Menu Items

Quickly studying the various menus can be a great way of discovering some of the features that Acorn has which don't hang out in the Tools Palette. The menus are just a click away, but if you find yourself performing a repetitive task, it might be helpful to learn the hotkey, which will be located to the left of each menu item. Command N, for example, will create a new document. You might be used to using hotkeys in another application, such as command C for copy. Try using those same hotkeys in Acorn, you might be pleasantly surprised.

File Menu

The file menu is where you open, save, print and perform other similar actions.

Open Folder... will ask you to find a folder of images to open. This can help find the right picture to edit, or make a nifty slideshow. Check out the slideshow page for more information.

Save As... Will let you save the file under a new name and as a new type of file. Acorn uses the .acorn file type to save files so you have the ability to edit them later without losing all of your layers or shape objects. However if you want to save it out as a .jpg in order to send it to someone who doesn't have acorn, or to send it to another application, you can choose this menu item and set the format to JPEG

Web Export... will save out in a format that is ready for the web. There is a slider which controls how compressed the image is, and a read out at the bottom of the window to tell you the final size. If you're getting your image ready to put onto a website, or even emailing it off to someone, look at this menu option. Exporting for web will dramatically reduce file size and speed up the process.

Actions Menu

The actions menu is something to drool about, with these options you can quickly send your image out to iPhoto, out to a new Mail message or many other things. If you're looking for more actions check out the Extra Scripts page.

View Menu

The view menu is a list of every tool as well as some zooming controls. This is a great place to come if you're ready to learn the keyboard shortcuts for Acorn.

Image Menu

Resize Image... lets you change the total size of the image.

Rotate Canvas will change the orientation of image that you're working on.

Trim to Edges will crop the unused space out of image. Having trouble with this feature? If there is a layer hiding somewhere that has, perhaps, white filling the entire canvas, it will block this feature from cropping down. It only works for images on a transparent background.

Levels Check out the Levels page for more information on this tool.

Adjust Color... has in it controls for Saturation, Brightness and Contrast.

New Layer/ Image from iSight... will take a picture with your built in iSight or webcam and create a new layer or image with it.

Layer Menu

The layer menu features commands that will only effect the layer that is currently selected in the layers palette. Be sure you're selected on the right layer then feel free to Duplicate, Transform, Rotate or Delete.

Filter Menu

The filters menu features many amazingly useful filters for manipulating your image. For more information on this check out the Acorn Filters page.

Select Menu

The select menu lets you select all, clear selection (select none), invert what is selected and what isn't, and feather the selection. Check out the tips and tricks section for an example of using selections.


Opening Acorn
Tools Palette
Layers
Colors and Fonts Palettes
Menu Items
Taking Screen Shots with Acorn
Making Slideshows with Acorn


Back to Acorn