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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Color matching wizards Pantone have been bought out by color management gizmo maker X-Rite (yeah, I never heard of them either). Seems they have been collaborating for some time now, with the Pantone Huey being one of their joint efforts. The Huey is a pretty cool, essential and affordable tool, so perhaps this is a good sign of things to come (see my review of the Pantone Huey monitor calibration tool).
Pantone swatch books are essential tools for any artist/designer working with color, but it’s good to see that the hardware side will no doubt be more aggressively pursued by this merger, since the new owners are hardware based. Such a huge part of the work of many artists and designers create these days is done on the computer monitor, and proper calibration for predictable print output is essential.
via Daring Fireball
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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Primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary, analagous, brightness, hue, value, saturation, tints, shades… do these words mean anything to you? They should.
A post by cartoonist Matt Glover points out ColorFAQ – very basic web guide to color theory. It got me poking around on the internet for some other sites with some more depth on the subject. Sometimes I forget how much I use color theory every single day, it’s just something that sometimes goes on autopilot and is an easy topic to forget to recommend to others.
Continue reading 'Color Theory Resources'
by George Coghill -
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