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 Contents:

  1.  Graphic Workshop Professional 11 Revision 3 (new this weekend)
  2.  Announcing Alpha Paint 11
  3.  Windows Speedup: Disable Defender's Real Time Protection (second notification)
  4.  Replying to this Message, List Removal and Details
The middle ages were way more than just
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Graphic Workshop Professional 11 Revision 3
(new this weekend)



Last week's release of Graphic Workshop Professional 11 had a few first-edition issues, which have now been addressed:

  • The Destination list in the new Social Media window didn't populate itself under some configurations of Windows. Now it does.

  • The Social Media View mode filter was missing. It has been found and returned to its desk.

  • The new Web Checker application's status window, and its attendant Abort button, didn't appear under some configurations of Windows. It does now.

  • Graphic Workshop didn't always correctly configure file associations so it would appear in the Open With list for Windows File Explorer. This has been fixed.

  • Converting graphics with alpha-channel transparency to formats that don't support transparency, such as JPG, could result in pretty weird pictures. It's history.

  • Some PNG documents with alpha channel transparency and select other chunks could crash the PNG reader. This no longer happens.

  • The justification settings of the classic Caption window now behave correctly.

  • The frame metrics in the default Caption window now also behave correctly.

  • A bug in the View window that could crash Graphic Workshop if it was confronted with large graphics having wildly different dimensions has been stomped.

  • Thumbnails generated from grey-scale graphics with alpha channel transparency could have a decidedly red tint to them. Now they're authentic grey.

  • The Scrapbook application now includes logic to prevent multiple instances of it from being run, which generated several spurious error messages.

  • The Audible Confirmation menu item in Resource Extractor now works correctly.

  • After an unanticipated delay, the Graphic Workshop Professional 11 Printed Reference is now available through Amazon. Please click on the red book later in this section.

We recommend that everyone who installed Graphic Workshop Professional 11 last week update to the new release.



From last week's announcement:

Graphic Workshop Professional 11 has been released.

We've added new functionality to the known universe's most popular image management application, improved its performance, included several fresh ancillary applications and generally refined it to better get along with Windows 10. (We hasten to add that it still performs admirably under earlier builds of Windows, all the way back to Windows XP, if you're feeling retro.)

Among the new features and enhancements to Graphic Workshop Professional 11, you'll find that it:

  • Adds Social Media: Quickly compose your pictures for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other popular social media platforms. The Social Media window will automatically resize and crop your photographs and apply a rich palette of backgrounds to them. Right-click on any picture in a Graphic Workshop browser and select Social Media from the menu that appears, or batch-process multiple graphics through the Image menu.

  • Adds WebP Support to Supercompressor: Graphic Workshop's Supercompressor will automatically adjust the compression and quality parameters of the pictures you store to arrive at the smallest possible files. Hitherto the province of JPEGs, Supercompressor can now apply its stealth and cunning to WebP documents as well, which look way better when you need a tiny document footprint.
  • Updates Image Libraries: All the libraries that read and write graphics for Graphic Workshop and its ancillary applications have been reviewed to ensure that they're secure and totally bulletproof. There being some really disagreeable people under many of the rocks of the Internet, we urge all the users of our software to keep its security elements up to date.
  • Updates Caption: The Graphic Workshop Caption window will add captions to your pictures. The Caption editor now allows for rich text — it's pretty much a small word processor that supports multiple fonts, typographic effects and text size changes. We hasten to add that the original Graphic Workshop Caption window is still available, should you prefer it, and it now features a powerful macro language to automatically generate captions. Select Classic Caption Window in Setup to access it.
  • Adds Absolute Noise: The Fractals and Textures window now includes Absolute Noise, a sophisticated, limitless fractal surface generator. Create surreal photo backgrounds, import flawless textures into other applications or just lose yourself in an alternate universe. The animation to your right illustrates a few of the effects available through the Absolute Noise fractal generator.
  • Adds Screen Capture Annotation: The GWS Camera screen capture application can now optionally include captions with the capture graphics it creates. You can add a standard caption to every capture, be prompted for a caption for each screen capture or use the rich macro language of the Caption window to create automatic captions that include elements such as the time and date of your capture and the title of the window that was grabbed.
  • Adds Animation Workshop UltraLight: Graphic Workshop now installs with a fully functional simplified edition of our popular Animation Workshop application to build sophisticated, editable banners, advertisements and other complex objects for your web pages, social media postings, e-mail messages and PowerPoint presentations.
  • Updates Matt and Frame: The Matt and Frame window has been redesigned to make it more intuitive, and to address a few lingering functionality issues.
  • Adds Web Checker: Graphic Workshop's Web Checker is an ancillary application to spider your web site and bring to your attention any broken links and missing graphics it encounters. It's effortless to use, and usually a bit surprising the first time you run it and see what it finds.

  • Updates Watermark: The Watermark window has also been redesigned to make it more intuitive.

  • Updates GIF Construction Set UltraLight: The GIF Construction Set UltraLight application has been completely rewritten and expanded. It manages memory more effectively, has a smaller code footprint than its predecessors and is substantially quicker.
  • Fixes the Crop Window: The Crop window has been updated to address an issue which prevented it from correctly respecting the Windows task bar under some configurations of Windows.

  • Fixes Animated PNG: An issue that could cause the animated PNG viewer to display an initial blank frame for some animations has been addressed.
  • Performance: Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software developers never really stop meddling with.
         
  • Documentation: Updates the documentation.


The Graphic Workshop Printed Reference has been revised for the version 11 software, and it includes sections for all the new functionality. It's available through Amazon —there's a link to it at the Graphic Workshop web page, and you can access it through the Get The Graphic Workshop Printed Reference item of Graphic Workshop's Help menu. Alternately, just click on the book to your right.

All the Graphic Workshop plugins have been upgraded to install in the version 11 software. Note that if you're currently using an earlier version of Graphic Workshop and its attendant plugins:

  • Be sure to uninstall the version 10 plugins before you install Graphic Workshop Professional 11. Failing this, Graphic Workshop Professional 11 should prompt you to do so automatically the first time you run it.
  • You'll need to download and install the new plugin installers to run under Graphic Workshop Professional 11.

If you're using a registered installation of the Graphic Workshop RAW Digital Camera and Smartphone plugin for an earlier release of Graphic Workshop, note that your existing registration key will work with the version 11 plugin — you won't have to buy it again.

As in years past, when you run Graphic Workshop Professional 11 for the first time, it will look for a previous installation of Graphic Workshop Professional 10 and optionally copy your existing configuration, so you won't have to set everything up by hand. Even your open browser windows will be preserved.


Click on the blue button to download Graphic Workshop Professional 11.


Upgrades

If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 10 on or after April 1, 2020, you're welcome to a no-cost upgrade to Graphic Workshop Professional 11.

If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 10 prior to April 1, 2020, we invite you to upgrade to Graphic Workshop Professional 11 for half the current new-user price.

The first time you run Graphic Workshop Professional 11, it will determine which upgrade option applies to your license.

Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.


You can access the no-cost upgrade page directly by clicking on the foregoing link.



Announcing Alpha Paint 11



Alpha Paint + Icon Editor 11 has been released.

Alpha Paint is a sophisticated Windows paint application to draw and manage graphics with full alpha transparency. It will create:
  • Professional web page images
  • Eye-catching effects for social media
  • Killer graphics for PowerPoint presentations
  • Titles for videos
...and pretty much anything else that requires leading-edge art and transparency.
In addition, it can create and edit Windows icons.
Alpha Paint is intuitive, easy to use and it won't require that you get involved with complicated mathematics, higher-order spatial dimensions or a manual that requires more than one human lifetime to read.

Anyone with sufficient eye-hand coordination to successfully operate a web browser should be able to master Alpha Paint in under an hour.
We've added new functionality to Alpha Paint, improved its performance and generally refined it to better get along with Windows 10. (We hasten to add that it still performs admirably under earlier builds of Windows, all the way back to Windows XP, if you're feeling retro.)

Among the new features and enhancements to Alpha Paint, you'll find that it:

  • Updates Image Libraries: All the libraries that read and write graphics for Alpha Paint have been reviewed to ensure that they're secure and totally bulletproof. There being some really disagreeable people under many of the rocks of the Internet, we urge all the users of our software to keep its security elements up to date.

  • Toolbox: Refines various elements of the toolbox and the functionality associated with its drawing tools.
  • Performance: Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software developers never really stop meddling with.
         
  • Documentation: Updates the documentation.


Upgrades

If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Alpha Paint 10 on or after April 1, 2020, you're welcome to a no-cost upgrade Alpha Paint to 11.

If you have registered or upgraded a registration for Alpha Paint 10 prior to April 1, 2020, we invite you to upgrade to Alpha Paint 11 for half the current new-user price.

The first time you run Alpha Paint 11, it will determine which upgrade option applies to your license.

Click on the blue button below to visit the upgrade page.


You can access the no-cost upgrade page directly by clicking on the foregoing link.

Windows Speedup:
Disable Defender's Real Time Protection (second notification)



The Windows Defender security application that installs with Windows 10 is a redoubtable defense against the bottom feeders, script kiddies and brain donors of the Internet. This said, it can prove to be somewhat overprotective.

The Real Time Protection feature of Defender scans every file that gets anywhere near your computer, in real time, to make sure that none of them includes anything unexpected. While a laudable feature, it soaks up a lot of processor time and system resources in doing so.

Unless you sprang for a really fast computer with enough memory to fully occupy a modest suburban livingroom, having Defender’s real time protection running will slow your system down… probably quite a lot.

The past summer, Real Time Protection appears to have mutated. Windows would no longer allow it to be disabled through its Settings panel. Windows and everything running under it dropped into neutral.

We've found a way around this issue — if you trust yourself not to click on mysterious e-mail attachments or download software from peculiar web sites with a lot of spelling errors, you might want to look at restoring your system's performance

Click on the big blue button to see how this works.



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