Graphic Workshop Professional 4 is now available as a beta release. We invite you to download the current installer and try the latest generation of the known universe’s most popular image management package.

Please check out the beta notes, below.

As always, we will appreciate any feedback you can offer us, both regarding genuine bugs or other issues you’ve found in the software and suggestions you have for its improvement.

We hasten to note that the beta release will cease to function 60 days after it was built. Long before this happens, there will be a newer beta or the release software available. The beta timer prevents long-dead betas from hanging around ‘til the end of time, taunting users of Graphic Workshop with problems that have long since been addressed.

Beta Issues and Things to Note

1. You'll need to uninstall the previous Graphic Workshop Professional 4 software, if you've been running an earlier release, before you install the current one. There's a link in Graphic Workshop Professional 4's section of the Programs menu to handle this — it can also be uninstalled through Add/Remove Programs.
2. Important: Make sure you have your account password before you uninstall the previous release of Graphic Workshop Professional 4. If it's slipped away during the night, use the Account Managment function in the Help menu of Graphic Workshop — before you remove the earlier software — to reset it.
3. Graphic Workshop will validate itself the first time it runs after installation or after you've upgraded from an earlier beta. If you've registered it, it should populate its name and key fields — you'll need to enter your account password. Should you have taken Graphic Workshop up on its offer to save your registration information to a disk file when you initially registered, just open the file in question in NotePad and copy it to the Windows clipboard before you run Graphic Workshop. All the fields will be populated for you.
4. In answer to a frequently-asked question, you can install Graphic Workshop Professional 4 on a system which currently has Graphic Workshop Professional 3 on it. The two applications don't interact.
5. The Delete function in View mode has changed its behavior somewhat. It now queues up all the deleted files and nukes them when you exit View mode. By default, it will prompt you when it's about to remove files to let you change the removal method, and edit the list of doomed files. It will not prompt you during View mode for each deletion. Note that both these behaviors can be changed — see the discussion of Delete in the Reference ocument.
6. The Graphic Workshop Professional 4 format plugin interface is now working, and all the plugins are available for download. See the end of this page for links. Note that these plugins won't work with anything earlier than Graphic Workshop Professional 4 beta 5.
7. Folder overrides have been implemented. See the discussion of this feature in the section of the Reference document that deals with Browser Windows.
8. Windows special folder support is now implemented. They'll appear near the bottom of the navigation pane in Graphic Workshop's browsers. There's a discussion of special folders in the Reference document.
9. Some Windows 7 library support is included in this beta. Graphic Workshop will access selected known Windows 7 libraries, but it can't see any folders below them. Access to Windows 7 libraries for third-party software is a bit limited — we're still exploring how much support in this area Graphic Workshop will ultimately be able to offer. Keep in mind that libraries are collections of folders — you can easily access the underlying folders of your libraries.
10. The problem of Graphic Workshop repeatedly wanting to validate itself in evaluation mode has been addressed. Please let us know if you experience any further issues with it.
11. Graphic Workshop will appear in your Programs folder under an entry entitled Alchemy Mindworks, which will have a sub-entry entitled Graphic Workshop Professional 4.
12. The Progress window that appears when multiple files are being processed is due for improvement, but this hasn’t happened yet.
13. The installer is now an MSI file, this being a Windows installation database object. Double-click on it, or execute it from the Run prompt or even a DOS prompt. Be sure to type in the entire name in the latter cases, to wit, GWSP40.MSI or GraphicWorkshopProfessional4.MSI.
14. The registration code system, or registration keys, as they’re now called, have changed entirely from Graphic Workshop Professional 3. You’ll be prompted for your code the first time you run Graphic Workshop, rather than during installation. If you copy the e-mail message we sent you with your Graphic Workshop Professional 4 registration key to the Windows clipboard before you open the Enter Registration Key window in Graphic Workshop Professional, most of the fields therein will be populated for you, saving you some typing.
15. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 must have unfettered access to the Internet to validate an evaluation copy or to register itself. There isn’t a way around this, nor is there likely to be in the future.
16. None of the format plugins are available for Graphic Workshop Professional 4, and they probably won't be until after the beta cycle.
17. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 ships with two themes. All the version 2 and version 3 themes are still available, but you'll need to download them separately. There's no cost for doing so. Handling them as a separate install helped keep the size of the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 installer down a reasonable level of immensity. Click on More Themes in the Select Themes section of Setup.
18. Graphic Workshop Professional 4 requires Windows XP, Windows 7 or... what's that other one, that nobody liked... oh yes, Windows Vista to run. It will not run under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME or Windows NT.
19. We’re still working on a way to allow Graphic Workshop Professional 4 to run under the Wine compatibility layer on Macintosh and Linux systems, as our other application do. This beta probably won’t be of much use in these environments.
    
    

A really important bit: The registration key structure for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 has been completely redesigned, both to thwart as many of the world's cybercretins as possible, and to manage user accounts directly on our web server in a secure manner. The latter collection of euphemisms means that if you lose your registration key, you'll be able to get it back immediately. All this having been said, the registration key system is new — if you encounter any issues with it, we ask that you contact us. Thanks.

If you have registered or updated a registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 3 on or after August 1, 2009, you are welcome to a free registration key for Graphic Workshop Professional 4. That’s “free” as in “no money down, no interest or carrying charges and no payments until the end of time.” Please see the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 Key Request page to apply for a free key.

If you registered Graphic Workshop Professional 4 prior to August 1, 2009, you can upgrade to Graphic Workshop Professional 4 for $22.49 (US). Please see our upgrade page or call 1-800-263-1138 to upgrade.

If you register Graphic Workshop Professional 3 or upgrade your existing Graphic Workshop Professional registration during the Graphic Workshop Professional 4 beta cycle — that's any time from July 23, 2010 onward — you'll receive a registration key for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 as well. You won't need to complete the upgrade form.

As of this writing, the pricing for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 has not been finalized. Needless to say, if you register or upgrade at the existing Graphic Workshop Professional 3 pricing of $44.99 (or $22.49 to upgrade) and the price of Graphic Workshop Professional 4 turns out to be higher, you’ll have pocketed the difference.

Entering your registration key: When Graphic Workshop Professional 4 boots up for the first time, it will show you a window like the one to your right. Click on the uppermost button to enter your registration key and related information. Having successfully entered your registration key, the window will appear no more.

Click on the middle button to validate Graphic Workshop Professional 4 for evaluation. You'll see this window each time you run Graphic Workshop Professional 4 as evaluation software — click on the middle button to dismiss it. Note the text at the bottom of the window before you do so — it will let you know how much longer the fully-functional evaluation period of the software has left to run.

You can also enter your Graphic Workshop Professional 4 registration key by selecting Enter Registration Key from the Help menu.

If you copy the e-mail message in which we sent you your Graphic Workshop Professional 4 registration key to the Windows clipboard before you open the window to enter it, most of the fields therein will be automatically populated for you, saving you considerable typing and rodent action.

Account passwords: As part of your Graphic Workshop Professional 4 registration, you'll be assigned an account password. The passwords are assembled from a dictionary of English worlds. We reviewed the dictionary to exise any objectionable words, and we're pretty sure we nailed them all. In the event that you receive a password that includes a word you find troubling, please let us know. Having done so, use the Account Management function in the Help menu of Graphic Workshop to reset your password.

If you have suggestions or questions concerning Graphic Workshop Professional 4, please send us some e-mail.

If you'd like to submit a bug report, or if you need help in using Graphic Workshop Professional 4, please visit our support page. The support page does have a longer form, for which we are suitably contrite. However, it gets to our support staff, and it will provide them with the initial information they need to address your issue.

Click on one of the following links to download Graphic Workshop Professional 4 beta 6. This file is 20,535,296 bytes in length.

Plugins

AOL ART Plugin: The ART plugin will add support for the AOL ART format to Graphic Workshop Professional 4. The plugin supports reading and writing AOL ART files. It will also read ancient PFS:First Publisher ART files, in the truly unlikely event that you find yourself with some. This plugin is available at no cost to registered users of Graphic Workshop Professional 4. AOL is a trademark of AOL Inc.

JPEG 2000 Plugin: The JPEG 2000 plugin will add support for the JPEG 2000 format to Graphic Workshop Professional 4. The plugin supports reading and writing JPEG 2000 files — these are usually named with the extension JP2. This plugin is a product of our friends at Accusoft / Pegasus Imaging.

The Pegasus JPEG 2000 plugin is free to read JPEG 2000 files, and costs $29.00 (US) to register for writing images. Registration for this product is available on line through Accusoft / Pegasus Imaging.

RAW Digital Camera Plugin: The RAW plugin will add allow Graphic Workshop Professional 4 to read and convert the high-quality uncompressed images from hundreds of high-end digital cameras. Please see the raw plugin page for more information. This plugin costs $34.99.

If you have registered the RAW Digital Camera Plugin for an earlier version of Graphic Workshop Professional, your old registration code will work with this installer. You will need to enter it in the plugin by hand as of this writing, however. Once the plugin has been installed, run Graphic Workshop Professional 4, click on the Setup button in its tool bar, select the Files tab, select RAW Digital Camera from the Plugin Configuration list and click on Go.

SFW Plugin: The SFW plugin will add support for the Seattle Film Works digital image files to Graphic Workshop Professional 4. The plugin only supports reading SFW files. This plugin is available at no cost to registered users of Graphic Workshop Professional 4. It's our understanding that Seattle Film Works is now owned by AG Interactive, a subsidiary of American Greetings Corporation.