Random Acorn Thoughs

Link: 10/09/2007 03:09 PM 14 comments

Lots of typing going on today, lots of good feedback- thank you all, it's been awesome so far. I'm very happy with the reception that Acorn is getting.

I had been thinking for a while that when I'd ship Acorn I'd buy myself an xbox 360, so I could play some of the cool online arcade games like Worms. Then I thought, nah- I'm buying a sea kayak. Ahhhh yes, paddling along the banks of the Puget Sound, with orcas and otters and seals and salmon splashing and playing along side of me, and a view of Mt Rainier in the distance and the Olympic and Cascade mountains on either side. And eventually, that wasn't good enough. I wanted a new house on the Puget Sound, so I wouldn't even have to get in my car to use my kayak! (Ok, that was just a dream, but whatever. It was a good dream).

Ironically, I think I'm going to be buying a copy of Photoshop CS3, so I can figure out just what these feature requests are talking about.

Figures.

On Sep 10, 2007 at 04:00 pm, Rad Smith wrote:

How does one enter a hex color code into Acorn?

On Sep 10, 2007 at 04:44 pm, Gus Mueller wrote:

Currently, it isn't possible to do with acorn by itself.

However, you can install this:
http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/

And it'll show up in your color picker.

On Sep 10, 2007 at 05:30 pm, FlyingMeat Fan wrote:

Why don't you just download Gimp? Doesn't it have about the same feature set?

Or, you could enroll at your local community college and get the student discount. I am sure it would be cheaper than buying it.

Think about the otters, man!

On Sep 10, 2007 at 05:43 pm, CuRoi wrote:

Seriously, get the kayak. I'm living vicariously through you. So if you blow the Bens on CS3 I'll feel so let down.

On Sep 10, 2007 at 05:59 pm, Christian wrote:

Or Seashore: http://seashore.sourceforge.net/

I've been using it for my image editing needs, as Gimp under X11 is so clunky. There are two things that Seashore does that I'd be interested in seeing in Acorn: Select Alpha (for masking), and a Polygon Lasso.

But I'm in no hurry. I've also emailed this request, as I think that's better for a FogBugz workflow, no?

Thanks, Gus!

On Sep 10, 2007 at 07:01 pm, Russ wrote:

Maybe someone could make you some screen casts of how exactly they use these certain requested features and explain what they do? Possibly help you avoid the expense.

On Sep 10, 2007 at 09:52 pm, Sean Harding wrote:

If you're hoping to replace Photoshop for experienced Photoshop users (even for a small subset of the features), GIMP is not going to do the trick by any stretch. GIMP has many of the same features, but many of them are not implemented nearly as well, some very important things are missing and the interface is horrid. If you want to understand what Photoshop users are asking for, Photoshop is the only thing to study.

I'm going to be perfectly honest here. I think Acorn looks like a great app, and I'm *extremely* happy to see some real development in this space. Seriously. And your reputation alone is enough to make me be willing to try a new app. But I'm extremely unlikely to switch away from Photoshop for Acorn at this point. I've been using Photoshop for almost 15 years. I'm very familiar with it and very efficient in it. So any replacement would need to offer some benefit large enough to offset the time I would spend getting up to speed in the new app.

It seems that the two biggest benefits to Acorn are cost and resource requirements. Cost is a non-issue to me, since Photoshop is already paid for (and I need Illustrator and InDesign anyway, so even if I were buying now, the cost of getting Photoshop along with them is minimal). Resource utilization isn't really much of an issue for me either. My machine isn't *that* beefy, but I never really run into major resource problems with Photoshop. Yes, it takes a while to launch, but I usually leave it running for a long time, so that's a cost I incur very rarely. So I'm having a hard time seeing what would be "in it for me" to use Acorn. The interface may be better but again, I am extremely efficient in Photoshop -- I've already overcome the burden created by Photoshop's interface.

The truth is, I'm probably not really your target audience. I don't imagine you're planning to replace Photoshop for heavy users with this release. So this isn't meant to be a criticism -- it's just meant to give you some insight into the perspective of a potential user.

Keep up the great work, and maybe I'll see you at an Xcoders meeting if I ever manage to make it to one ;-)

Sean

On Sep 10, 2007 at 10:04 pm, Gus Mueller wrote:

Acorn isn't meant to be a replacement for Photoshop by any stretch - I just want to get a copy of PS so that I can see what these features are that people are talking about, and wether or not something similar to it would make sense in Acorn.

Someone writes me and says "You should have the Fanbular Dangle Dodad Tool that Photoshop has!", and I say ... "Huh, what the heck is that?". That's all I want it for :)

On Sep 10, 2007 at 11:30 pm, Pieter Omvlee wrote:

I know those kind feedback and buying Photoshop makes sense in that way.
Seeing that it is quite expensive I suppose you made a good first day :-P.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, isn't that what they say? :)

On Sep 11, 2007 at 03:23 am, Jacob Rus wrote:

It's certainly worth playing with Photoshop (that is, spending serious amounts of time exploring its nooks and crannies). The PS UI is *not* optimized for new users, or discoverability, etc. But it is *extremely* efficient for power users. And there are hundreds of tiny features that once you learn about them, make life really nice.

On Sep 11, 2007 at 10:21 am, Greg wrote:

Acorn looks cool. The biggest two features I'd need before funding the kayak or CS3 are:

1) The abilty to save a JPEG with different 'quality' levels. I couldn't find that if it has it.

2) The ability to choose the number of colors and transparency when saving a PNG.

On Sep 11, 2007 at 12:34 pm, Sean Mills wrote:

I use GraphicConverter for my very limited graphics needs (usually just optimize images for the Web), and I find its interface confusing and unattractive. Wish you two could combine forces :o)

Best of luck with your product.

On Sep 11, 2007 at 02:29 pm, Maarten Spreij wrote:

Impressive!

Will there be any kind of batch support or scriptability?

On Sep 12, 2007 at 10:20 am, Michael Barber wrote:

One point of comparison with Photoshop that no one seems to have mentioned yet is in terms of documentation. There are tons of books about Photoshop, and about graphics work assuming you're going to use Photoshop.

Photoshop is way beyond my needs. From what little I've played with it, Acorn seems about right. Now, if I want to learn how to make effective use of that big list of filters, what might be a good book to look at? Ideally, one that's not so centered on Photoshop that reading it is a constant translation effort?