[Newsletter] Announcements from Alchemy Mindworks
Alchemy Mindworks
alchemy8147 at mindworkshop.com
Sat Dec 20 10:09:55 EST 2014
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THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC POSTING FROM
THE ALCHEMY MINDWORKS UPDATE MAILING LIST
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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
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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.
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1. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Plugins Updated
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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.
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2. PNG MNG Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 4
(Second Notification)
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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
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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.
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5. Replying to this Message and List Removal
_______________________________________________________________________
This message has been sent from an unmonitored address - please do not
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http://www.mindworkshop.com/update-list.html
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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.
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