The new ArtWorks 2.X2, unveiled at the Wakefield Show 2012, adds an exciting new creative feature: Artistic Lines. These new objects can have a variable width profile, so they can look like brush lines or waves, yet they are still as conveniently editable as ordinary lines. Even better: You can apply graduated fills or Hatch fills to them, and they can even have a coloured outline (Details).

Its predecessor version 2.XI was the first ARMv7-safe version of ArtWorks (for BeagleBoard and ARMini compatibility) and it introduced the Style Panel making it much easier to create illustrations with a consistent design. Together with other improvements that makes working with ArtWorks 2.X2 even more of a joy as before.
New 2.X2 features. New 2.XI features.

ArtWorks 2 builds on the strength of an unrivalled and mature feature set resulting from more than fifteen years of development by MW Software, incorporating many suggestions by home and professional users and making it the ideal tool for the creation of graphics for the Web, home printing and (semi-)professional printing.

ArtWorks 2 can import multi-page PDF files with advanced features like graduated fills, transparency, clipping and CMYK colours, so designs created on other platforms are only a mouse click away from being edited in ArtWorks. This opens up a whole new world of opportunities for getting existing designs into ArtWorks for further editing (details). And thanks to its direct PDF export capabilities ArtWorks 2 is the only RISC OS program that can create PDF files with full CMYK colour support, high-quality masked sprites of any colour depth and advanced graphical effects such as graduated fills and transparency (details).

In the RISC OS universe ArtWorks files can be rendered directly by many applications thanks to the AWRender2 module, distributed as part of the free ArtWorks Viewer. This module enables third-party RISC OS applications to render all your designs exactly as ArtWorks 2.X2, including advanced transparency effects and shadows.

Illustrations created in ArtWorks 2 can be exported with anti-aliasing and transparency information as alpha masked Sprite or PNG files. This finally makes it easy to create bitmaps that blend perfectly into any background, which is ideal for web and icon design. (details) The RISC OS 5 icon set was created in ArtWorks and then exported as sprites ready for inclusion in the OS. ArtWorks 2 also allows illustrations to be exported as CMYK sprites or TIFF files with full CMYK colour control for professional printing.

Discover the power of graduated transparency, multiple transparency types (mix stained glass, bleach), dynamic clipping for all object types, multi-column text areas, user-defined dynamic pattern fills, dynamic blends and replications, moulds and perspectives, graduated fills (linear and radial) and many more and then submit your documents for professional printing or viewing on other platforms as high-quality PDF files.

ArtWorks 2 runs on all RISC OS machines equipped with RISC OS 3.5 or higher, from low-end A7000 and RiscPC computers to StrongARM and Kinetic RiscPCs, Omega, Iyonix pc, the A9home and BeagleBoard-based systems (e.g., ARMini and BIK). The ViewFinder graphics card is supported, as is emulated operation under VirtualRPC and operation under RISC OS 6, even in 64-thousand colour modes.

The above pictures show front covers for the Acorn Publisher June 2002 and December 2002 issues designed by Henk Huinen (Creatief Beeldwerk) using ArtWorks.