Acorn 8.0

Gus Mueller:

This is a major update of Acorn, and is currently on a time-limited sale for $19.99. It’s still a one time purchase to use as long as you’d like, and as usual, the full release notes are available. I want to highlight some of my favorite things below.

“Select Subject”, “Mask Subject”, and “Remove Background” are new commands which use machine learning (or A.I. if you prefer) to find the most important parts of your image, and then perform their respective operations. This has been a request for a long time, and while I was doubtful of it’s utility, it’s actually pretty fun to play with and more useful than I figured it would be. So I’m glad I took the time to integrate it.

You can now set your measurement units to inches, centimeter, or pixels, and it shows up across the tools for your image, not just specific ones. This includes the crop palette, shape dimensions, filter settings… well, pretty much everything. This might be the oldest feature request I’ve implemented so far. And then related to this, Acorn 8 now has an on canvas ruler which you can use to measure out distances, straighten your image with, or even redefine the DPI.

Look up Table (LUT) support. LUTs are pretty fun, and they work by mapping one set of colors to another, enabling consistent or stylized visual effects. LUTs are used primarily in photography or filmmaking, and you can download and install new LUTs from various places across the internet.

And more, so much more. The release notes are copious, and for me, always interesting. Acorn remains one of my most-used tools. It’s fast, reliable, powerful, extensible/scriptable, and the interface makes so much intuitive sense. That’s all been true since version 1.0 back in 2007, and that’s why it’s been my go-to image editor since it was in early beta before version 1.0 back in 2007. It’s just faster and more powerful today.

Acorn is, simply put, one of the best Mac apps ever made. It’s that good. You’re nuts (sorry) if you don’t check it out while it’s available for just $20.

★ Tuesday, 17 December 2024