{"id":52800,"date":"2026-07-30T15:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=52800"},"modified":"2026-07-30T15:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:21:16","slug":"acorn-8-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/30\/acorn-8-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Acorn 8.6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/shapeof.com\/archives\/2026\/6\/acorn_8.6_brushes.html\">Gus Mueller<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/flyingmeat.com\/acorn\/releasenotes.html\">release notes<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/shapeof.com\/archives\/2026\/6\/acorn_8.6_brushes.html\">\n<ul>\n<li>A new brushing engine that has been rewritten using Metal shaders. It includes an option for &ldquo;velocity thinning&rdquo;, where the faster you draw your brush strokes, the thinner the lines.<\/li>\n<li>A new <code>acorn<\/code> shell tool that you can use to send JavaScript to Acorn, as well as start an MCP server. So if you&rsquo;ve got a favorite LLM you like to use, you can now use it to drive Acorn. The <a href=\"https:\/\/flyingmeat.com\/acorn\/releasenotes.html#8.6JS\">JavaScript section of the release notes<\/a> are a good read if you&rsquo;re interested in that. In addition:<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/flyingmeat.com\/acorn\/docs\/javascript_api.html\">JS API<\/a> has also been updated with examples for most calls.<\/li>\n<li>The shell tool has a <code>-jsio<\/code> argument which lets you do things like: <br \/><code>echo \"acorn.takeLayeredScreenshot();\" | acorn -jsio<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Big ML models (used for Select Subject and Super Resolution Scaling) are now downloaded on demand. If AI isn&rsquo;t your thing, they won&rsquo;t take up any space on your Mac.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>I feel lucky that Acorn is enough for me.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aftermath.site\/i-hate-adobe\/\">Chris Person<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/aftermath.site\/i-hate-adobe\/\">\n<p>Very few software companies outside of Microsoft have the kind of leverage over entire industries. Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom and After Effects are all load bearing to some extent within their respective fields despite the fact that many people I know loathe using them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/i-hate-adobe\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/i-hate-adobe\/\">\n<p>I have said it before and I will say it again: if I had known the path Adobe&rsquo;s software would eventually go down, I might very well have picked a different career.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/30\/photoshops-modern-spectrum-user-interface\/\">Photoshop&rsquo;s &ldquo;Modern&rdquo; Spectrum User Interface<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/29\/acorn-8-5\/\">Acorn 8.5<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gus Mueller (release notes): A new brushing engine that has been rewritten using Metal shaders. It includes an option for &ldquo;velocity thinning&rdquo;, where the faster you draw your brush strokes, the thinner the lines. A new acorn shell tool that you can use to send JavaScript to Acorn, as well as start an MCP server. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-07-30T19:21:20Z","apple_news_api_id":"aed00804-d455-482d-93d3-d4fcca974b8f","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-07-30T19:21:20Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ArtAIBNRVSC2T09T8ypdLjw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76,447,332,1351,619,30,32,2742,906,2776],"class_list":["post-52800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-acorn","tag-adobe","tag-photoshop","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-graphics","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-metal","tag-model-context-protocol-mcp"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52801,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52800\/revisions\/52801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}