Alchemy Mindworks

The response to last week’s Graphic Workshop Professional 4 Sneak Peak posting would have been deafening if e-mail made noise. While we enjoyed hearing from a great many users who could still remember buying the software on floppy disks during the late middle ages, perhaps the most productive aspect of the mail and comments we received about the upcoming Graphic Workshop Professional 4 release were suggestions for functionality to be added to it.

In some cases, we were pleased to be able to reply that the suggested features were already in place in the new software.

The following are some of the most requested additions to Graphic Workshop… which turned out to have been implemented before anyone asked for them. While none of these enhancements to Graphic Workshop are likely to alter the fabric of time and space as we know it, we’re pleased to be able to say that they’ll be available as soon as the version four software is.

• Copy File Name: The Copy to Clipboard function in the right-click menu of Graphic Workshop Professional 4 copies the selected picture to the Windows clipboard, as you might expect. It also copies the text of the file name of the selected picture. If you hold down Ctrl when you select Copy to Clipboard, it will just copy the file name text. Hold down Shift and it will just copy the file name text plus its file path.
• EXIF Preservation: EXIF data blocks are objects stored in the JPEG files written by most contemporary digital cameras. The record a variety of useful things, such as the camera’s settings when the picture in question was taken. Graphic Workshop Professional 3 provided access to EXIF data – Graphic Workshop Professional 4 can maintain EXIF blocks through its various image processing functions.
• Image Stitch Filter: While image stitching – joining multiple images edge to edge – has long been manageable in Graphic Workshop through its Paint function, this entailed a not-insubstantial amount of manual juggling and eye-hand coordination. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 features a dedicated image stitching filter. It will stitch images together on your choice of edges, with your choice of positioning. The only catch in using it is that it expects to find the second image in a stitching on the Windows clipboard. To use it, copy your second image to the clipboard – right-click on it and select Copy to Clipboard – and then double-click on your first image to open it in View mode, open the Filters window and fire up the Stitch filter.
• Next and Back in View Mode: Graphic Workshop’s View mode has two aspects – the quick double-click mode to view individual files and the somewhat more elaborate format view mode in which View is selected from the tool bar to view a sequence of selected images. The View mode tool bar includes Previous and Next buttons to allow users to navigate through a list of selected files in the latter situation. In that the double-click implementation of View only involved one file, these buttons had no real place in the great structure of the universe, and they just exited the double-click View mode. The double-click view mode in Graphic Workshop Professional 4 recognizes them and uses them to work through the images in a folder, selected or not.
• Editable File Prefixes: When Graphic Workshop performs batch image processes other than Convert, it optionally prepends a prefix to the destination file name to avoid file name collisions and the unintentional overwriting of the source images it’s working with. In Graphic Workshop Professional 3, the prefixes were inalterable – they appeared as “T_” for Transform, “E_” for Effects and so on. In Graphic Workshop Professional 4, these prefixes are both somewhat more lucid – “Transform_” and “Effects_” respectively – and they can be edited, allowing you to name them whatever you like.
• Quicker Lost Code Recovery: We’ve never been entirely satisfied with the Alchemy Mindworks lost registration code recovery resources – while they work, and most users get their codes back with little difficulty, they’re inherently slow. For reasons of security, the database they search is kept on a server that’s not accessible to the Internet, which means that it’s only available when our offices are open. Dating back to the dawn of time – well, to 1998, actually – it’s somewhat enormous, and we’ve split it into year-sized smaller databases, which admittedly does complicate the process of finding lost codes. Regrettably, all the paranoia and security surrounding our database is arguably justified. We see a lot of putative attacks on our servers. While most of them are as lame as liberal politician with a face full of microphones, we have little choice but to take them seriously. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 uses an encrypted on-line database, allowing its users to interact with their records in real time. The database doesn’t contain any personal information, so even if someone were to successfully hack it, and then successfully crack its encryption before they began banging their pointy little head against a wall, they wouldn’t compromise anything useful. Lost registration code recovery for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 should take up to a minute on a very slow day.

As an aside, one of the questions we were asked in a significant number of the messages arising from last week’s post was whether there would be a 64-bit version of Graphic Workshop Professional 4. At the moment, it’s a matter of some debate, but we can offer a brief airing of the 64-bit software issue for those of curious bent or who find themselves to be in need of sleep.

As with earlier major version upgrades, if you have registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 3 within one year prior to the release of Graphic Workshop Professional 4, we’ll send you a free upgrade registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 4. That’s “free” as in “no money down, no interest or carrying charges and no payments from now until the end of time.”

The pricing for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 has not been finalized at this time – note that if you upgrade your Graphic Workshop Professional 3 registration now and the upgrade cost for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 increases, you’ll have pocketed the difference… assuming you still keep anything like money in your pockets.

To upgrade, please visit our upgrade ordering page or call our toll-free order desk at 1-800-263-1138.

As always, we encourage you to get in touch with us if you have any suggestions for Graphic Workshop Professional 4.