I’m glad to tell that I am going to the European Mac developers conference in Hatfield, UK on April 16-17. I hope to meet great people there and learn more about different aspects of Cocoa programming. I will also use this opportunity to travel in UK a bit, since I’ve never been there.

To learn more about the conference visit: http://www.nsconference.com

Jacob.

I’m glad to announce that my long-time friend Kosta Rozen has agreed to join me in Apparent Software to lead Business Development.

Kosta has experience managing IT projects and also experience at programming. His deep analytical skills and the desire to build a sustainable and growing business will be very benefitial to our mutual success. It will also, hopefully, will take some load off of me and at the same time allow our business to reach new heights. It feels much better not being a one-man show anymore.

We’re already planning ahead to diversify the portfolio of Apparent Software with new program(s), alongside planning better marketing and promotion for ImageFramer.

Stay tuned for additional reports on our progress.

ImageFramer 2.2 Release notes:

• Over 30 new frames. Most frames were contributed by existing users.
• A new “Manufacturers” collection, which includes real frames from several manufacturers.
• Resizing frames and mats can now be performed right on the preview screen. For example to resize the frame:
  1. Click somewhere on the frame. The cursor will change to a resize cursor.
  2. Hold mouse pressed and move the mouse towards the center to increase width or outwards to make the frame thinner.
• The same applies to mats. Click and drag on any mat directly on screen.
• ImageFramer now automatically rotates images on load, based on their EXIF orientation tag.

New since 2.1:

• Fixed the loading of designs by double clicking a .framing file in Finder to start ImageFramer.
• Added option to save a design, if it was changed, before quitting ImageFramer. A panel will pop-up asking what to do when quitting an unsaved design.
• Color panel now doesn’t pop up just by selecting another tab in control panel, which nagged some users.
• Frame, image and mat setting can now be selected correctly by clicking in the main window at the relevant area. Frame by clicking on frame, image/background by clicking on image or background, A specific mat can be selected by clicking directly on the mat.
• Disabled opening an Open Image dialog by double clicking on the image in main window.

I’ve finally released version 2.1 of ImageFramer.

I’ve also somewhat redesigned the website to allow better user experience on the site. The navigation has been modified to be more accessible and the home page now redirects directly into ImageFramer’s overview page.

I’ve also added a new gallery to show 2.1 features and a new introductory screencast. Find them all on the site.

Also, I’ve embedded a PayPal web store for better buying experience. Those who don’t have PayPal can still use our store on Kagi.

I’ve finished coding ImageFramer version 2.1 and it’ll be released in the coming days, after the Japanese translation is finished updating. So, what’s new in 2.1? Lots of beautiful stuff:

• Additions of bevels for mats. Many users have asked for this and I didn’t realize the power of this until after I implemented this feature and saw the results. Mats can now have a white-like bevel to add depth to the resulting image. The bevel’s width is controllable.
• It’s now possible to add shadows under frame and beveled mats. This is really exciting as well, as the addition of shadows really adds to the 3D look, and together with bevels it just looks fantastic.
• Light direction can be controlled using a simple control in the image tab. Light direction changes where the shadows fall and also changes the lighting on the bevels to give a consistent look on the shadows. Note that the frame themselves don’t change as result of the lighting change. So your best bet is to adapt the light source to look consistent with the frame’s lighting.
• I also added a new set to the real frames collection, called Linen Liners, I put 4 different linen liners there that are very good to put under frames, instead or in addition to mats.

So what result can you expect with the new features? Take a look at the pictures below:

To see the new features in action, see the new screencast that shows them:

I’ve released ImageFramer version 2.0.3 with 2 UI changes:

1. The Hue and Saturation sliders are now disabled when frame colorize effect is applied, since they don’t affect the frame’s appearance and may only confuse the user.

2. Removed the bottom light gray bar from the main window, as it only served for resizing and looked bad. Resizing is of course still possible by dragging the bottom right corner.

On another note, design for ImageFramer 3 is going quite well and it will be an application of another class.

I’m glad to announce that starting 1st of July, a designer, specializing in interactive design will join Apparent Software. She will join me for about 3 months to take ImageFramer to the next level.

She’ll be working on usability improvement, UI design for the planned features of ImageFramer 3, illustration work on icons and on the design of new frames.

She’ll also produce more screencasts to compement the one I’ve prepared earlier.

I’ve come to this decision after realizing that I’m not the best UI designer around and certainly not a great graphic artist. This will also leave me more time to actually program.

I hope her involvement in ImageFramer design will take it to the next level.

ImageFramer version 2.0.2 was released today. There’s only a bug fix (important one) and a usability change.

BUG FIX: Crash when renaming variation was fixed.
NEW:  Variation names are in editable mode when adding a new variation.

Download ImageFramer

I’m glad to announce release of ImageFramer 2.0.1.

These are the release notes:

• Added default startup image when launching without image
• Design files (.framing) can now be loaded from Finder or by dropping on ImageFramer icon, in addtion to dropped to the main window.
• Updated drawing code for faster resizing
• Some bug fixes and a memory leak
• Added “Buy ImageFramer” menu item under ImageFramer menu.