The more I try out image editors Pixelmator & Acorn, the more Acorn’s simplicity and new perspective on the interface grows on me. Pixelmator is looking to be just about perfect for those people who need a Photoshop Elements style app with low overhead at a sweet price point.
Acorn, on the other hand, seems to be carving out a new niche, and developer Gus Mueller has shown in some of the details that’s he’s not trying to compete with Photoshop (or even Pixelmator), rather he’s attempting to do something new & unique. From the single, unified tools palette to the Option & Control key resizing & crop features (with the live pixel dimension display on the bottom left of the window frame) to the live brush size on the brush slider, Mueller demonstrates that he’s been using graphics software, he’s been frustrated with some things, and he’s thought of a way to make it painless, effortless and intuitive.
Once you’ve worked a bit in Acorn with some of these novel approaches to old habits, you’ll soon wonder why it was never done this way before.
Continue reading 'Acorn: The Leatherman Tool of Image Editors'
by George Coghill -
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A quick overview comparing the two new image editors Pixelmator and Acorn by designer John Whipple. I would have to agree with most of his points. The one thing I really, really like about Acorn is the handy resizing & cropping keyboard modifiers: hold Option and drag to resize, hold Control and drag to crop. It’s a very clever and very handy way to do things quickly. The zoom slider at the bottom of the window is nice as well. Oh, and the integrated screenshot tool.
Continue reading 'Pixelmator & Acorn: Quick Comparison Review'
by George Coghill -
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A cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.
This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.
Continue reading 'Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier'
by George Coghill -
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A new image editor snuck in under the radar a few days back: Acorn. It’s a pretty nice lightweight alternative to Photoshop for either users who don’t need all the bells and whistles the Adobe juggernaut has to offer, or would like to have a companion app for those times when you just need to do some quick edits and don’t want to fire up Photoshop just for an annotated screenshot.
If Adobe has Photoshop Elements, you could call Acorn “Photoshop Molecule”.
Continue reading 'Acorn: Handy Lightweight Pixel-Based Image Editor'
by George Coghill -
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Genopal is a color scheme generator software application I just stumbled across, and it’s pretty interesting.
Instead of the standard color wheels most color scheme generator/explorer software programs utilize, Genopal doesn’t give you the option of choosing a color model such as Complimentary, Triadic and such. Instead there are two sliders, one for Color Diversity and one for Lightness Diversity. There’s a “Generate” button which them cycles though color schemes as analagous or as wild as you set the sliders.
Continue reading 'Genopal Color Scheme Generator Software: Weird Name, Cool Tool'
by George Coghill -
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This one is hard to explain without watching the YouTube video over at Creative Bits: Content Aware Image Resizing
The video is a demonstration/presentation from the annual SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) Conference. In short, the video demonstrates computer algorithms which allow an image to be resized horizontally or vertically non-proportionally, without distorting the image. Elements are “reshuffled” inside the image to keep the same basic look of the visual information.
Very interesting.
by George Coghill -
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Paintbrush a cool little free image editor/paint software program for Mac OS X. As the site says, this is no Photoshop competitor. It’s just your basic paint program like Microsoft Paint or the old MacPaint. It has just the basics – pencil, paintbrush, line, rectangle & circle tools, eraser, text etc. Even lets you open up an image and draw on top of it.
Still, it’s a solid application and thought out. Opens quick, runs smoothly, some cool little animations for windows and tools. Definitely designed with fun in mind.
Continue reading 'Paintbrush: Free Bitmap Image Editor For Mac OS X'
by George Coghill -
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Pixelmator is a brand new (and still in beta) raster image editor for Mac OS X. What seems to set it apart, at least from the descriptions and screen shots on their website, is it’s very Mac OS X-ish GUI (Graphic User Interface). Everything has those cool-looking, smoky translucent windows.
I’m not sure how the all-black interface would flow for me, but I am willing to try it out. Looks like a nice lightweight Photoshop alternative for those out there without full Photoshop needs, without sacrificing some of the must-have Photoshop features like layers, thenow-stamdard tool set, transparency, layer blending and certain retouching & effects.
Coincidentally TUAW has a post today about the first public beta being out, and they have a “first look” review. The prognosis is positive, but they say it definitely needs more work under the hood. There’s also an introductory video to Pixelmator.
I am looking forward to trying out the demo. I am not sure how much of a use I will have for this, being a Photoshop owner and all, but I still enjoy seeing how other software makers solve challenges like layers, filter & effect applying and other tools. The intro video shows some potentially cool ways to handle gradients.
via Derek Bender
by George Coghill -
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