Settings¶

The Settings Panel for Acorn is located under Acorn ▸ Settings…. There are five tabs labeled General, Guides, Advanced, Fussy Stuff, and Registration.

Note

The App Store version of Acorn does not have a Registration tab, as all accounting and purchasing is handled by Apple.

General¶

Show startup window on launch
When enabled, this will show Acorn's startup window (see Opening and Saving Images)
Set canvas origin to top left
By default, Acorn places the origin (0,0) of an image at the lower left corner of the canvas. When enabling this setting, Acorn will then place the origin to the top left corner.
Show undo and redo notifications
When Undoing or Redoing operations, Acorn can show a little notification on the canvas informing you what was undone (or redone).
Float inspector palettes in windows
When enabled, this setting will detach palettes from the image windows and have two floating palettes, shared between all open images.
Appearance
This option (System/Light/Dark) sets the appearance of Acorn's UI. If set to System, then it will use whatever setting you have in macOS's Appearance System Settings.
Prefer tabs
This option controls whether new images are opened up in tabs or not. If set to System, it will respect whatever you have set in the System Settings.
Display layers warning when saving to flat files
When saving an image in a format that does not preserve layers (such as PNG, TIFF, JPEG, etc.), show a warning letting you know your layers will be lost.
Enable autosave and versions
When turned on, Acorn will automatically save images for you and opt the images into Time Machine's Browse All Versions… support.

Important Information on Autosave

When autosave is turned on, Acorn will open non-native (.acorn) files in an untitled, unsaved window. There is a very important reason for this: if an image is automatically saved back to the original file, then data may be lost (layer information, text layers, ruler preferences, etc.). In addition, if the format of the image is in a lossy format (such as JPEG), then repeatedly opening and saving an image will introduce compression artifacts and degrade the quality of your image.

Screenshot hot key
This is the shortcut you can use to take a screenshot of all the open windows (which may prompt for permission from System Settings to complete). This shortcut is global and will work while you are using other apps. In addition, there is an option to break out all open windows into their own layers.
Measurement units
This is the default measurement unit Acorn will use when opening or creating new images. You can choose between Pixels, Inches, or Centimeters.

Guides¶

Snap To:
When this is enabled, moving shapes or layers will automatically lock (aka, "snap") to a horizontal or vertical point position when it comes into close proximity to it. Acorn gives you the option to enable it selectively for the options listed in the tab.
Sound:
Optionally have Acorn play an audible 'tic' when a snap occurs.
Default Grid Spacing:
When opening or creating an image, this is the default grid width and height. Note: you can change grid settings per image via the View ▸ Guides and Grids ▸ Grid Settings… menu item. Additionally, these settings are saved when you write your image in the .acorn file format.

Toggle Snapping Pro Tip

If you have snapping enabled and you would like to temporarily disable it, holding the Control key down after you begin dragging an object (such as a layer or shape) will toggle off snapping.

Advanced¶

The Advanced tab gives you options to change the background color of full screen mode, as well as options for trackpads including zoom, pan, and rotation gestures. You can choose to keep shapes selected for editing and select a preferred file actions image format. You have the option to automatically check for updates when you open Acorn. Other options include choosing to have a super scrollable canvas, hiding cursor tooltips, printing using the image size for paper size, and showing the pixel grid when zoomed at or above 500%.

Full Screen
You have options under this section to have your canvas gutter (the area outside your image) change colors when transitioning to full screen. The Color: option allows you to change the color.
Printing uses image size for paper size
When enabled, this tells Acorn to make the size of the image sent to the printer the same size as the image (as opposed to the size of the printer's paper). This is generally only useful when you are using the print panel to make a PDF of your image, and you don't want to have extra blank areas added to your PDF.
Hide cursor tooltips
This option will hide the tooltips that come up sometimes when using various tools on the canvas (clone tool, selection hints, etc.).
Ignore trackpad zoom and pan gestures
If you're using a trackpad and find yourself accidentally triggering two-finger zoom and panning, enable this option to have Acorn ignore those gestures.
Ignore trackpad rotation gestures
Similar to the previous option, but targeted specifically towards two-finger rotating.
Show pixel grid when zoomed at or above 500%
With this enabled, Acorn will add thin lines between pixels when zoomed in at 500% or more. It adds a nice visible boundary between pixels for detailed work at this level.
Auto-select layers
When using the move tool, enabling this will allow you to click through to another layer from the currently active one. When disabled, the move tool will only select items on the currently selected layer.
Super scrollable canvas
With this enabled, Acorn will allow you to pan your canvas all around the window, even if its contents don't fill the visible area. With Super scrollable canvas disabled, when your image fits in the window, it will always be centered in the canvas.
Check for important news
When enabled, this option will allow Acorn to occasionally check with its creator's website () for important updates or announcements. If any are found, you are notified via a little news window. No private information is sent to us.
Allow 3rd party Image Unit plug-ins
If you have downloaded or created a 3rd party Core Image Plug-In (also known as "Image Units"), enabling this option will tell Acorn to find and make them available at startup (requires a restart of Acorn).
When Drawing Shapes: Keep selected for editing
After drawing a vector shape, this option lets Acorn know whether to keep that object selected for more editing (via the tool inspector) or to deselect it because you'd rather not have to worry about that, and you want to change the options for the next shape you're making.
File Actions Image Format:
When using the File ▸ Actions ▸ menu, this option decides what format to use when invoking the chosen action.
Updating: Automatically check for updates
This option tells Acorn to occasionally check with its website to see if there are any updates available. And if there are, give the option to auto-update to the newer version. This option will only check for updates for the current release. For instance, if you are using version 8.0.1, and version 8.0.2 or 8.1 is available, you will be prompted to update to that version (and it's free if you already have a license for version 8). However, major upgrades (such as from version 7 to 8) are not announced or auto-updated via this mechanism.
Note: This option is not available for the Mac App Store version of Acorn, and updates are handled via Apple's App Store.

Fussy Stuff¶

Color Profile for New Images
This option lets you set the default color profile (sometimes known as color space) for new images. Note: when an image is opened up and does not contain a color profile, Acorn by default will always use sRGB.
Pixel Processing Profile:
This is the default color profile that Acorn uses to process it's filters and compositing (including brushing) in. It will be most notable when making gradients. You can always change the processing profile per image via the Image ▸ Color Profile… (⌘⇧K) menu.
Renderer:
This tells Acorn wether it should use GPU accelerated rendering (Metal) or CPU (Software) based rendering. Metal is the default choice and is much faster than Software. This setting is here for legacy reasons and really generally only useful for debugging GPU problems.
Backing:
This tells Acorn where the pixel data should be stored, either on the GPU via IOSurface, or on the CPU via Software. If you are using an Apple Silicon based Mac, this options is mostly meaningless, but if you are using an older Intel based Mac, depending on the size of images you are working with, one option might be faster than the other.
Always make new layers for text boxes
Having text on distinct layers is something that older image editing software would do, and Acorn has this option avilable for people who can't live without it.
Copying selection trims transparent pixels
If copying a layer or whole image where there are transparent pixels along one or more edges, Acorn will trim away those pixels with this option enabled.
Use short file extensions (.jpg & .tif)
With this enabled, Acorn will attempt to influence the macOS save windows to use short three-letter extensions for JPEG and TIFF formats.
Use system color panel
By default, Acorn uses its own color palette to correctly handle color profiles of the current image (among other benefits). If you would prefer to have the standard macOS system color panel, you can turn this option off.

System Color Panel Pro Tip

Holding down the Control key when clicking on a color wheel will temporarily bring up the system color panel. If you have the previous option enabled, holding down the Control key will instead bring up Acorn's color picker.

Use PDF import window with New from Clipboard
If you have PDF data on the Clipboard, using the File ▸ New from Clipboard menu item will bring up the PDF import window instead of directly pasting a new layer into the current image.
Open images at max window size
When opening images for the first time, try and make the window as big as possible to fit the entire image.
Always open images at 100% scale
When opening very large images, don't zoom them down when they don't quite fit in their window.
Crop HUD Opacity
With this setting enabled, you control the darkness of the Crop HUD (Heads Up Display) when using the Crop tool.

Registration¶

This is where you enter your name and registration number for Acorn (which is only needed if you purchase Acorn directly from Flying Meat). Once your registration number is entered, it will be saved here for future reference. There is a link to the Flying Meat store where you can purchase Acorn, and a link to request lost registration numbers. The registration tab is not present in the Mac App Store version of Acorn.