We have been completely overwhelmed with everyone’s enthusiastic response to the announcement and release of AlphaTricks this month! As we’ve worked with users, we’ve uncovered some common questions, as well as tips that it seems everyone would like to know about:
Hello, all your Embrilliant embroiderers!
It just occurred to me that we haven’t mentioned our new AlphaTricks here on the blog.
It’s a feature pack for Essentials, but it does run by itself. We just know that you’ll want to use it all together though. It makes those alphabet designs work like the built-in Essentials fonts.
Check out the page on the product at embrilliance.com/products/alphatricks
And get started using all those alphabet designs you’ve collected but never used!
Happy Easter!
-Brian
Hi Everyone! We have posted the latest version 1.103 on the downloads page. It is a major update for the Mac version and includes support for Mountain Lion, which released yesterday. Cheers!
Another new, as yet undocumented, feature has been added to Essentials:
You can now create thread palettes of existing thread colors, and you can also place a check mark on threads that are in your inventory.
We have also added many user-requested threads including the full Coats and Clark lines, BFC, Jenny Haskins, etc.
This feature will appear in the next Mac update too. But we have it today for you on Windows, so we’re releasing it now.
Happy colorizing!
-Brian
Hi,
We’ve released Essentials 1.08.
This version has a myriad of updates, including our new Navigation H.U.D (Heads Up Display).
We moved the Navigation Window to make the right-side of the screen more user friendly, and to give more room for the Object View, which will grow in importance when we put out the digitizer.
We also added a couple requested features: Color Sort and a Preferred Thread brand.
In Windows, the Merge Designs window has been updated to be multi-threaded, so you can browse and scroll while the designs themselves are loading. This makes life a bit easier when browsing folders with hundreds of files. We’re working on this for OSX, but it wasn’t ready for this release.
The manual, help and online help have been updated with large section additions. We do however consider this to be an ongoing project. Lindee has been a great help with edits and new material, and she also has plans to give us some tutorials too!
We downloaded Lion on a Mac Mini as a regular user, and Essentials 1.08 runs just fine!
A lot has been done with bug checking and quality assurance testing in general.
And the Mac version is synced up even closer, so the features are almost perfectly concurrent.
Enjoy!
-Brian
Well, Apple must have read my blog, as I’ve been a bit whiney about getting our updates to the AppStore. They turned around our latest submission in record time for them, and we are very pleased to announce that we’ve finally gotten the long-anticipated 1.06 Essentials update in the Mac App Store version!
Hi, I just want to remind everyone that in the Forum there is a section where you get to ask for software to fit your needs and wants. We are wondering what you would like to do and why. One of the features up for discussion is stitch editing. So I posted an explanation and some questions in the Forum regarding that, and would like you opinion there. Thanks!
Although most of you have bought it from us direct, this is a milestone for embroidery using a Mac.
If you weren’t aware, Apple now has a ‘Mac App Store’ as part of OSX 10.6. It lets users buy programs and download them direct from Apple, kind of like iTunes.
We busted our butts jumping through the hoops that Apple puts up. It was a long, painful project. But there it is. Finally, Embroidery on a Mac is mainstream!
This means that more and more Mac embroiderers will be able to find us, which hopefully means more and more embroidery stuff for Mac can be brought out.
Go, Mac, Go!
We spoke with Apple yesterday, and they asked us to change a little bit in our setup then we’ll have Essentials in the Mac App Store. It was nice getting a real human being to talk with us. They are so excited about embroidery on a Mac they actually had a team meeting where we were part of the discussion. Wow!
We’ve taken many of your suggestions and implemented them in Essentials 1.04!
Of particular note is Ghost Mode, which I created many years ago for Designer’s Gallery HoopWorks. Ghost Mode makes things that are not selected transparent. Why? Because when you are selecting individual colors in a design sometimes you can’t tell exactly which stitches that is selecting. In the original method you would of course see the handles, and you still do, but not the selected stitches are REALLY obvious. And in the unlikely event you want the regular display, simply turn Ghost Mode off using the View menu.
We’ve also fixed some selection bugs, and added other simpler feature requests like double-clicking a file in the Import window to “just bring it in without clicking on the Import button.”
To follow the changes, we have a ‘Changes’ forum topic where you can see most of what we add.
Have a great weekend!
"I"ve enjoyed my Embrilliance Essentials."
From Kathy W
Regarding Essentials
