stamp!
The Flying Meat Newsletter
May 2013

This is Gus and Kirstin Mueller of Flying Meat Software, writing to you with exciting news about Acorn 4. You have received this email because you purchased a product from Flying Meat in the past (Acorn, VoodooPad, or FlySketch) or you asked to subscribe to our newsletter.

1. A Quick Introduction
2. What's New and Awesome in Acorn 4
3. Availability and Price
4. System Requirements
5. A Coupon for Our Favorite People
6. The End

1. The Intro
It has been over two years since Acorn 3 was released. Layer styles, photo retouching, amazing filters, instant alpha, retina support - Acorn 3 is pretty awesome, but what we've been working on for version 4 is even better.

2. What's New and Awesome in Acorn 4
There are over 150 new features and improvements in Acorn 4! That's way too many to list in an email, so we'll give you a quick rundown on the highlights:

# A Fresh New Look
We've outgrown the single palette found in past versions of Acorn. There's now a skinny tools palette that goes on the left of the canvas and the inspector palette that goes on the right. Why the change? We've listened to feedback, added more tools, and the end result was too much good stuff to fit in a single palette. We've also designed a more traditional image editing interface and gave Acorn's windows and palettes a fresh new coat of paint.

# New Curves Adjustment Tool and Improved Levels
One of Acorn's most requested features was to be able to adjust color balance with curves, and now you've got it. But we didn't stop there- we've also added a mid-tone (aka, gamma) slider to the levels tool and spiced it up with a live histogram.

# Performance Improvements
Everything is faster. Drawing, filter previews, undo, saving, you name it. Using the Flood Fill, Magic Wand, and Instant Alpha tools on large images is a breeze. The Render Clouds filter got a little speed boost as well.

# Layer Syles and Filters Sitting in a Tree?
We rolled the layer styles and filters interfaces into a single non-modal window. This means that filters are non destructive! You can still chain together filters like before, but now you can undo and redo your adjustments and even save them as part of your Acorn file. In addition, you can now directly modify filter parameters right on the layer using the Merlin HUD. Drag filter controls on the canvas that show up when the filter window is present to quickly change a filter's radius or center point!

# New Shape and Vector Tools
Stars and arrows! Another feature that was heavily requested is the ability to add arrows to your canvas. Well we did that, and added a star shape as well. In addition, the whole shape layer pipeline has been rewritten. Acorn offers a new anchor selection tool, the ability to add points to shapes, boolean operations (to combine or subtract shapes from each other), convert outlines to paths, set the join style on shapes, rotate and scale multiple shapes, scale bezier paths, view shapes as outlines or vectors when zoomed way in, and much more.

# Other Stuff
Acorn will now save your current selection with the file. You can also view a layer's mask, search for filters, export shape layers as pure vector PDFs, and set the working color space. There is a new Offset and Wrap palette, new Grid and Random Noise filters, a shapes generator, and more. Check out the full release notes for all the gory details: http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/releasenotes.html

3. Availability and Price
Acorn 4 is available right now from http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/, where you can download a free 14 day trial. When you're ready, you can purchase Acorn either directly from us https://secure.flyingmeat.com/store/ or from the Mac App Store http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/appstore/. Act fast! For a limited time (until the end of May 2013) we are offering the upgrade price of $29.99 to everyone to make it easier to move between the App Store and the direct versions. When June rolls around Acorn will return to normal pricing. If you have previously purchased any version of Acorn directly from Flying Meat you are still eligible for upgrade pricing.

If you purchased Acorn 3 directly from Flying Meat* on or after February 1st, 2013 we've already emailed you a registration number for Acorn 4.

4. System Requirements
Acorn 4 requires OS X 10.8 or later.

5. A Coupon for Our Favorite People
That's you of course. We figure since you've made it all the way to the end of the newsletter, we'll give you an additional five bucks off your next order from our online store. Just use the coupon code 'fmnewsletter4' (without the quotes of course) when purchasing Acorn or any other product from us. This coupon will expire at the end of May 2013.

Thanks!

Gus, Kirstin, and little Madeline Mueller

* Oh man, we wish we could do the same free upgrade three month window thing for folks who purchased Acorn from the Mac App Store- but part of the deal when purchasing products through Apple is that we have no idea who has previously bought Acorn.