From alchemy8147 at mindworkshop.com Sat Dec 20 10:09:55 2014 From: alchemy8147 at mindworkshop.com (Alchemy Mindworks) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 10:09:55 -0500 Subject: [Newsletter] Announcements from Alchemy Mindworks Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.20141220100955.04f73e58@localhost> _______________________________________________________________________ THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC POSTING FROM THE ALCHEMY MINDWORKS UPDATE MAILING LIST _______________________________________________________________________ Contents: 1. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Plugins Updated 2. PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 4 (Second Notification) 3. GIF Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 5 (Second Notification) 4. 10 Unsurpassed Tweets about Graphic Workshop Professional 5 (Second Notification) 5. Replying to this Message and List Removal _______________________________________________________________________ This holiday season, return to a time before Amazon, iPhones and Twitter. http://www.stevenwilliamrimmer.com/lizardland.html (100 million years before... it's totally epic!) We offer our best wishes to all the users of our software, and our continued hope that you don't get any more socks. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 1. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Plugins Updated _______________________________________________________________________ The library of format plugins for Graphic Workshop Professional 5 has been updated. These releases: - Enjoy more sophisticated memory management to occupy a smaller memory footprint, resulting in better performance... especially on systems with slower processors, limited resources or lots and lots of other stuff happening. - Improve the file handling, for quicker reads and writes. - Improve the color management for those plugins that use it. - Improve the plugin interface, so Graphic Workshop can do less thinking when it imports the plugins, and as such, boot up in less time. - Implements our work-around for the Microsoft installer limitation that hitherto required each previous release of the Graphic Workshop plugins to be uninstalled before an update could be installed. These releases of the plugins can be installed right over the previous ones - they will in fact automatically uninstall the previous plugins as part of the install. The updated plugins are: - The RAW Digital Camera Plugin: Enjoy better-than-JPEG image quality from most high-end digital cameras. http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwsplugins.html#RAW - The PostScript (EPS, PS, AI, PDF) Plugin: Read and write PostScript, encapsulated PostScript, Illustrator and PDF documents. http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwsplugins.html#EPS - The ART Plugin: Read and write AOL Johnson-Grace ART files, the default on-line graphic format for America On-Line back in the day. This plugin also supports PFS Art, should you have a well-oiled time machine interfaced to your laptop. http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwsplugins.html#ART - The MOZ JPEG Plugin. Install this plugin and the JPG files written by Graphic Workshop will be about ten percent smaller, with no loss of image quality compared to conventional JPEG compression. We too were shocked when this worked. http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwsplugins.html#MOZ - The SFW (Seattle FilmWorks) Plugin: One of the earliest adventurers into the dark heart of consumer digital photography, Seattle FilmWorks offered users of their photofinishing services the option of receiving their pictures on CD-ROMs... back in the twentieth century. They're gone, but a surprising number of their old CDs remain. If your memories are locked up on one, Graphic Workshop can convert those ancient pictures to a modern format. http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwsplugins.html#SFW Click on the foregoing links to download the updated plugins. The RAW Digital Camera plugin costs $34.99 - the update to the current release is available at no cost to previously registered users of this plugin. The other Graphic Workshop Professional plugins are no-cost downloads for registered users of Graphic Workshop Professional 5. _______________________________________________________________________ 2. PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 4 (Second Notification) _______________________________________________________________________ PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 has been updated. This release: - Adds resizable File Open and Save As windows. You can now make them as big as the universe itself - if you have a larger-than-normal monitor - and they'll stay that way between sessions. - Rewrites the View window for better timing accuracy and a helpful progress display. Note that if you disagree about the helpfulness in question, the progress display can be disabled in Setup. - Updates the validation logic to address some occasional hiccups that could manifest themselves during updates. You'll notice that it now displays an additional window after you complete the validation of this update. Fear not - it's a one shot deal. - Adds an Export Image feature to the right-click document menu. Right- click on any Image block and you can save it to a graphic file. Should the graphic file you select be the PNG format, it will even preserve the original Image chunk's transparency, if it's a 32-bit animation. See the discussion of Cutting, Copying and Pasting Blocks in the Reference document for more about this. - Updates a number of minor features of the Animation Wizard. - Makes the Supercompressor slightly more aggressive in its eternal quest to make animations smaller... some of them, in any case. - Fixes a number of minor cosmetic issues in various user interface windows. - Improves the document window memory management, which will make the whole application run somewhat faster, especially on systems with limited resources. - Updates the documentation. You can download PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 from: http://www.mindworkshop.com/pngpro.html#download ........................................................................ UPGRADES If you registered or upgraded a registration for PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 4 on or after May 1, 2013, you?re welcome to a free upgrade to PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5. If you registered or upgraded a registration for PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 4 prior to May 1, 2013, you can upgrade to PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 for half the cost of a new single-user license. When you first run PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5, it will check to see if you have a registration for PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 4 on your system. If it finds one, it will display a window to tell you which of the foregoing upgrade options is applicable. Click on the Upgrade button to visit our web page and request or order an upgrade. The upgrade window can subsequently be accessed through the Help > Upgrade Manager > Upgrade from Previous Version item of PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5's menu bar. You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/pngkey.html and the upgrade order page at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html _______________________________________________________________________ 3. GIF Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 5 (Second Notification) _______________________________________________________________________ GIF Construction Set Professional 5 has been updated. This release: - Fixes a cosmetic bug in the View window progress bar. This is not a particularly serious issue - it may make the progress bar extend past the edge of its window in some cases. Still, it was a bug and it deserved to die. Previous week's release: - Adds resizable File Open and Save As windows. You can now make them as big as the universe itself - if you have a larger-than-normal monitor - and they'll stay that way between sessions. - Rewrites the View window for better timing accuracy and a helpful progress display. Note that if you disagree about the helpfulness in question, the progress display can be disabled in Setup. - Updates the validation logic to address some occasional hiccups that could manifest themselves during updates. You'll notice that it now displays an additional window after you complete the validation of this update. Fear not - it's a one shot deal. - Adds an Export Image feature to the right-click document menu. Right- click on any Image block and you can save it to a graphic file. Should the graphic file you select be the GIF format, it will even preserve the original Image block's transparency, if it's present. See the discussion of Cutting, Copying and Pasting Blocks in the Reference document for more about this. - Updates a number of minor features of the Animation Wizard. - Makes the Supercompressor slightly more aggressive in its eternal quest to make animations smaller... some of them, in any case. - Fixes a number of minor cosmetic issues in various user interface windows. - Improves the document window memory management, which will make the whole application run somewhat faster, especially on systems with limited resources. - Updates the documentation. You can download GIF Construction Set Professional 5 from: http://www.mindworkshop.com/gifcon.html#download ........................................................................ UPGRADES If you registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction Set Professional 4 on or after May 1, 2013, you?re welcome to a free upgrade to GIF Construction Set Professional 5. If you registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction Set Professional 4 prior to May 1, 2013, you can upgrade to GIF Construction Set Professional 5 for half the cost of a new single-user license. When you first run GIF Construction Set Professional 5, it will check to see if you have a registration for GIF Construction Set Professional 4 on your system. If it finds one, it will display a window to tell you which of the foregoing upgrade options is applicable. Click on the Upgrade button to visit our web page and request or order an upgrade. The upgrade window can subsequently be accessed through the Help > Upgrade Manager > Upgrade from Previous Version item of GIF Construction Set Professional 5's menu bar. You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/gcskey.html and the upgrade order page at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html _______________________________________________________________________ 4. 10 Unsurpassed Tweets about Graphic Workshop Professional 5 (Second Notification) _______________________________________________________________________ If you're among the tens of thousands of Graphic Workshop users who don't follow us on Twitter - we're in no way offended by this - you'll likely have missed the ongoing tweets that deal with often-overlooked features of the known universe's most popular image management software. Graphic Workshop Professional 5's ability to do practically everything that can be done to pictures makes it relatively easy to use it every day for years and still miss a few of its better tricks. Here are ten more of the finest features you never knew it had, fresh from the Alchemy Mindworks Twitter account: - Build instant distributable photo montages with Montage UltraLight. - Manage duplicated files with the Keep Both option of the Overwrite Files prompt. - Instant sidewalk chalk art with the Add Noise filter. - Right-click and select Paint to edit any still image, in any supported format. - Turn any image into a seamless background with the Seamless filter. - Browse, convert and extract graphics stored in ZIP files. - Transmute anything into light and color with the Neon filter. - Browse images on CD-ROMs with thumbnails using the Virtual Thumbnail mode. - Connect multiple photos with the Stitch filter. - Create theft-resistant comps of your photos for distribution. You can download a copy of Graphic Workshop Professional 5 from: http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwspro.html#download If you're still using Graphic Workshop 4, we invite you to enjoy all the new functionality, enhanced performance and cool things to click on - for half the new-user registration price. Please see: http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/upgrade.html See http://www.twitter.com/alchemymindwork to follow us on Twitter. _______________________________________________________________________ 5. Replying to this Message and List Removal _______________________________________________________________________ This message has been sent from an unmonitored address - please do not reply to it. To remove your address from this mailing list or to change your address, please visit our web page at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/update-list.html Removal requests will be processed instantly. ....................................................................... If you have questions about this list or any Alchemy Mindworks products, please contact us at: http://www.mindworkshop.com/email-alchemy.html You can contact us by telephone at (705) 789-5238, and by snail-mail at Alchemy Mindworks, L10 C8 Brunel, Huntsville, ON P1H 2J3, CANADA. **************************************************************************** Copyright (c) 1998 - 2014 Alchemy Mindworks. All rights reserved. Use no hooks.