Alchemy Mindworks

Graphic Workshop professional 4 is nearing its first public beta. Unofficially, it should see daylight in late July or early August. We hasten to note that anyone who has registered or upgraded their registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 3 within a year of its release will be able to apply for a no-cost Graphic Workshop Professional 4 registration, and never see the version 4 reminder screen.

We’ve reviewed a wealth of suggestions for features and improvements to Graphic Workshop, and many of them will appear in the new software. Some of the suggestions in question date back a while – the version 4 architecture has allowed us to implement things that were largely impossible in version 3.

It’s with sincere regret that we are unable to name specific features after the authors of their suggestions. As such, the documentation for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 does not include reference to “the Andrew P. Dingworth folder change noise,” “the Lancelot Pigswallow JPEG detail sorting option” or “the Melinda O’Grady tool bar waste basket icon.” The decision of the judges is final.

In fact, many of the suggestions we’ve received for improvements to Graphic Workshop have come from multiple users with the same good ideas. The naming issue would have grown unwieldy.

The following are a few of the most requested enhancements that users of Graphic Workshop Professional 4 can expect.

1. Tagging in View mode: There are users of Graphic Workshop Professional who are a great deal better organized than we are. They’ve asked to be able to step through a folder of pictures and select or unselect them from within View mode, such that the resulting selected files could be further processed upon exiting View mode. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 features Select and Unselect items in the Picture menu of its View mode. You can also hold down Shift when you use these items to select or unselect all the files in a folder.
2. Transparency support in PSD: We’ve had frequent requests to have the PhotoShop® PSD reader in Graphic Workshop Professional support alpha-channel transparency in PSD files. Now it does. Graphic Workshop will convert PSD files with transparent elements into more common formats that support transparency, such as BMP and PNG.
3. Detail mode in browsers: This one got touched on briefly in an earlier sneak peak with a picture of the new browser mode, but no explanation of what it was up to. Select Details as the display mode of a browser window and you’ll see a list of its file names, along with their file types, file sizes and file dates. The field sizes are adjustable, and as was noted in the aforementioned earlier posting, you can sort the contents of a browser by name, type, size and date to make it easier to locate files in a large folder.
4. More paths, better memories: Graphic Workshop Professional 4 keeps track of the various file paths used by functions like Web Gallery, and it maintains a unique Save As path for each open browser. The browser Save As paths are remembered between sessions, so if you save files out of View mode, for example, you won’t have to navigate around your hard drive each time to help them find their way home.
5. Audible feedback when changing folders: One of the more frequent requests of late, changing folders in Graphic Workshop Professional will now cause a short sound to play. By default, it uses the same shutter-click noise that Windows Explorer plays for this function, but you can configure it to play any sound you like. We don’t recommend a wave file of Purple Haze every time you click in the navigation pane of a folder, for what should be obvious reasons. The change folder sound also plays when you change folders in Search, Move and Copy, the GWS Camera screen capture application, and when you select objects in Resource Extractor. Some users will find it to be a bit fractious in the latter context, and we hasten to note that it can be disabled in Resource Extractor should you agree with them.
6. Multiple user support: With the advent of Windows Vista and Windows 7 – operating systems that all but insist that you maintain multiple user accounts, even if you’ve never been more than one person – Graphic Workshop often found itself growing confused and distracted, in that it could only be a registered version under one useraccount. These later versions of Windows impose file permission constraints on applications that prohibited Graphic Workshop installed under one user account from accessing the configuration files of another user account. While the permutations of these issues are myriad, complex and frightful, we’re pretty sure we have them all nailed down in Graphic Workshop Professional 4.

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 hasn’t 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.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to visit the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 Sneak Peak, the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 Sneak Peak #2: It’s There and the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 Sneak Peak #3: Cool Toys postings for more about what’s coming in the next release of the known universe’s most popular image management software.