The new ArtWorks 2.X, released at the Wakefield Show 2010 finally offers a shadow tool for transparent drop shadows and the ability to transfer properties from one object to others, plus it has other improvements that make working with it even more of a joy as before.
All new features.

ArtWorks 2.X builds on the strength of an unrivalled and mature feature set resulting from more than thirteen years of development by MW Software, incorporating many suggestions by home and professional users.

ArtWorks 2.9, released at the Wakefield Show 2009, allowed anti-aliasing and transparency information to be included in exported bitmaps by offering Sprite and PNG export with alpha masks. This finally made it easy to create bitmaps that blend perfectly into any background, which is ideal for web and icon design. In addition, many other new features in various areas such as multi-page handling and text areas made working with ArtWorks even easier.

The release of ArtWorks 2.8 marked another another milestone in the development of the platform's most popular advanced graphics illustration package. With its new PDF import capabilities (details) designs created on other platforms are only a mouse click away from being edited in ArtWorks, including multiple pages, graduated fills, transparency, clipping and CMYK colours. This opens up a whole new world of opportunities for getting designs into ArtWorks.

ArtWorks 2.8 imports multi-page PDF documents, making use of the previously added multi-page support (details), another first for RISC OS graphics programs. Combined with the powerful and highly popular direct PDF Export introduced in version 2.5, this allows users to import, edit and export multi-page PDF files with ease.

Its direct PDF export capabilities make ArtWorks 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).

The new features complement the advanced features already present in earlier versions, such as graduated transparency and dynamic clipping making it the ideal tool for the creation of graphics for the Web, home printing and (semi-)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 and the A9home. The ViewFinder graphics card is supported, as is emulated operation under VirtualRPC and operation under RISC OS 6.

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