Acorn 8.5 is out!

Acorn
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I’ve just release Acorn 8.5, which you can grab from https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/, or using the in-app updater. Here’s the release notes:

# New Shape Things

  • Arrows have a new style: Bendable. With this option selected in the new Arrow shape palette, you can make your arrows curve across the canvas. We’ve also added the option to have an arrow head at either end of your line (and much rejoicing was had).
  • There is a new Shape Processor named Random Location from Circle which will either randomly move all shapes inside, outside, or along the edge of the adjustable circle. This is handy if you are making abstract art or custom wallpapers for your phone or desktop.

# New SVG Things

  • The SVG parser for Acorn has been updated to support more element types, styles, and other SVG goodies.
  • Text on a path is now supported.
  • Embedded images are now supported.
  • Poly lines and referenced elements are now supported.
  • Improvements to the path importer, now supporting rarely used path instructions.
  • Drop shadows on elements are now supported.
  • Element transforms have been greatly improved.
  • Opening a SVG as a single layer bitmap: Holding down the option key when opening a SVG will render your image as a bitmap. This uses the WebKit (aka, Safari) framework to rasterize the SVG, and it should look just like it does on the web.
  • Lots of other little things. Acorn’s importer is much improved, but if you come across a SVG that it can’t import and you think it should, make sure to send it to us: support@flyingmeat.com

# New Other Things

  • The Linear Multi-Stop Gradient and Radial Multi-Stop Gradient filters now support a couple of different color interpolations: Document, sRGB, Perceptual (Oklab), and Linear. Oklab is a great choice, and it’s now the default when creating a new filter.
  • When exporting an image as TGA you can now set the compression options.
  • You can now toggle the window UI by pressing the keys Option-Tab. Pro tip: Did you know pressing the Tab key will toggle all the palettes?
  • The RAW Import and New View windows now have overscroll and better zooming capabilities.
  • Drop shadows from layer effects are now imported from PSD files, and exported to layered PSD if you have a drop shadow layer style in an Acorn image.
  • New “Clear All Measurement Rulers” Action Bar item that will remove all the on canvas measurement rulers.
  • Clicking down on your scroll wheel mouse button (if you have one) will now let you pan your image around.

# Other

  • Renamed the Shape ▸ Align ▸ “Vertical / Horizontal Distribute Center” menu items to “Vertical / Horizontal Distribute Bounds”, which more accurately reflects what it does.
  • New Command Bar actions: Horizontal Distribute Left Edges, Horizontal Distribute Right Edges, Vertical Distribute Top Edges, Vertical Distribute Bottom Edges.
  • You can now drag and drop an image’s proxy icon onto its own canvas or layers list to duplicate all the layers in the image.
  • Undo now works when using the Free Rotate tool.
  • The Zoom tool now defaults to having the pref “Scrub zoom” turned on. You can change this back to the previous default in the Zoom palette.
  • UI refinements.
  • Bézier path editing refinements.
  • Holding down the Option key while clicking the Dock icon in the Settings… ▸ Mueller tab will reset it to the default on whatever system you are on is. So if you’re using tinted icons and don’t want either selection, this will come in handy.
  • Tweaked how images are opened a bit, so they open centered if multiple tabs are already visible.
  • Updated German, French, and Spanish localizations.

# Changes

  • General performance improvements with Bézier paths and arrows. And they use less memory now as well (which is awesome because we’re in the middle of a global memory shortage and we need to save all the bits we can).
  • There’s a new little heuristic for enabling the fill or stroke when changing the color for selected graphics. Acorn will now turn on fill or stroke when you change the fill/stroke color if a single shape is selected; but if there are multiple shapes selected with multiple enabled states for fill or stroke, then Acorn will not enable the property when a color change occurs.

# Fixes

  • The option for the number of Hysteresis Passes in the Canny Edge Detector filter is now visible.
  • Fixed a problem where you couldn’t edit existing text by clicking on it with the text tool when it was selected, and you had the Fussy Stuff setting “Always make new layers for text boxes” enabled.
  • Fixed a little bug where Instant Alpha wouldn’t work on selections after they were moved with the mouse.
  • Histograms are now a little bit smarter at drawing.
  • Tweaks to how the clone tool works across images.
  • Fixed an issue where you could’t move selected anchors in a Bézier path with the arrow keys.
  • Fixed a problem where the multi-stop linear gradient filter wasn’t working so well on smaller dimensioned images (less than 512px in size).
  • Fixed a problem where the Generate Shapes processor would hide all shapes when using the Shape: pulldown and you moved the cursor outside the menu.
  • Fixed an issue where the tab bar was getting in the way when canvases were in edge-to-edge mode.
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