A Look at the Acorn Image Editor

I've used Photoshop for eleven years. I use it mostly for design, but also for touching up photos, editing screenshots, and so on. Any image editor I might use either has to replace Photoshop entirely, or carve out its own space. Acorn does the latter.

For me, Acorn is not a complete replacement for Photoshop, but I don't think that's the intent. It's an image editing tool that happens overlap with some of the things Photoshop is designed for. It takes just a second or two longer to launch than Preview, but is far more complete. I've been using it for quick editing tasks.



I was surprised when I first launched Acorn and saw a source list in a palette (a "source list" being the iTunes/Mail/Finder-style sidebar). At first, this seemed really out of place, but then it started to sink in that this actually works for what Acorn sets out to do.

This interface succeeds because of two factors: the display is remarkably compact and the conventions are familiar. The entire user interface fits into a single palette. There are subtle animations when switching tools, and many Photoshop shortcuts are intact. For example, the "m" key activates the marquee tool, and "x" swaps the foreground and background colors.

All of the standard bitmap editing tools are present, as are all of the filters provided by Core Image. Basic vector shapes are provided and are true vectors in that they remain editable. Plugins can be written in Python and Objective-C. A full screen mode is available, as well.

The filter user interface is surprisingly sophisticated. The dialog for each filter is displayed as a stack, to which you can add new filters on the fly.



The interface for adding a filter to this stack is similarly well-designed. A list of Core Image categories is displayed along with a live preview view. Although not a drastic departure from other implementatons, the overall experience is possibly the cleanest, most clear version of the concept that I've seen so far.



Acorn is not all things to all people, but it misses nothing essential. It's clear that this is a true Mac app with all of the key conventions and behaviors in place.

At $39 and 14.3MB (a fraction of Photoshop in both cases), Acorn will handle almost all of the needs of at least 70% of the population. An added bonus is that you're giving money to a developer who really cares about writing good, solid, Mac-specific software.

In fact, if you have a friend who is coming to the Mac from another platform who is looking for a good, solid image editor for day-to-day tasks, this is probably the one you want to recommend. It's not for high-end needs, but it's unlikely anybody in that category would be asking in the first place.

Now all of that said, an alternate review goes like this:

Acorn is first working example of what I would consider a programmer's image editor. It has a very "objecty" feel to it — sort of what might happen if Interface Builder was reincarnated as a bitmap tool. If you feel more at home in an IDE than Photoshop, I think you will probably like Acorn.

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