Acorn for Mac

New Features

• You can now resize selections with on canvas handles. Once you start resizing a selection, a palette appears and you are able to set the width, height, angle, and more. Press enter to finish up.
• New “Crop to Original Bounds” filter, which will will cut out all the pixels outside the original image. This is useful if your image goes through a series of filters that distort it in such a way that the image dimensions grow in size (such as blur filters, distortions, etc). Using this filter will crop it back to the original dimensions.
• The RAW Import window got a big upgrade with more options for making your RAW images come out exactly as you’d like. Updated documentation is available: RAW Image Support.
• New “Scrub zoom” preference in the Zoom palette. When turned on, you can zoom in and out smoothly by clicking and dragging left or right on the canvas when the Zoom tool is active.
• Related bonus features: (A) You can toggle the “Scrub zoom” preference off and on by quickly pressing the z key; (B) You can now zoom in to 25600% (up from 6400%). Tip: You can double click on the zoom slider handle to zoom to 100%.
• The Grayscale Filter has expanded the range for RGB sliders from 0-100% to -200-200%. Additionally, it now includes an Intensity slider that controls the blending of the grayscale filter. This enhancement allows for more creative channel mixing when creating monochromatic images.
• When using the Crop tool, holding down both Option and Shift keys while confirming/committing the crop will add a selection instead of cropping the image. Tip: Holding just the Option key crops the current layer rather than the entire image.
• A new File ▸ Actions menu allows you to place shortcuts, droplets, scripts, and more. This replaces the legacy “File Actions” menu item. You can read more (and learn how to revert to the previous File Actions menu) in the Actions documentation.
• Added a new Make New Layer from Subject menu item, which appears instead of Make Selection from Layer when holding the Option key under the Select menu.
• Introduced two new blend modes: Linear Light and Vivid Light.

Autosaving Changes

• There is a new preference in the Settings window for autosave with three options:
• (A) Off: This will disable all autosaving of images; (B) Native Acorn Images: This will enable autosaving and versions support for native Acorn files only (.acorn); (C) All Images: This will autosave all file types, including lossy encoded images such as JPEG or HEIC.
• The default is set to Native Acorn Images.
• In Acorn 8.0, when autosave was enabled, non-native files would open without a reference to the original file on disk. This is no longer the case in Acorn 8.1, where non-native files open with a reference to the original file, and pressing ⌘S will save back to the original, regardless of the autosave setting.

Other Improvements

• The Smart Layer Export palette now has options to save as WebP and JPEG-XL.
• When exporting images, Acorn does a better job now at stripping out the alpha channel when it’s not needed.
• PSD files now correctly import masks for group layers. If you’re using Etsy frame mockups, this one is for you.
• The RGBA Multiplier filter will now allow you to enter values up to 25500% for the multiplier (up from 1000%).
• If you have multiple shape layers selected in the layers list and use the Edit ▸ Copy menu item, and then use the File ▸ New from Clipboard menu item, the original shape layers will be copied over instead of a bitmap of the layers. SVG data for the selected layers will also be written to the clipboard.
• Acorn now does a better job at auto-scrolling the canvas when working with various tools, and it’s slowed down the rate of auto-scrolling a bit as well.
• Data Merge import will now allow the prefix '@ (single-quote + @ symbol) to denote an image path, in addition to a single @ symbol. This is for Microsoft Excel compatibility, which reserves the @ symbol for functions.
• Slight change to the do JavaScript AppleScript interface, which used to say it returned a value, it no longer does (and never really did anyway).
• The pixel grid is now turned on by default when you are zoomed in at or above 1000%. (Also, that value used to be 500%).
• The brush preview in the inspector palette(s) now clamps to a maximum size of 50 for brush strokes. Previously, large brush sizes made the preview ineffective.
• Minor improvements have been made to SVG export functionality.
• Acorn will display a confirmation prompt in the PDF Import window when attempting to create an image over 50MP, similar to the warning for creating a new image. Additionally, caution is encouraged when trying to create images over 525MP.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with the Levels filter where it could impact other layers.
• Slight tweak to the Fuzz Stroke filter to fix artifacts when the stroke was set to certain sizes.
• Not so much a bug fix, but some slight tweaks to the shape angle widget in the shape palette to get nicer values. Pro Tip: Did you know you can hold down the option key when using this widget to get fractional values?
• Fixed a problem where the canvas preview in the zoom palette might show your image with the wrong color profile.
• Tweaks to how WebP is detected when running Acorn on macOS 14.
• Resolved an issue where moving selections at high zoom levels caused unexpected snapping behavior.
• Fixed a problem with boolean shape operations on shapes with corner radii, which previously resulted in undesired Bézier paths.
• Solved an issue where the minimum size for pencil/pixel tool brushes could be less than 1.
• Addressed an issue preventing text boxes from being moved after using the Data Merge inspector.