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If you need to simply re-size, crop or add text to an image and find Adobe Elements too large and cumbersome, then take a look at Acorn and Image Well.
Image editing on the Mac has been dominated for a long time by Adobe Photoshop and more recently by its younger sister Adobe Elements. Both of Adobe´s programs are very capable but resource hungry and relatively expensive for simple editing purposes. Acorn and Image Well provide fast alternatives that could suit your work needs as well as your budget. AcornAlthough Acorn is not free ($39.95) it packs into its diminutive proportions all the requirements of a more professional and much more expensive program. Acorn not only does basic photo editing, but also layers, selections, text layers, vector shapes and has a wide range of filters that you can chain together to create special effects. Acorn also allows you to save a file as a PDF document and then send it to your mail client or iPhoto, Yep or Yojimbo for future storage. Overall, Acorn is fast, small, easy to use and provides a depth of editing and range of tools that could make it a serious alternative to Adobe Elements. Image WellIf however, what you need is something smaller, simpler and even faster than Acorn, then Image Well is the program for you. To start editing images, just drop an image onto the Image Well window to change an image size, the format, to crop a picture, or add shadows and borders. These tasks are done so fast with Image Well you will often have done your editing and saved the file before most other programs have even opened up. Once the editing is done, simply drag the image to where you want to save it. You do not even need to give it a name as Image Well will randomly generate a file name for you if you choose. And should you want to open the file again, there is a mini thumbnail list in the Image Well menu for you to select so that you do not need to remember the auto-generated names of the files previously used. Image Well comes in 2 forms: A simple editing mode that is free, and an Extra Feature mode that costs $14.95 USD ( though there are educational discounts available from the website). Although the free version does everything listed above, with Extras you can drop a whole folder of images from iPhoto into Image Well to re-size, watermark and then export them all at once. Extras also allows the creation of templates. For example, say you need an image cropped and re-sized to 80x80 and given a circular shape and bordered. Set it up once and Image Well will remember the sequence, store it as a template and apply it to any other image you wish. Which Program to Choose?For editing images to be emailed, uploaded to a blog or web page, Image Well is the faster, simpler and cheaper option of the 2 - it even provides a web upload function from within the program. The next version of Image Well (version 4) is due out in November and it promises to be a major upgrade. Users that buy the Image Well Xtras now will be entitled to a free upgrade to version 4 on release. However, if editing with layers and image effects are essential to your work then you will need Acorn. Although this compact but sophisticated program is only on version 1.0.2 everyone in the Mac community is talking about it at the moment as there has not been a real alternative to Elements before. A trial version of Acorn can be downloaded from the Flying Meat web site.
The copyright of the article Fast Image Editors for the Mac in Mac Software/OS is owned by Paul Read. Permission to republish Fast Image Editors for the Mac in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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