Acorn 8

Acorn comes from Flying Meat, the two-person outfit behind VoodooPad and Retrobatch, and it has been on sale since 2007 without ever growing a login screen. It does layers, masks, curves and levels, blend modes, vector shapes, text on a path, batch export and web presets, plus the modern conveniences — subject selection, super resolution — that you would otherwise open a much heavier app for. There is a real automation layer underneath: AppleScript, JavaScript and a plug-in API, so repetitive jobs stop being manual.

The point of it is proportion. It launches instantly, the window is not covered in panels you never touch, and $29.99 is roughly two months of the Photoshop plan. For retouching, compositing, icon and asset work, and cleaning up screenshots, it is enough.

The cost you should plan for is the next major version. Flying Meat charges again when one lands, at full price rather than an upgrade discount, which works out to about ten dollars a year if you always move up — and nothing at all if you do not, since the version you bought keeps running.

Skip it if you need reliable round-tripping of complex PSDs with a Photoshop team, or you want the file on an iPad too. Acorn is a Mac app for one person's Mac, and it is honest about that.