory details.

Did you know that you can take screenshots of windows, with perfect drop shadows and no noisy background? It's pretty easy- press Command-Shift-4 like you normally would to take a screenshot, but then let go and press the space bar. Move your mouse around you'll see that windows you mouse over highlight. Click on the window you'd like a screenshot of, and an image of it will be written to the desktop.

Open that up and Acorn and you'll see that you've got the window, the window drop shadow, but nothing else.

And for extra credit, you can copy the screenshot directly to the clipboard if you hold down the control key when you click the mouse. Then use the "File ▸ New From Clipboard" menu item, or paste directly into an existing image.

I wrote up a little technical article on how VoodooPad 4 does its page syncing as part of VoodooPad's future docs.

It's a little bit technical, but if you are curious about that kind of thing, check it out.

Did you know you don't actually have to click on links to open them?

If the cursor is already positioned on a link to another page or even a URL, you can just press Command-L to open the link (VP is smart enough to figure out you don't want to make a new page).

Did you know it's possible to open up images in Acorn, from a VoodooPad page? You can then alter and save the image in Acorn and it will update directly in VoodooPad.

Click to watch movie.

VoodooPad can also embed native Acorn files within its pages as well, so when you double click it to edit, shapes and layers don't go away. (To add an acorn file to VP, just drag and drop it into a page and choose "Paste" from the sheet that comes up).

There isn't a shortcut for decrypting or encrypting a page, which can be a nuisance if you don't like to have your fingers leave the keyboard. However, if you find yourself sitting at a page that's encrypted, you can press Command-L, and instead of creating a link, VoodooPad will prompt you for the password to decrypt a page.

Gus Mueller describes a little bit on how he uses VoodooPad in "How I use VoodooPad"

Noise Industries is giving away some Core Image filters, which can be used in applications that support Core Image plugins.

Such as our beloved Acorn.

So go grab them and add a couple of extra filters to your toolbox.

Free Textures from Lost and Taken.

You can use these images in Acorn (for free!) to add a bit of texture to your images. Put them in the background, or paste them on a new layer and apply some compoisiting effects.

Michael Tsai has written a handful of Acorn plugins (in python) for trimming images- Acorn Trim Scripts.

"These scripts, inspired by Bosco’s Foto Trimmer, make it easy to crop a single row or column of pixels off the edge of an image. This can save you some intricate mouse work and/or manual typing of pixel values to resize the canvas, and it’s especially useful for manipulating screenshots."