The Flying Meat Weblog http://flyingmeat.com/blog/ 2010-06-14T10:12:18-08:00 Gus Mueller VoodooPad used for Advanced iPhone Development urn:uuid:c797ead2-8c24-4f0b-b864-69ffabfbe820 2010-06-14T10:09:21-08:00 2010-06-14T10:12:12-08:00 class on Advanced iPhone Development, which is available via iTunes U.

But even awesomemer than that, he's using VoodooPad Lite for the class notes, and you can grab those notes from the course's iTunes U page. It's worth checking out just to see how other folks use VoodooPad to take notes. ]]> Acorn 2.3 is released, and what FM is doing next urn:uuid:4bc4b9d8-4678-4164-b30d-4907039e9e46 2010-04-30T12:40:08-08:00 2010-04-30T12:41:07-08:00 Acorn 2.3 is released! You can read a little bit about this over on Gus's website, and also what the near-term future for Flying Meat holds. ]]> Macgasm: Make your Photos pop with Acorn urn:uuid:01491553-22b6-43b5-862c-cd3421b16447 2010-03-30T18:12:44-08:00 2010-03-30T18:13:37-08:00 Make your Photos pop with Acorn.

Today, I want to give you my tip for making your images pop when you don’t have all day to tweak them.
]]> Acorn: Impressive Pixel Editor for Mac urn:uuid:11c8c22f-b381-4f57-b135-b47b90469991 2010-03-30T14:20:11-08:00 2010-03-30T14:21:50-08:00 Impressive Pixel Editor for Mac.

"Flying Meat Software has a fantastic alternative: Acorn. Priced at only $49.95 (and read on for details on the free option). It’s a suprisingly powerful app with some features Adobe could learn a trick or two from."
]]> RogueSheep: Acorn and JSTalk urn:uuid:203fd7f2-fc1d-4e08-881f-87b9e2ba3309 2010-03-27T18:24:27-08:00 2010-03-27T18:24:28-08:00 make a bunch of custom promo cards for Macworld Expo:

"In total we had four versions of Postage plus, SnoGlobe and RoseGlobe that we wanted to make a full set of 50 moo cards with a promo code on the back for. That was 300 unique images we need to make and upload! Certainly a tedious process at best.

"Lucky for us, we had some automation magic in our toolchest thanks to Flying Meat’s image editor Acorn and Gus’s excellent new technology project JSTalk."
]]> Acorn 2.2.2 Released urn:uuid:b181bee9-800e-4dd6-a3d2-723156384f58 2010-03-22T12:16:47-08:00 2010-03-22T12:18:08-08:00 Acorn 2.2.2. This is mostly a bug fix release, and you can read the (short, but gory) details in the release notes.

If you run into a bug, you know where to send it! ]]> Acorn 2.2 Released urn:uuid:12c828b9-a142-451a-a3e4-14501fce4ad4 2010-01-12T10:35:51-08:00 2010-01-12T10:59:42-08:00 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 Released urn:uuid:0c9db61b-8313-4be2-a1de-bf2c63cc7984 2010-01-01T12:52:40-08:00 2010-01-01T12:55:41-08:00 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. ]]> Run a WebDAV server on your Mac to sync VoodooPad urn:uuid:b8c34e49-c67d-4798-9295-79aa641e5513 2009-12-12T13:01:40-08:00 2009-12-12T13:03:13-08:00 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 Wins an Eddy urn:uuid:cda0534a-2dcb-4806-925a-e111cffbf5c7 2009-12-10T10:03:22-08:00 2009-12-10T10:04:55-08:00 won a Macworld Eddy! ]]> Acorn 2.1 released urn:uuid:4cb5b1b6-b821-4776-8cc6-fa70dc168ca3 2009-10-16T11:26:34-08:00 2009-10-16T11:41:02-08:00 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.
]]> A Couple of Neat Acorn Tricks urn:uuid:38e4d50a-5df7-4d36-b226-e1cc6080c60e 2009-09-21T15:36:54-08:00 2009-09-21T15:36:55-08:00 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. ]]>