Flying Meat releases Acorn image editor

Okay I admit it; I was fooled. Last week Gus Mueller posted an "interview" on his blog with a "fellow Pacific Northwest developer" about an exciting new app to be released today. While I had figured out it was probably an image editor, I did not figure out that Gus was talking to himself! In any case, Flying Meat software (of VoodooPad and FlySketch fame) today announced Acorn, an image editor "built for the 21st century." Much like Pixelmator (with which I expect Acorn to be compared once Pixelmator finally ships), Acorn takes advantage of your GPU to speed up its operation. It has the normal assortment of editing tools, including layers (with filters), vector tools, as well as a built-in Python and Objective-C plugin system. The latter is particularly exciting as it will allow third-party developers to extend Acorn in potentially interesting ways.

I've long thought that there was an obvious hole in the market for a reasonably priced image editor that was powerful enough for most user but much cheaper than Photoshop. Since Adobe is taking its sweet time releasing a Universal version of Photoshop Elements, it's good to see smaller developers like Gus Mueller and the guys behind Pixelmator stepping up to the plate. It'll be interesting to see how each of them make out in the long run.

Acorn is $39.95 (intro price) and a demo is available.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!