Opacity: Video Review and Giveaway

Posted by Michael Mistretta on 02/19/08 in Featured, MacApper Videos, Graphics, Giveaways

Opacity If you are a graphic or icon designer, and are looking for an app that is easy to use, beautiful, and very powerful, Opacity is the perfect app for you. Having just come out on February 13th, this brand new application takes advantage of Leopard Core Animation to create a powerful and beautiful environment for making icons, buttons, and graphics.

Opacity has a very simple interface on the surface, but under the hood you are able to apply tons of filters, create different resolutions, build different factories, and even apply different variables such as color and boolean. And if you are looking to preview your graphics, you can see live previews of how they will look in the dock, menu bar, or even the web. For a full first look at the power beneath the interface of this application, watch the following video review.

Opacity Review [9:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Like Thought, the makers of Opacity, have generously given us two licenses of Opacity to giveaway on the blog. All you have to do is leave a comment with one way you will use Opacity, and you will automatically be entered into the random giveaway. If you don’t win a copy of Opacity in our giveaway, you can pick up your own license for $89 USD.

The giveaway will end on February 29th at 12:00AM EST, so be sure to get your submission in early. For more MacApper video reviews, subscribe to the MacApper podcast in iTunes, or to the MacApper RSS feed.

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52 Comment(s)

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Pat said on

February 19th, 2008 at 6:48 am

I would use it to create web graphics.

Louis said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:00 am

I’d use it to create icon bundles.

tbrizitsky said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:07 am

I’m mostly interested in a tool to create small size pixel graphics like arrows, simple pictograms, etc…

Marius B said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:23 am

I´d definitely use it for making web graphics in a more speedy way.

Dan said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:28 am

I would use it to create logos and buttons for websites.

Silla said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:31 am

I’ve actually been looking for an app to make icons and other small graphics, as I find it difficult to make them using graphic apps like Gimp and Pixelmator. Opacity’s a bit expensive for me right now, but it seems like just the thing I need, so I thought I’d enter the giveaway

I would use Opacity to make alternative icons for the Mac OS and to make adoptables. I’d also like to learn programming, so if I manage to build an app I would use Opacity to make icons for it too. Making custom cursors should also be fun! ^__^

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Michael Sheehan said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:45 am

This is an incredible program. I currently use RW to build my website, as an amateur I seem to spend hours with Photoshop, where with this my ability to create web buttons with a professional finish would be much easier. Would love to have a copy of this

Neil said on

February 19th, 2008 at 8:03 am

I would definitely use this to create icons. At the moment the learning curve with PS is pretty steep but this looks very good. This is a really well constructed niche app and I love apps which do just a few specialist things really well.

Chriswan Winata said on

February 19th, 2008 at 8:55 am

I saw the video, it’s awesome

Me as a newbie can make a professional’s graphic magic while get entertained with the fabulous interface

Jim said on

February 19th, 2008 at 9:11 am

My 10 yr old daughter would love this. She had the chance to use Photoshop in a class she took last summer at the local community college for two weeks and now just loves playing with graphics programs. She’s also created her own web page so something like this might be useful in encouraging her interest in design.

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Matt said on

February 19th, 2008 at 9:19 am

From my current way of using no application, I would no doubt love this to create web graphics.

Ryan said on

February 19th, 2008 at 9:27 am

I’ll use it to make some cool icons for my blog relaunch. Looks like a cool little program!

Anthony said on

February 19th, 2008 at 9:33 am

I guess that I would attempt to use it in web design: button creation, rollover states, and the like. It is hard to know exactly how I would use this tool until I download the demo and try it out for a while. But web work is how I would employ it.

Steven Ratcliffe said on

February 19th, 2008 at 9:45 am

I’m soon to start a much needed revamp of my web portfolio (its been about a year and a half)as well as starting a blog/sketchbook site as a place for me to vent my anger/frustrations/likes/loves at the world and it will hopefully, maybe, who knows?, turn into some sort of webcomic somewhere along the line. gonna be doing the same thing for an artist friend of mine who’s not as handy with the old HTML as I am.

So yeah, this looks like it will be a big help with all the web graphics I intend to be producing in the coming months. I recently started with some icon design as well so It would come in use there as well

my fingers are crossed!

Brooks said on

February 19th, 2008 at 11:08 am

This looks perfect for creating web graphics, and maybe finally getting around to creating an icon set.

Geneve said on

February 19th, 2008 at 11:24 am

I do freelance web design to give myself a little extra cash for college, and this would be a godsend!

miklb said on

February 19th, 2008 at 11:33 am

I’d love a more focused app for creating custom icons and such for developing blog app themes.

Josh H. said on

February 19th, 2008 at 11:47 am

I will upgrade my companies website with new icons as it it sort of out of style

maeks84 said on

February 19th, 2008 at 11:51 am

Icon creation.

Adam Teece said on

February 19th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

I would use this to make banners and logos for a few of my websites.

Zak MacDonald said on

February 19th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

I’d be using Opacity for a few purposes. One would be for my website where I would offer tutorials and downloads of project files. The other way would be for my job where we need random icons for this and that. Though more so for my soon-to-be-launched baby.

2stupid2knowIt said on

February 19th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

I would use this to create quick graphics for presentations

Joe Cool said on

February 19th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

I would use Opacity to create mac and web icons.

Catatonic said on

February 19th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Create beautiful, scalable decorative flourishes and widgets for web sites.

What an outstanding application. Kudos to the Opacity dev team for some truly stellar work.

Something2sea said on

February 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

I would use this application to build button graphics for my web projects & database applications / projects.

Lucky said on

February 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

I’d use it to make icons for open source projects. Transmission really needs some better icons.

Alex said on

February 19th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

I would love Opacity as, despite being a designer, I’ve never really got on with making icons, I’d love to be able to make loads of icons to distribute to the community this way.

Quick graphics are also very useful in web design, so I have multiple reasons, just not the money!

Colby G said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

Creating logos would be my main use…

David Stalnaker said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

I’d use it for web image work and possible some icons for some applications if I ever get off my ass and learn cocoa. But primarily images for the web.

Darrell said on

February 19th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

I would love to win a copy!

I’ve tried Pixen by Open Sword software, but it’s too buggy and hasn’t been updated in about 2 years. I’ve also tried Icon Builder from IconFactory, but that’s too complex and a total overkill to have to load Photoshop just to create icons.

I would use Opacity to create icons and buttons for websites that I’m working on as well as create generic icons for use with other applications.

Scott said on

February 19th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

I could finally banish inkscape and its X11 ugliness from my workflow.

michael said on

February 19th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

I WAAAAAAAAAAAAANT it !!!!

Zach said on

February 20th, 2008 at 1:17 am

I’d use it to create graphics for the web.

Richard said on

February 20th, 2008 at 2:55 am

I will use it for logos.

The Spirit said on

February 20th, 2008 at 3:57 am

i would use it to make new icons for the iphone apps

kylegl said on

February 20th, 2008 at 5:14 am

I would use it to create icons for open-sources applications that I’m developing.

Pierre Bernard said on

February 20th, 2008 at 5:30 am

I am a software developer / publisher. For major icons, I call upon a professional designer (Mike Rohde). But there are all these minor UI elements: from toolbar icons down to split bar dimples. These I do myself. Still running Photoshop CS2 in Rosetta. And only mastering 10% of it.

I think Opacity would be God-send for the casual user like me.

johan said on

February 20th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

I will use for creating icons for web and print.

Tanner Smith said on

February 20th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

I would like to you Opacity to help design my FIRST team’s website.

Tim said on

February 20th, 2008 at 8:48 pm

I will use it to create a Ghostbusters Adium icon. Then I will begin creating several other icons because it looks like it is a joy to use, and easy to learn. Very nice.

Hans J Bauer said on

February 21st, 2008 at 8:04 am

I will use ist to create the icons for our students oragmisation webpage.

Mark said on

February 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am

I am super excited about this application. I have been looking for something other than photoshop to build user interfaces for home automation controls. This is perfect for designing the vast majority of the button graphics, which is about 90% of the design work I have to do!

Thanks!

Mark

AllOut said on

February 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am

I would like to use opacity to create nice icons for my application.

Ray said on

February 21st, 2008 at 10:42 pm

I will use it to brainstorm GUI for web application as well as general graphics use.

Alan B. said on

February 22nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Looks like this could be great for helping me design a new logo for my photography biz.

Deni said on

February 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Icons!
I’m an icon junkie and so I’m really interested in how this program simplifies the process.

Arthus Erea said on

February 23rd, 2008 at 8:40 pm

I will use Opacity to create icons for my web projects.

Michael Pastore said on

February 24th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Beautiful icons attract attention to any project. I would use Opacity to enhance my screencasts.

Ruprecht said on

February 24th, 2008 at 11:42 pm

I would like to use it for making personalized icons for myself and to surprise friends Nobody is the same, so why would yr Mac be the same?:)

cheers

Mike said on

February 25th, 2008 at 9:21 am

This looks like a great program to simplify my order buttons on my sales pages.

Michael said on

February 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

As a pure designer who sometimes dabbles in web design, this would be an amazing addition to my workflow. Right now I mock up websites in Illustrator. Assuming this would play well with Adobe, I could design everything in Illustrator, and then pluck out each item and ‘post-produce’ everything in Opacity.

Coool.

Apple Fanatic said on

February 27th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

I would most definitely use this to make more aesthetically appealing icons for my Mac.