The point of Flickery is to move all of the functionality of Flickr to your desktop. So, of course, you can upload photos with it. All you do is go to the Upload item in the sidebar, and either drag some photos onto the window, or use the Make Screenshot button to create and upload a screenshot. You can also click the Open button to choose some files to upload. These can be either pictures or videos. But, to make things even simpler, you can record a movie to upload directly from Flickery. Once you have chosen some images and/or videos, you can then add titles, descriptions and tags to them. However, from this screen, you can’t choose what photoset it will go into when uploaded.

Once a picture or video has been uploaded, you can still edit its information just by clicking Edit Info. To add a photo to a photoset, you just have to click the Add to Set button, and then choose one or more photosets. However, the sets it is already in don’t appeared as checked (in the window that pops up), so you can’t really tell if it’s already in one. This also makes it hard to delete it from a photoset, because you can’t uncheck the box. You can also show comments, tags and descriptions of anyones photos by clicking the Show Details button when a photo is selected. I really like the crumpled paper look of this screen, but it really doesn’t match the rest of the UI, so it seems a little awkward. To view a larger size of an image, you just double click on it. Or, you can click the Fullscreen button to view the image in fullscreen.

Flickery also supports easy downloading of any picture or video. If you’ve ever browsed on Flickr.com, you know it’s always annoying to download an image or video. But Flickery makes it just the click of a button away. You just select an image or video, and hit Download. A downloads window will then appear, allowing you to manage multiple downloads. Along with this, you can also add any photo to your iPhone library (not Aperture though). You just click the Add to iPhoto library. I’m not sure why you’d want to add someone else’s image to your library, but you can.

Like Flickr.com, Flickery allows you to Explore. Exploring is just a cool way to find all images that were taken on a certain day. You can also perform and save searches right in Flickery, which is really cool. You can also see all of your contacts and their photostreams by just clicking on their name in the sidebar. However, you cannot manage contacts directly from Flickery. I assume this is an issue with the Flickr API, and not the app though.

Flickery is a great desktop version of Flickr.com. It has almost all the features the Website has and a couple extra. You can buy it for about $20, and download a 15-day free trial from their site. Anyone who uses Flickr frequently, or who wants a better image search engine should definitely try out Flickery.

TwitPic for the iPhone lets you log in to your twitpic account, upload any photo stored on your device, comment on it and tweet it…  and that’s it.  Essentially TwitPic is a twitter client for twitpic photos only.  In a world where Twitter clients offered zero photo functionality, this would be a godsend.  But that’s not the world we live in.  In fact, most iPhone Twitter clients not only offer image uploading features but allow you to pick from a list of hosts including twitpic.

The developers behind this app couldn’t have been oblivious to this fact, and yet their design decisions suggest just that very thing.  Adding in twitpic specific features such as browsing your photo history or the photo history of other users would have added something fresh and new here, but such features are conspicuously absent.  Going one step further they could have added in features that have been glaringly omitted from the site like a search functionality, but again, this app functions as little more than the image uploader you already have in a client.

Even as an image uploader, it’s far from perfect.  Once you enter the portion of the process where you “comment” on your photo, giving the tweet text, you’re officially locked in.  If, say, you change your mind at the last minute and decide you’d rather not post the image for whatever reason (logged into the wrong acct, don’t want to embarrass your wife, etc..), tough beans.  There’s no way to cancel at that point.  Even worse?  Logging out of the app will then force your pic to post when you boot it back up.

If you’re looking for a quick way to pop your photos on to Twitter without booting up your Twitter client for whatever reason, this is definitely going to be a handy little tool.  The problem?  I can’t imagine anyone who that situation might apply to.  It’s like entering the word processor market and offering a fantastic app for backspacing.  No matter how good it is, it doesn’t matter — every app already does that.  And this app?  It’s a sub-par backspacer at best.

Considering there are so many options that already exist for uploading photos to twitpic, this app feels completely edundant.  Had they added in some basic features like the ability to browse your twitpic acct or search through the photos of others, they may have had something worth checking out.  As it stands though, TwitPic for the iPhone offers a tiny set of features that you’ll already find built into the vast majority of Twitter clients in the App Store.

TwitPic is available for free on the iTunes App Store.

When you start up LittleSnapper Touch you will see a large wheel. Simply spin this wheel to select the different options. You can choose to upload images from your library, your camera, or you can take a websnap. Unlike LittleSnapper for Mac, however, the websnap will only be of what is currently showing on your iPhone’s screen. You can also add and delete accounts and visit the QuickSnapper website from the main menu.

Once you have a picture to upload you can enter the title, rating, description, tags, and type. Then just choose an account and tap share. The image will be uploaded and you will have the option to share it in an email or on Twitter. If you choose to share it on Twitter it will open up the Twitter application on your phone (Tweetie, Twitterrific, and Twitterfon are currently supported) and have the link in a new tweet.

While LittleSnapper Touch is great for uploading images, there are a few issues with the application. Other than uploading images, it doesn’t do that much. There isn’t anyway to annotate your images and, as mentioned before, the websnaps do not capture the whole page (obviously due to the iPhone’s limitations).

If you are expecting a full version of LittleSnapper for Mac on your iPhone, this is not what you are looking for. If you want a simple application to upload pictures to QuickSnapper, however, this is just for you. LittleSnapper Touch is currently on iTunes for $2.99.

Rather than being a small feature in a giant software suite, EasyCrop is a standalone program that can handle all of your cropping and resizing needs with little more than the click of a mouse.  Unlike PhotoShop, the program loads up in seconds.  Simply drag any image — be it on your desktop, in a folder, or even in your browser — into EasyCrop’s left window.  Use your mouse to select the area you want to crop and it will appear as a cropped image in the right window.  Drag that new image to your desktop and voila!  You have a freshly cropped image.  From clicking on the EasyCrop icon to having a newly cropped image file can take you less than 10 seconds.  It’s glorious.

While EasyCrop doesn’t offer up much more than this, you’re also present with the ability to resize your new photo.  A slider will let you adjust the size if you just want to eyeball it, but if you know the sizes you need you’ll be able to pop in those numbers too.  The resizing always keeps things in proportion, so you’re not going to accidentally stretch things out and make your image look wonky.  Mind you, if you’re looking to stretch things out, you’re not going to be able to accomplish it with EasyCrop.

Images can also be sharpened and saved in different formats if needed (JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF).  A few other perks like the Destination Drawer (which lets you save up to six locations to store your newly cropped files at the click of a button) and the built in screen capture tools make this a rather meaty offering for such a no frills presentation.  The program has a number of little handy extras like this, but it doesn’t offer anything that doesn’t make sense.  EasyCrop is light on frivilous add-ons and big on sensible extras. Asides from these little tweaks, EasyCrop is a program that does little more than live up to its name.  It’s easy.  It crops.  That’s it.  And that’s all it needs to be.

The only complaint we had was with the lack of an “undo” feature.  If you fiddle with the adjustments a little and want to revert to an earlier choice, you’re stuck.  It’s a strange situation, and one we hope to see remedied in future iterations.

While there could be any number of smaller features included in EasyCrop, that’s missing the point.  EasyCrop succeeds not because of what it does, but because of what it doesn’t.  By stripping away all the needless bells and whistles that so many photo editors come bundled with, Yellow Mug Software has designed a photo editor that focuses on a single task and handles it effectively and efficiently.

EasyCrop is available from Yellow Mug Software for $11.95.

Unlike OS X’s Grab, Layers can capture every element on your screen, from your wallpaper, to your menu bar icons. But, it would be hard to select an individual menu bar icon every time you wanted to grab it, so they did something never seen before: They have allowed you to capture your screen as a PSD file. This means that every object on your screen is in a separate window, and they are even grouped by type (menu bar, desktop, apps). To do this, all you have to do is go to File>Capture screen. A PSD file will then appear on wherever you have set Layers to save it. You can also hit a keyboard shortcut to do this. You can also go to File>Capture front window to just capture the frontmost window (or again, there’s a keyboard shortcut).

But, this almost seems like a step back so far, because you can’t capture just any window or a selection without editing the PSD. Well, that’s not entirely true. If you go to Window>Inspector, you will see that you can capture individual elements very easily. If you click on one of the items in the list, Layers will highlight it and zoom in so you can see it. When you have a selection made (one or more items), you just hit Save, and Layers will save the/those elements. It also adds a white background to each element, which is nice if that’s what you want. If you don’t want that, all you have to do is click the Opaque toolbar item, and no white background will be drawn.

In the same inspector, you have a few more options. You can choose to hide all desktop elements and you can choose to hide all off-screen elements. Hiding the desktop is great if you need a screenshot with a blank desktop. You can also choose to give the selection a tight fit (which will make sure the total size of the PSD is the size of your desktop), a shadow, a frame and have the background opaque (these are all toolbar items).

wuonm’s Layers retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from their Web site. It adds a lot of functionality to screen-capturing, but it is not necessary for all people. Only those who need a PSD of their desktop, or need a shot of a few select elements will find use in this. For everyone else, Apple’s Grab is just fine.

Many people think of an HDR image as more of an “artsy” type of photograph, but in reality HDR imaging has very practical uses. It allows you to reproduce the range of tones that our eyes can see, but no camera can capture in a single image. The process of creating an HDR image involves combining multiple images of the same scene at different EV settings; but enough of what HDR imaging is, and onto how Photomatix handles it.

Upon opening Photomatix Pro, you are greeted with a “Workflow shortcuts” window. This window has four buttons for getting started with your image, and a tutorial button for when you need help. For the purposes of this review, I am going to select “Generate HDR Image.”

Clicking this button brings up a dialog where Photomatix asks you to select the images you want to combine. You can see the three images that I am going to use below. In Aperture, I took a RAW photo of a bolt of lightning, and, using the exposure adjustment, made two additional images to process.

Once you have located your images, clicking “OK” will send you to the next step. Here you have a few options when deciding how Photomatix will create your HDR image. The defaults have worked fine for me so far, but your results may vary. Click “OK” once again, and Photomatix will go to work.

The initial result once Photomatix is done is very lackluster. You must process the image using tone mapping in order to make the image something worth looking at.

This is where things can become confusing. Photomatix has an array of options and sliders to adjust your image. The manual provides an explanation of what each slider does to your image, so it is recommended that you read each blurb before adjusting. Once you have a handle on how each option changes your image, you can begin tweaking to reach the desired effect.

Overall, Photomatix Pro is very good at what it does. Though the interface may be a little bland, it is still easy to navigate. While some may be intimidated by the many buttons and sliders present at any moment on screen, a quick skim of the manual will get you up to speed.

Though the price may be an issue for many, HDR soft also has academic pricing available, and one license is valid for both the Mac and Windows versions.

You can pick up Photomatix Pro for $99 from HDR soft.

What does this app do?

Img2icns is designed to take any image in all of the popular formats, including Adobe Photoshop files, and apply it so that you can put that image on a folder/file. In other terms, it takes your image and turns it into an icon.

Img2icns feels like this was the blueprint throughout the entire app. All you have to do is drag your image into the window-dominating drop field and Img2icns gives you your options. Once the image is loaded into the app, simply drag another file or folder onto the same drop zone to give it your new icon. If you want to convert that image into Apple icon format (.icns), click the ICNS button.

Streamlined Interface

The developers put a ton of effort into the look and feel of this app. It’s no surprise that Img2icns is dominated by icons. The window is small so it doesn’t take up a bunch of real estate. Every step is transitioned with sleek animations making the experience as fun as the result. If you’re ever stuck, choose Help > Show help balloons and some popup balloons tell you what the interface elements do.

Requirements and Performance

Img2icns is universal, meaning that it can run on a Mac run by an Intel or PowerPC processor. Its current version is made for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, however you can also download version 0.5 for Mac OS 10.4 X Tiger. In terms of speed, like any app it will depend on your processor and the amount of memory you have. Img2icns imports and exports images extremely quickly. Icons are not big files, and setting them to files does not require a lot of processing power.

Standard or Pro?

Img2icns comes in two versions. The pro version obviously comes with more features. Shiny Frog, the developer of this app, has illustrated the capabilities of each version with a comparison table:

The Verdict

At the time of review Img2icns is in version 1.01 and does exactly what the title depicts: it takes your images and converts them into icons, which can be applied to style your files and folders. This app feels like it has been designed from the ground up for this purpose only. There are no excess features or fluff. Img2icns’ interface is streamlined, not to mention beautiful, with great transitions designed to keep your workflow productive and stress free. The best experience is when running this app under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, however there is a previous version available for Tiger. If you have a need for the ability to export icons for the iPhone or to create favicons, there’s a pro version for $12.90. Otherwise Img2icns is available at img2icnsapp.com for Free.

As said above, Deep allows you to search by colors. This can be really useful if you are looking for all the pictures of your room, because you know the wall color. Instead of making you pick a color out of the blue, Deep shows you a list of colors that your images contain. But they aren’t really specific colors, they are ranges. So, if you know the picture has a dark red in it, click on the icon that includes that color. This may sound really powerful already, but it gets even more powerful. Once you have clicked on a range, you can click on another one to narrow it down even more. When you click on another color, the list of colors and the list of images will then narrow down. There will always be 7 rows of colors, though, that go through the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet).

Once you have selected an image, Deep gives you even more options. On the right side of the window you will see another color list, this time for colors in that image. Below the preview of the image you will see a view with all of your images. But when you click on one of the colors in the right, this list will narrow down to only images with that color. Deep can show you similar images with just a few clicks. But you can also have Deep do this for you with its “Genius” functionality. In the toolbar you will see an icon that looks like iTunes’ Genius button. If you press it, Deep will find all images similar to the selected one. It will still do it by color, but it should make it even easier to find similar images.

One gem in Deep that many can easily miss is its image list scroller. You can use a left or right scroller on a mouse to scroll through, but there’s another way — a better way — just click anywhere in the list and flick with your mouse, left or right, and the list will move through the images. Unlike regular scrolling, it will not stop moving until it has reached the end of the list. You can also just hit the Play button to have it go through the list slowly. The only issue is, there is no pause button, so you have to stop it by clicking somewhere on the list. Although it also has some issues (like dragging up or down can resize the list), it is still a very cool way to view a list of images — very iPhone-like.

Although Deep’s main purpose is to allow you to search images through colors, it also includes a few other things. First of all, when any image is selected, you can just hit Enter to enter some tags. This will also make it easier to find images in the future. You can also sort by image type, location and size and shape. You can actually do all of these at once. This means that you can look for a raw image in your Pictures folder that is extra-large, with a dark shade of blue.

Ironic Software’s Deep retails for $34 and you can download a free trial from their site. It solves an issue that many of us have multiple times a day. Although it’s basically a one-trick-pony, it does the job, and does it well.

Button Builder is designed to make all of your buttons, whether it’s for a web site or an application for the Mac, quickly and easily.  Every aspect of the app is tailored so that you can get in, make your buttons, and get out.  The user interface is simple and streamlined so that you only need to focus on your results.  

At the top is a standard tool bar with 4 buttons.  Theme, Font, Adjust, and export.  Think of the toolbar as a conveyor belt with each step in order to make your button.  First, select one of Button Builder’s 50 themes each varying in size and color.  Next, choose a font out of your library.  It doesn’t matter if the font is specific to your computer or not because the exported button will be an image.  After that, click the Adjust button to customize all of your button’s aspects ranging from the text position to the width of the actual button.  It’s a comfort to know that your button can be as wide or as thin as you’d like.  Each template is made up of three parts: Left, Middle, and Right.  All Button Builder has to do is increase the size of the Middle part. Once you have your button looking the way it should, click the Export toolbar item to save it in either .JPG or .PNG format.

Button Builder is required to run at Mac OS 10.4.3 or higher which means your computer should run this app at a quick pace.  Button Builder takes up very little processing power resulting in almost insinuations responses.  However, depending on what you have running at the moment and on how big your button is, Button Builder’s speeds will vary.

Button Builder does have it’s flaws.  The bottom of the file menu has its usual “Print Setup” and and “Print” menu items, but after choosing “Print”, nothing happens.  Also, when opening a new window in Button Builder, the theme column is missing it’s scroll bar.  To fix this one must simply resize the window, but this does become annoying having to do this every time you open the app or a new window.  

One might compare Button Builder to a more professional program such as Adobe Photoshop.  If you want more control over the look and feel of your buttons, Photoshop is your choice.  Button Builder makes it easier to create a standard set of buttons based on its wide variety of templates.  Speaking of templates, Button Builder comes packaged with a Button Builder Template Builder.  Say that ten times fast!  If you find yourself using a file in another editor a lot, you can go ahead and use this utility to create a template usable in Button Builder.  On another note, if you have RapidWeaver, check the “Window” menu again.  You should be happy to find a “Launch Button Builder” item there waiting for you.

Button Builder has gone through four main version updates.  This app is not new to the Mac app world.  Due to a decrease in interest and more focus on RapidWeaver, Realmac Software has made it Open Source and for the unbelievable price of Free!  Button Builder is available at from Realmac Software.

LittleSnapper’s main feature is the ability to capture an entire website. As you browse the Internet, you can hit a keystroke and LittleSnapper will automatically save the whole web page as an image file. You can also open the current website in LittleSnapper and select a specific area to capture. When you open up a website in LittleSnapper you have two main choices: you can save the whole page, or you can select a section from it. As you hover your mouse pointer over sections of the web page, areas will become highlighted and you just need to click to capture it. LittleSnapper also includes the basic screenshot tools, so you can snap anything on your screen.

Once you have your screenshot, you can edit it. LittleSnapper comes with the basic tools. You can draw lines, circles, boxes, and arrows, and add text to your screenshot. You can also use the blur and highlight tool to hide or point out a section of the image. There is just one last step before you share your image: add information. You can add tags and/or a description.

LittleSnapper lets you quickly upload your images using Realmac’s QuickSnapper service. When you upload images to your QuickSnapper account people can view the image and add comments. QuickSnapper is currently in beta, so you may experience minor problems. Not only does LittleSnapper let you upload images to QuickSnapper, but you can also upload to Flickr or an FTP server.

With LittleSnapper you might be taking a lot of screenshots, so you can organize your screenshots in the LittleSnapper library. LittleSnapper lets you create collections and folders to organize your images. Folders can contain collections, and collections contain your screenshots. You can also create smart collections for easy organizing. You just need to set different rules, like rating or tags, and all applicable images will go straight to the collection.

LittleSnapper still comes with its flaws. While editing images, there isn’t a quick way in the toolbar to edit the text size and font. If you want to change the font you need to open the standard font window in the menu bar. There also isn’t a way to create a shape with a filled color. If you want to take a picture using your iSight and quickly share it, you would need to take the picture in a different application; LittleSnapper doesn’t have iSight support.

LittleSnapper is a great application to share screenshots. It works perfect for many uses, from sharing website designs to annotating images for your blog. You can download a free trial, or buy LittleSnapper for $39 from Realmac Software.

Screenflick ($20)

The point of Screenflick seems to be making screen-capturing easy. All you have to do to create a recording is set a size, set some audio and keyboard settings, and then hit record. It does all of the encoding after you record, so your processor is not running hot during the recording, but you have to wait a while after. When you are done recording, you can choose how to encode the video, and (if you want audio) how to encode that, too. What Screenflick doesn’t have in features, it makes up for in performance and simplicity.

Another thing that Screenflick offers is a library of recordings. Instead of creating a recording, and then just saving when it’s done, all of your videos are stored in a folder at full quality, allowing you to export as many times as you would like. You can also enable things like showing mouse clicks and keyboard actions.

Grade: B

Séquence ($29)

The purpose of Séquence seems to be the ability to just open it up and get going. But yet, this does take away from its feature set. Séquence does allow you to draw before and during a screen-recording. So instead of having options to show keyboard shortcuts or mouse clicks, you can point things out with a drawing. Nice concept, and it does work, but this is really one of only two special features in Séquence. The other special feature is the ability to record from an iSight or other Webcam at the same time as your screen so you can put yourself in the video without having to record twice.

Séquence gives you barely any audio and video export options (comparatively), and there is no library. But, for what it’s worth, you can also take screen-snapshots in it, too (with the drawing tool). I think that for someone who likes ease-of-use and doesn’t care about export options, Séquence is right, but I’m personally not willing to give up nice features for this.

Grade: C

Screenium ($29)

Screenium may not be the easiest to use, but it’s not lacking at all in features. Its first major feature is its vast audio support. You can choose from many audio sources that you might not even know about. The second is that it has a library, so you can export later and record at a lossless format. The third is its Webcam support. Like Séquence, you can attach a Webcam (or use a built-in iSight) and have your face in your video. But, not only can you just record it, you can also have it flipped vertically and horizontally. The next one (I lost count!) is called HotText. With this you can create a keyboard shortcut that will display a nice little transparent window to show text for a certain duration. You can place it in 9 different positions, and have it displayed for anywhere from 1 to 120 seconds. The last notable feature in Screenium is its Single window recording. Some apps say they do single window recording, but they really just record the area where the window started. Screenium actually follows the window! Granted, if you move it, it gets a bit jagged, but it is still really nice to have.

I must say that you cannot go wrong with Screenium. It has many of the features in more expensive screen-capturing apps, and more. And what’s better, it was just released, meaning it will only get much better!

Grade: A-

iShowU HD & HD Pro ($29.95 & $59.95)

iShowU has been out for a while, and just recently has shinywhitebox released the HD and HD Pro versions. The main reason you would want to use iShowU HD is for real-time recording and features. It has many formats (not as many as others) to record to, and you can even upload directly to services like YouTube. iShowU HD contains a library, but not one with lossless files — they are just the files in their lossy format. Like many of the others, you can record from your iSight. iShowU does do single-window recording, but it is not nearly as good as Screenium’s. It just expects that the window stays still. Because of its real-time recording, HD Pro can be processor intensive, so it has a mode called Low-CPU mode. This just records the changes from the last frame, and then puts it together at the end. I have noticed a huge difference on my MacBook when using this mode, so it does work. One thing that I just don’t get is why there is no option for non-real-time recording, if we really don’t need it fast. A nice little feature that iShowU HD has is the ability to preview what your video will look like in the main window. However, it can be a processor hog.

The differences between HD and HD Pro are the Low-CPU mode, watermarking, audio mixing, key recording, and compatibility with Final Cut. Some of these features should be in HD, but HD is cheap enough that it doesn’t matter that much. Overall, iShowU HD looks very polished, and works well.

Grade: B+

ScreenFlow ($99)

You cannot really talk about Mac screen-capturing without talking about ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow makes it easy to create a screen-capturing session (just the click of a button), but also gives you many post-production tools. Like most of the others, ScreenFlow supports iSights. One neat feature is support for multiple video sources. You can click the Add Media button, and then you can use other videos too. The nice thing about ScreenFlow is everything that you do to your video is post-production. You don’t have to worry about anything beforehand. It really gives you a miniature studio to edit your video, all in one application.

In most ways, ScreenFlow has the biggest feature set, but it comes at a price — it is almost double any of the others. If you do screencasts professionally, or for something important, you may find it worth it, but I don’t think it’s the app for the average user.

Grade: B+

I hope this has given you a good idea of the good screen-capturing apps out there. In case you didn’t read it, my favorite is Screenium, but they are all good apps — you really can’t go too wrong. If there are any apps that you think were left out, or should be added, just tell us.

Most vector applications allow you to set fill colors, strokes, gradients, shadows, and text. Well, DrawIt takes this a step further with over 100 filters. These are all non destructive, so you can simply delete (or hide) a filter, and the effect will be gone. They are also stackable, which allows you to have them applied in a specific order. Like any other vector app, it also has stackable layers. But it gives you more than one way to see the layers: list view and icon view. So, instead of having to give your layers extremely descriptive names, you can just check out the preview of the layer. Another thing that you will probably notice is that DrawIt is a one-window application. Anything you need to do can be done in the main window. This is in contrast to applications that have inspectors, and other unneeded windows. And yet despite these, DrawIt doesn’t look cluttered at all — it still looks simple and elegant.

The biggest change in DrawIt lately has been its removal of bitmap tools. Yes, it no longer combines both bitmap and vector tools, but if you purchased DrawIt when it did have bitmap tools, you can get a free copy of Acorn. So, for those of you who purchased DrawIt a while back and never picked up your free copy of Acorn, just get it here. With the dismissal of the bitmap tools, DrawIt has also seen a rewrite of the vector tools. This makes it faster, and just better. Another removal is localizations. They were getting too hard for him to keep up, so the developer had to remove them. So, if you don’t speak English, DrawIt may be a little hard for you to use. The final notable upgrade is the ripple and page-curl effects. These sound like small new features, but they are not, for one reason: DrawIt Batch.

These two have been added to DrawIt from the unreleased DrawIt batch. DrawIt Batch is still under development, but it will be released soon. It will take the idea of effects and apply it to batch image processing. So, you can apply many effects (in a specific order) to many images quickly.

DrawIt retails for about $40 and you can download a free trial from their site. Although $40 seems like a lot, compared to other vector tools, it is cheap. But it has so many features and is so easy to use. If you are on the market for a vector tool, try out DrawIt — you may be happy that you did.

Camerabag is an application from an unlikely developer, Nevercenter, whose claim to fame is actually a 3D modeling application. Camerabag itself is a relatively simple application. It is very obvious that they are focused on your photos and not a “delicious” interface, which I find pleasing. Camerabag allows you to take a photograph and apply one of several effects. The effects revolve around styles of older cameras, such as Holga and Lolo, as well as photographers like Ansel Adams.

To apply these effects you merely import the photo into the application and swipe through the various effects and save the ones that you like.

Nevercenter is constantly adding new effects and tweaking the ones that are currently included. In the time I have been using it (about a month), they have added an Instant (polaroid) effect and tweaked the Infrared effect.

Camerabag also allows you to take photographs from within the application but if you do not tell it to save the photo with any of the effects it will not be saved at all. Unfortunetly, due to its heavy reliance upon the camera Camerabag is not very useful on the iPod Touch. But if you do store photos on your Touch, Camerabag is capable of modifying them.

Currently Camerabag is listed on the iTunes App Store for $2.99 here (iTunes link).

Rulers’ main feature is just putting rulers on your screen. It adds a horizontal ruler to the top of your screen, and a vertical ruler to the left side of your screen. Wherever your mouse is, there will be a red marker on each ruler to show the relative position of your mouse to the rulers (which is not the actual start of your screen). If you don’t want to see the rulers because you are using some of Rulers’ other tools, just go to the point where the two rulers meet and click on the [-]. Whenever you want them back, you just click on the [+] in that same corner. If you want the rulers to be on different sides of the screen, just go to Rulers>Preferences… and change the corner in which the rulers meet. You can change opacity and colors, too.

The only window you will see in Rulers is the inspector. This is where you can see where your mouse is (zoomed in, of course), the mouse’s coordinates, and the color of the pixel your mouse is over. There are two coordinates that it gives for your mouse: relative and absolute. Relative is the position from the rulers, and absolute is the position from the upper-left-hand corner of your screen. The color field shows you the color of the pixel that your mouse is currently over in Hex and RGB codes. The first time you open Rulers, this window will show all three of these fields. If you click the spiral in the upper-right-hand corner of the window, you can toggle between full, only image, and only coordinates and color.

Of course, Rulers doesn’t just show you an inspector and rulers, it has many nice tools too. One of these is lines. Lines are like reference points; you can put them on your screen to always know where x pixels from the left of the screen is. There are a few ways to add these. You can click on the ruler parallel to the line you want to add, and then just drag until it is where you want it. You may be thinking that the whole ruler will drag, but it doesn’t, only a line gets dragged. You can also go to Tools>Add horizontal line and Add vertical line. And finally, you can create an intersection. Just position your mouse where you want the lines to intersect (yes, this will create two lines), and hit Command-I. I am not sure why they let you select the intersection tool from the Tools menu, because it will just create the intersection over the menu item.

There is one other great use for lines — screenshots. If you use Apple’s built-in screenshot commands, you can select only a certain region to grab, but you have no way to take time, and get the position exactly right. Well, with Rulers, you just create a couple lines, and hit Command-3 or Command-4. Command-4 lets you select a region, and then it snaps a picture of only that region to your desktop. Command-3, on the other hand, lets you select a region, and then it copies the picture to your clipboard. These features are great for selecting the exact region that you need for a screenshot.

The last feature I will tell you about is Auto Measuring. With this, you can put your mouse anywhere on your screen, and Rulers will tell you the amount of space between two elements. If you want to know the width of the sidebar of a Website, just put your mouse somewhere on that sidebar (where there is no text), and it will tell you. It gives you the distances across and up-and-down between things. As said above, text usually gets in the way of these measurements, so make sure there is text around when you do it.

omnidea’s Rulers retails for about $16, and you can pick up a trial from their site. It is almost essential to design and some programming work, so if you fit one of those descriptions, I highly suggest that you give it a try.

For a number of weeks now, Adobe has been tantalizing their loving horde of followers with the promise of a “Brilliant Event” taking place on the 23rd of September – that’s today. It wasn’t really too much of a mystery though, as it was clear from the start that the big event is the unveiling of the long-awaited next installment in their multi-purpose creative design software package: Creative Suite 4. Interestingly, Adobe has chosen to call this their biggest software release to date, and when someone like Adobe says that, people take note.

Officially unveiled in a large-scale public webcast at 9AM Eastern Time this morning, CS4 will be available in a number of different packages: Master Collection, Production Premium, Web Standard, Web Premium, Design Standard and Design Premium. Each of these is a suite of applications specifically tailored to the needs of professionals in that field. Existing users of CS3 (or earlier versions) can also choose to upgrade or purchase any of their existing stand-alone elements individually.

Released in March of 2007, CS3 continued the legacy of industry-standard creative development applications and remains the staple for most design needs. Its successor comes trumpeting in with a number of new features for their 13 stand-alone products, 14 integrated technologies, and seven services. But the best part of CS4 isn’t its individual parts, but its apparently seamless integration between all products in the line.

This is achieved primarily through Adobe ConnectNow, an online service for real-time collaboration that can be accessed from many of the CS4 applications.

There are a number of feature updates for each of the individual applications in the suites, including the ability to use “tweens” instead of keyframes in Flash CS4 to facilitate precise control over animation attributes. Flash also sports a new tool called the “Bones” tool which allows for realistic animation of linked objects. InDesign users will be happy with the new Live PreFlight tool that can make catching minor errors easier, and Photoshop fans should enjoy the new Content-Aware Scaling tool that can automatically re-compose an image on the fly as you resize it.

Speaking of Photoshop, CS4 offers it in two flavours, the standard and “Extended” versions, which differ slightly in functionality and price. The added features of the “Extended” edition are mainly geared toward those who work in film and other mediums where advanced 3D image manipulation is important. Some of the most exciting “Extended” features are the ability to paint directly on 3D images, rotate and scale 3D models freely, and adjust lighting, meshes, and materials for any of your models.

On the negative side for us Mac folks, Adobe is not shipping 64-bit versions of its CS4 applications for the Mac OS, and is not expected to until CS5 shows up. This is apparently because the applications were originally written in Carbon rather than the Cocoa application framework. And since Apple decided to scrap plans for a 64-bit version of Carbon, all the applications must now be ported to Cocoa before they can continue on their way to a 64-bit release. Adobe is working on it, but they say that it’s no small undertaking and will not be something they will achieve for the release of CS4. I guess that means a few more months of letting Windows users have a 10% performance advantage on us. Darn.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 is scheduled to ship in October, and until then we can enjoy the betas of a couple of the applications including the new Flash Player 10, all of which are now available as free downloads. For more information on the features and functionality of CS4, check out the official site.

At WWDC this past June, Timeline 3D was awarded runner up in “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application” at the Apple Design Awards ceremony. This should give you an idea of the quality of Timeline 3D. It is very similar to the 2D version, except for a few key differences (one of which I’m sure you have picked out).

When you first open up Timeline, it asks you to pick the “look” for your project. There are 7 pre-designed templates available for you to choose from, which you can edit to your hearts content. Below the template chooser is a list of applications that you can import events from. You can import from iCal, Address Book, iPhoto, RSS Feeds and more. For example, I chose to import events from System Profiler, which gave me a timeline of all the updates I have installed since I bought my MacBook Pro back in February. You can also import from a few applications that don’t come pre-installed on your computer, like Aperture and Skitch.

Once you have chosen your theme, and then whether or not you will be using a blank timeline, or import events, it is time to start editing. Timeline has a three-tabbed sidebar on the right, and a toolbar at the top. All of this applications functionality is contained within those two parts of the interface.

The first tab is labled “Visual Design,” and is where you can tweak the look of your timeline. From here, you can change the font used in your timeline, the color scheme, what the date line title looks like, and whether or not the selected event has a descender (the line connecting the event to the timeline).

The next tab, labeled “Dates,” lets you adjust the formatting of the dates on your timeline. You have quite a bit of control of how they are displayed, with multiple formating options, as well as the option to manually set the row date format (the dates that run along the bottom of your timeline), or have Timeline 3D adjust their formatting automatically.

The last tab of the Settings sidebar is labeled “Printing,” and lets you set up your options for when you want to print your timeline. You can set up the page size, document margins, and the minimum amount of pages you would like Timeline 3D to try and fit your timeline on (the default is 1).

The toolbar is where you begin adding/removing your events. After clicking the “Add” button to add an event to your timeline, you have to enter in some information about it. Of course you have the necessary information that is needed like the name of the event, and the date it started on, but you can also add an end date, notes, an image and a link associated with the event. Clicking an event after you have finished filling out its information, will let you remove it, edit it, and change the font.

Timeline 3D has 3 main views. First, there is the Screen View. Screen View lets you scroll through your timeline, and add/remove events on the fly. Next there is Bulk Edit, which shows you a list of all your events. This makes it easy to add additional information to many events at once, like notes, images etc. Finally, you have Preview view, which breaks up the timeline so you can see how it will look when printed out.

Next, is the feature that gives Timeline 3D its name. Clicking on 3D in the toolbar will show your timeline full screen. You can use the arrow keys to cycle through your events, and pressing space-bar will invoke all of Timeline’s 3D good-ness. From the 3D view you can cycle through your timeline just like in the 2D view. For an explanation for the idea behind why 3D is so great for presenting a timeline, check out this video from the developer, Adam Behringer. You can see a quick example of what the 3D view looks like below.

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Timeline lets you search your timeline from the toolbar, by highlighting the event that matches your search query. Timeline also has a media browser for you to choose photos from your Mac to be included in your project.

Besides the 3D presenting view, all of the features I have mentioned so far are available in both the 2D and 3D edition of Timeline. The other feature that is 3D edition only is Timeline’s exporting options. In the 3D edition, you can export to your iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, 1080P HD and even Keynote (with a separate slide for each event). The 2D edition lets you export to PDF as well as send your timeline in an email.

In the end, I can certainly see why Timeline 3D was runner up for “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application.” It allows you to create/customize timelines that are interactive, sleek and well-organized; simple, yet powerful. There are a few videos of Timeline in action on Bee Documents website, so you can see a few examples of what it is capable of.

Timeline 3D from Bee Documents is $65, while the standard (2D) edition is $40. There is a free trial available which lets you do everything except for print/export your timelines.

Usually, to create a mind map on my Mac, I open up Pages, go into “Page Layout” and join text boxes and pictures together with lines. This method works fine for simple mind maps, but re-arranging boxes is a pain, and it can get difficult to add a little style to the page without making it a mess. OmniGraffle, from the OmniGroup, however, is an application focused on creating diagrams, process charts and more.

When you first open OmniGraffle, you are greeted with the template chooser. If you have ever used any of Apple’s iWork applications, the template chooser looks very similar to that. OmniGraffle comes with 16 templates, and you can find more online.

The aspect of OmniGraffle that really makes it useable for many different purposes though, is the stencils. Stencils are the objects that you drag into and manipulate in OmniGraffle projects. There are many stencils included with OmniGraffle, from boxes to clouds, maps, and even circuit engineering objects. There is a website recently featured on the OmniGroup’s website called Graffletopia (which you can now search from OmniGraffle), which has a database of user-submitted stencils, which help to expand OmniGraffle’s functionality even more.

The interface can be a little daunting at first, but just like OmniOutliner, the majority of the options for OmniGraffle are inside of a multi-paned inspector. Similar to OmniOutliner, there is a Style pane and a Document pane, as well as a Canvas and Properties pane.

The Style pane lets you change everything from the fill of a shape/line, to shadow, and how text looks. The amount of customization is quite extensive, so no two diagrams will ever have to look the same. You can set a background image for a shape, or even the whole canvas.

The Properties pane is where the more technical aspects of your diagram are altered. You can set where a shape will sit on the X/Y axis of your canvas, and it’s exact width and height. You can decide where a shapes magnets will be (where a line will automatically join onto the shape), and even add actions (like opening a file, or focusing on a point in your diagram) when a shape is clicked in Presentation mode.

The Canvas pane lets you set up your canvas (funny how that works eh?). You can set the canvas size, grid, alignment and even how the diagram will act when set to automatically lay itself out. One feature which I found nice in this pane was the “Selection” sub-pane. This lets you select all the occurrences of an object in your diagram at once, which makes it easy to style all of them at once, or change something about them.

The Document pane is quite simple, allowing you to add metadata to your file (Authors, Copyright, Description etc.), and a few options for when you save your file.

Similar to how Pages ’08 has a format bar under the toolbar, OmniGraffle has what the OmniGroup refer to as a “mini inspector.” This bar gives you access to the most used commands in OmniGraffle, so you don’t always have to go into the inspector to edit something.

You have lots of options for lines, from straight lines to curved lines, and OmniGraffle now supports Bezier lines, so you can curve to your hearts content.

Now, in terms of the professional version, it has features and options that I won’t even pretend to understand, which leads me to believe that for the average user, the standard version will more than suffice. The standard version of OmniGraffle comes in at $99.95, and the professional version weighs in at $199.95.

As I mentioned earlier, OmniGraffle has a Presentation mode, though only in the professional version. Going into View>Start Presentation shows your canvas fullscreen. Hovering over an element (Lines, shapes etc.), will highlight it, and clicking on an element will activate any actions you have assigned to them in the Properties pane.

If all you would ever need a mind-mapping application for is the occasional text chart, OmniGraffle can be over-kill, and not cost effective for most. If you just want a simple application for brainstorming or making a simple text chart, I recommend MindNode (freeware). It has a simple interface which makes it easy to create mind-maps.

In the end, OmniGraffle’s use spans far beyond just creating flow charts or mind-maps. Some people use OmniGraffle to lay out the structure for a website, and some even use it to lay out designs for yards and rooms!

If you you do a lot of work where creating diagrams etc. is essential, then the price of OmniGraffle is certainly justifiable, as it makes it simple to get your ideas from your brain to your computer. The stencils available help to convey the message of your diagram in a way that is visually appealing, and easy to understand. There are a few video tutorials done by ScreenCastsOnline of OmniGraffle on the OmniGroup’s website, though they have not yet been updated to reflect the newest version of OmniGraffle. You can purchase either version of OmniGraffle (which is now Leopard-only) from the OmniGroup’s store.

A few days ago, while browsing through the MacHeist Forums, there was some talk about an application called “Scribbles.” A quick Google search turned me to Atebits Software, where I downloaded Scribbles. This application has a simple interface and makes good use of Leopard’s CoreAnimation technology.

When you open up Scribbles for the first time, you will notice that the interface is very clean. The default brush, brush size, and brush color can be set in the preferences, so you can always start off with your favorites.

Clicking the button in the bottom-left corner brings up a palate that allows you to change your brush. In the screenshot below, from left to right, the brushes are as follows: Rainbow, Goo, Calligraphy, Charcoal, Bristles, Flat Hard, Flat Medium, Flat Soft, and and the last line was made by the flat hard brush and then gone over with the shading brush.

The next button over is for selecting the brush color. Clicking on the circle will bring up a color picking overlay, which looks similar to Apple’s color wheel. Just click and drag your mouse to select the color, and then the right side is for shade.

The slider along the bottom of the window is for brush size. Drag to the right to make it bigger, and to the left to make it smaller.

The last button (in the bottom right corner), opens up the layers overlay, which is something you don’t usually expect to find in a simple application like this one. From this view, you can add and remove layers, and change their opacity. You can scroll through layers by moving your mouse up and down, and the active layer is outlined in blue. This implementation of navigating layers feels like a sideways cover-flow, which is a nice touch. The application takes a very visual approach to UI, negating the use for inspectors and floating palates.

The top-right corner is where the canvas navigation resides. The first button lets you go back to the brush tool if you have another selected. The button with the arrows takes a clever approach to manipulating the layer. Clicking and dragging inside the inner-most circle allows you to move the layer, dragging in the second circle lets you rotate the layer, and the third circle lets you zoom the layer in and out. Clicking and dragging outside of the circles also lets you move the layer around. The hand tool lets you move all the layers at once, and the magnifying glass tool lets you zoom all the layers at once.

The View menu also had a few surprises for me. Scribbles lets you draw full screen, which is awesome for an application like this. Scribbles has an “infinite canvas,” meaning that there are no set boundaries for your drawing. You can pan and zoom endlessly. Scribbles offers a “Tracing Paper” view, where the background goes transparent and you can trace whatever is under the Scribbles window. Lastly, you can also have a grid overlaid on the page foreground.

When exporting your finished masterpiece, you have a few options. Scribbles supports exporting to 7 file formats, such as PNG, TIFF, BMP and GIF. If you would like to share your creation with the rest of the world, you can upload it to the Scribbles Gallery free of charge. There are some neat pictures there; I recommend you take a look.

Overall, I was impressed with Scribbles, as I didn’t really think very much of it when I first opened it. The use of CoreAnimation throughout the interface makes everything smooth and a joy to use. Some may be turned off by Scribbles apparent lack of features, but my impression of this application is “less is more.” It does one job, and it does it well.

With such an array of graphics applications available, you have many more to choose from if Scribbles isn’t for you. If you do decide that Scribbles is up your alley, you can purchase a license for $19.95 from Atebits Software.

DMG Architect is like Interface Builder for your disk images, helping you make a great design for them. Whenever you open it, the theme viewer will open. This is where you will choose the basic background image for your DMG. You can choose one of the included ones, choose an image from your disk or get the background from a disk image that you have on your computer. I think that the included themes are great; I have never found myself in need of any others. If you need the disk image window to be big, though, you may have problems with their themes, because for the most part the images are pretty small.

Once you have chosen a theme, you are almost done! First, you probably want to drop the files that you need onto DMG Architect’s window. Then you will want to open the Inspector. This is where you will customize almost every aspect of your DMG. First there is Position & Size. This is where you can choose the size of the window for your DMG and where it is located on the user’s screen. In the next tab (Icon Properties) you can actually choose an icon to use for the DMG and/or the file. This is another easy way to give a great impression to users. Now, in the DMG Background Background tab, you can choose a background to use from your disk. There is also a toolbar item in DMG Architect labeled “Template” which will just bring up the theme viewer.

In the next tab, License, you can add license agreements to your DMG. These are those pesky popups you get when you open disk images. I have to be honest, these can turn me away from an app, but if you need a user to agree to something, you will need one of these. The DMG Properties is where you specify the properties for your final DMG. These are basically the options you get in Disk Utility for creating a new disk image. And the final tab, DMG Info, is just the place to specify names for the Volume and file and the save location.

As you might be able to see, DMG Architect, by Sourcebits, is a very simple app. It makes things that usually take 30 minutes or more in the Finder, take under 5 minutes instead. If you’re a developer, you know that time is money, and this app definitely values that. Although the price tag, $29.99, may seem a little pricey, it is an invaluable little tool, and will end up being worth it. Like I said above, because time is money, this app will end up saving you money, so in the end, it will pay for itself.

Have you ever wanted to send some of your great vacation or family photos to friends? Nowadays, email is the best and easiest way to do this. With that said, there are still a few setbacks to using email; you usually want to name the pictures with a pattern and resize them so you are able to send them. Sure, you could use Preview for both of these, but it just takes way too long. Well, if you want to add these on the fly, then I suggest you check out Coding Mammoth’s QuickScale.

As said above, the main two things that QuickScale does are batch renaming and batch resizing, so I will talk about these first. QuickScale has two resizing engines that you can use: Default and CoreImage. You can specify which one to use in Preferences > Graphics > Scale Export Engine. The default engine will get you much better speeds, but at a cost; the images are not as smooth. The developer wrote a blog post about these differences here. Because of this I have always used CoreImage to do the job. I prefer quality over time.

In QuickScale you can specify either a percent to scale to, or a size. If you want more control over the actual size (in pixels), I suggest that you specify a size. On the other hand, if you know that you want to scale it to a certain percent, by all means use the percentage scale.  QuickScale also gives you some scaling options: Normal, Stretch, Box, Crop, and Mixed. Normal will scale the image so it fits in the frame that you specify. Stretch will scale the image to the new size without keeping the proportions. Box will create a frame with the given size, and in this frame your image will be centered and scaled. The result is like the normal-export method, but with a size as wanted. It is also possible to give the background a color. Crop is a mix of the 3 methods above; it creates a frame with the given size. The image will be fit into this frame, but in such a way that it gets cropped. Mixed is the same feature as normal, but it doesn’t work with the height or width. Instead, it works with the longest and shortest size. For example, say you have two pictures, one portrait and one landscape. With this function, QuickScale will handle both images as the same, like you rotate one of the images. These different methods make it easy to get what you want, but can take a bit to really stick to your brain.

QuickScale’s batch namer is very simple.  You just hit Edit Custom Name in the main window, and the options window pops up. You can specify something that will be in every image (like DSC_), and then tokens based on the image (like index, new size, old size, etc.). Once you have specified how you want the images to be named, just hit OK. If you like choosing how many digits your index number will be, then with QuickScale you are out of luck, because it does not allow you to do this.

A great feature of QuickScale for publishing pictures to the web is watermark support. You check Add Watermark, and then hit Edit Watermark. You can choose what it says, the text styles, the location on the image, margins and even background color. The background color will only be applied to what is in the margins of the watermark. However, if you add a watermark to a small image, sometimes your scaling options will be off. There is also no way to choose a rotation for the watermark, which is a feature you see in almost all watermarking apps. Then again, QuickScale is not strictly a watermarking app.

One last thing that I was very impressed by in QuickScale is its interface customizability. In its preferences you can choose colors for things like the background, border, title, etc. You usually don’t see these in many apps, so I am very impressed with this. And speaking of the interface, I think it is extremely clean and easy to use, another thing you don’t find in that many apps. And ever further onto this not, I just love the icon!  Thank you Laurent Baumann for making yet another amazing application icon!

QuickScale, by Coding Mammoth is a great tool for batch resizing, renaming, and more! You can pick it up from them for only $15! I have used it for a while now, and it is definitely worth it when you compare it to the competition.

The window in Iris is very simple, with tools on the left side and colors, layers, and options on the right. In the middle is the image you are currently editing, and under that is a bar which displays other open images. This is a great way to get avoid extra windows and it makes it very easy to switch between pictures. The tools are pretty basic to most image editors and you can access more by holding your mouse button on some of the icons. The options section displays different controls for each tool. You can also view colors as different sliders or a color spectrum to make it easy to pick the right color.

Iris has many great tools to use. It has all the basic tools found in many image editors, like marquee, paintbrush, red eye fix, blur, and much more. It also has many adjustment options like levels, brightness, and saturation, as well as a large selection of filters (including blur filters and other styles). When you use a filter or adjustment, a small HUD shows up which lets you adjust the filter and see the effects in real-time.

There were a few problems in Iris that I hope will soon be fixed. For example, some of the image adjustments seemed to be very strong, and it was hard to make slight changes to something as simple as brightness. Also, sometimes the image does not update when I switch pictures or delete a layer. Another issue is that there are not many layer blending options. There are also some bugs with undo and some of the filters.

This is just the first release, though, so hopefully some of these will be fixed soon. If so, then Iris looks like it could be a great choice for people looking for a good image editor for their Mac, even if it isn’t the “ultimate” right now. Iris is available for $79 and a demo is available at the website.

HDR means High Dynamic Range, and in photography, is when you combine multiple images with different exposures to create one master image (For examples of HDR images, check out the HDR group on Flickr). When I started to look for software that would help me create HDR images of my own, the one that seemed to come up the most was Photomatix. Unfortunately, I didn’t have $99 to spend on it. One day looking through an issue of Macworld, I saw a program called Hydra, which did the same thing as Photomatix, but at a more affordable price.

To get started with Hydra, all you need is your 2 or more images you want combined. Hydra supports all RAW formats that Aperture does (outlined here). Hydra is split up into 2 windows, the first where the photos are displayed, and the second an inspector window.

Creating an HDR image with Hydra can be broken up into three steps. Importing the images to be combined, aligning those images, and then the final merge.

To import photos into Hydra, you can drag and drop them onto the Hydra window, open them from a folder, or use the media browser to find your images in iPhoto or Aperture.

The next step is aligning the images. The neat thing about Hydra, is that it claims you do not need a tripod when taking your images with different exposures. Hydra uses advanced aligning techniques to make sure that even if you didn’t use a tripod, your images are perfectly aligned. You can align the images yourself, or have Hydra do it for you.

The last step, and the step that will affect the final outcome of your images the most, is the merging. There are two types of merging that you can do, each with their own options. 8-bit Blend takes 8-bit jpegs as input, and outputs an 8-bit image. You can adjust the smoothness of the blend, and how much of each image is used in the final output. HDR Merge allows you to take 8 or 16-bit images (RAW images) and outputs EXR. EXR carries much more information than even 16-bit images, and preserves every bit of dynamics.

Hydra also comes with an Aperture plugin when you download it, so you can create your HDR images right within Aperture. After you install the plug-in (move the plug-in file to ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/. Create the folder if it is not already there), you just ned to select your image in Aperture, right-click, and select Edit With>Hydra. A box will pop up, and you will be able to edit and save your final HDR right within Aperture.

Now I am no expert at creating HDR images, but so far the results of my testing have been pretty neat. Hydra allows you to export your final image as a JPG, TIFF or EXR. You can pick up Hydra for $59.95 from Creaceed software.

What are your favorite examples of HDR images?

A few weeks ago, I was looking at a photo full-screen in iPhoto on my iMac, when I noticed a line of white at at the top of the screen (pictured below), where the menubar usually ends. Restarting didn’t seem to fix the problem, so it was at that moment, I realized that I might have Image Persistence.

Searching across the internet to get rid of it brought a few different methods, like certain movie clips to play fullscreen, and certain screensavers. After poking around a little, I settled on trying the application LCD Scrub, from ToastyCode. LCD Scrub is a screensaver that is supposed to get rid of unwanted Image Persistence. The instructions were to turn on the screensaver, and leave it for several hours. After following these instructions (I left the screensaver on overnight as I slept) I was pleased to see that I could barely see the persistence anymore. After I had gotten home from school later that day (the screensaver on all the while), I could no longer see the white line.

Of course, the line was never that big a deal in the first place, as it was not visible when the menubar was visible, though it was annoying when in fullscreen. Overall, I was pleased that this application actually functioned as advertised, though your results may vary. Let us know how you got rid of your Image Persistence

LCD Scrub is $18 from ToastyCode.

One application that is relatively new to the WYSIWYG scene is Flux, from The Escapers. This app aims to give you complete control over the look and feel of your websites, while not limiting you to only being able to adjust a few parameters of pre-installed themes.

When you first open up Flux, you can either start a new website from scratch, or from one of the included templates. If you decide to go from scratch, Flux can automatically create an index.html file, and CSS file to get you started. Once that is done, you can add additional pages/CSS files to your hearts content.

Double clicking an HTML file will open up Flux’s main window. This window is where the bulk of your web development will take place. Double clicking on a CSS file will greet you with the alert: “CSS files are created and modified by Flux, they should not be edited externally. If you still want to open the file, press ‘Open’,” which in my eyes is a big downfall of Flux. There are some things that are easier to edit in say TextMate or CSSEdit, so it would be nice if there was a way to edit CSS files externally, and have the changes reflect in Flux. When asking the developer about this, I received this response:

Right now, you *could* edit CSS in other editors, but it’s really not something we recommend, basically because Flux supports CSS fairly well, but it does not support some of the more esoteric features, and also there is some CSS “shorthand” we don’t support yet, this means that someone could type in valid CSS which Flux might take a dislike to. Similarly, Flux supports new CSS features like@fontface rules, which other editors may not, and then they might end up messing up Flux’s valid CSS. It’s something we are thinking about and will probably try to support sometime in the future.

This might be something we see in the future of Flux’s development.

With external editing aside, lets move on to Flux’s main window. The main window of Flux is organized into three panes. Your CSS styles are in the left pane, you build the website in the middle pane, and the right pane is where you will edit your CSS styles. There is also an option to have the pane where you edit your CSS display under the styles in the left pane.

The first thing that I always do when creating a website is add the metadata. To do this in Flux, you can click on the “Page Attributes” button in the toolbar at the top of the page. You can add in your page title, keywords description and author. The other tabs are where you can add custom code/attributes, javascript files, and CSS files. make sure before you start building your website that there is a CSS file in the CSS tab. If not, drag the one you created earlier into the pane from the site manager.

To begin building a website, you have to add an element. For this review, I’ll begin by adding a div in the middle of the page, and call it “contentcontainer.” To do this, click “New Element” in the top left corner, and click “Div.” You can resize the div to whatever you please by dragging its handles. To add a CSS style to this div, right-click and select “Create style with…” or use the keyboard shortcut Control-Command-S. This will open a dialogue window that lets you name your style. Once you have created your style, you can begin to edit your div in the right-hand pane.

Selecting the div in the middle pane, or the style in the left pane, will open the CSS Editor. You can edit all things you would expect in the editor, like position, Size, Fonts, Decoration, Shadow, Padding etc., and you can add in your own attributes if you would like. Clicking a checkbox beside an attribute drops down its options. For example, if I select “Fonts” I can choose the fonts that I want displayed in that div. This makes creating the CSS for your site easy, as most of the values for that attribute are right there in the editor.

One of the really neat feature of Flux is its built-in image effects. If you add an image right into the site manager, you can apply many different image effects, from adjusting the color, to adding scrapbook tape to it (like you see in the screenshot further below). The window is a little buggy, you have to resize the window in order to see all of the options for some effects, though I have notified the developers of this problem, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. If you add an image from the site manager to your site and then add effects to it, the changes are not reflected in the Edit view, but they are in the Preview view (which I will touch on in a second). Maybe we will see this in a future update.

Flux has 3 main views. The Edit view, which we have been working in the length of this review, the Preview view which lets you preview your webpage using WebKit, and Live Preview which allows you to publish your page to a server, to preview it online. When you are ready to publish your website to the world, you can publish it by clicking “Publish” in the File menu, or upload the files in the folder Flux created in your documents folder to wherever you like.

Flux’s abilities extend far beyond what I have demonstrated here thus far. It supports adding JavaScript actions, embedding PHP, Flash, Java and even support for Ruby on Rails. I am not going to talk about all that today, but I thought I should let you know that it is all there. Flux lets you design and build websites without having to conform to a pre-designed theme, or having to code everything by hand. If you want, you can still use Flux’s built-in templates, which are very customizable.

Besides the few bugs I mentioned above, I have had quite a bit of trouble with the Undo/Redo in Flux. For example, I added an image into Flux and then deleted it. I then entered some text and deselected everything. Clicking Edit>Undo got rid of the image, but overlooked the fact that I had even just entered in some text. Just like with the other bugs, I have notified the devs of this abnormality, and it will hopefully be fixed in a future update.

Flux is $69 from The Escapers.

Now, before I tell you anymore about Gluestick, there is one thing you need to know. It is not an image editor. It is simply layer-based editing. You need to already have images before you start. There is no vector, no drawing, etc. You simply put things in different layers, and move them around. This may sound like a stupid app at first, but its usefulness does reveal itself. When you are a developer, and you need to create a document icon, or even an icon for your app, Gluestick can be extremely helpful.

As I said above, Gluestick is great for developers. The first great thing for you if you are a developer is the Source view, which lets you look through Apple’s library of system-related icons. In the bottom of the sidebar, there are a bunch of images. These are either Apple’s default icons, or the ones you have chosen, if you use CandyBar or another customization app. There are blank documents icons, types of computers, hard drives, etc. This is great because then you can create an icon based off of Apples’ defaults, so it will end up looking more Mac-like. You can also add more groups to this source view by clicking the bar above it, going to “Edit groups…” and clicking the [+] button.

Another feature for developers is the .icns export support. Gluestick can export to .icns, and fill all sizes for it. Now, one problem with this simplicity of export (File>Export) is that it does not allow you to optimize the image for each size. Some people like to do this with more detailed icons, but I usually don’t. If you do not want to change your icon for each size, this may not be an issue for you.

Now, if you are just an average user, Gluestick may not be for you. It has a few image effects to add, but other than that, it is pretty much exclusively for designers and developers. Those are the people that Gluestick was made for; however, you still can make some nice images for yourself with it. But, if that is all you are going to do with it, you might get greater value out of Pixelmator or Acorn.

In the Inspector, the last three tabs is where you can add simple effects to your images. Like I said above, Gluestick does have a few effects that can be applied to your layers, but not enough to make it a full fledged editor. The first of these tabs in the Inspector allows you to adjust color. It gives you options like Saturation, Brightness, Monochrome, etc., some basic effects you would find in iPhoto or Aperture. The second of those tabs is for adding a shadow, and specifying the opacity. The third of these tabs allows you to do many things. First, it allows you crop and zoom. At the bottom of this tab, it allows you to specify the editing background (should be wood if you haven’t customized it yet). The background will not be exported with the image, it will only be there when you are editing. Though you can specify the background that you want to be saved with the final image if you like. I wish that there were a few more editing options like reflections or strokes, but what Gluestick has should get the job done. Another problem I have found, is when clicking the “Inspector” button in the toolbar. The inspector window (if open) just moves to its original location, and doesn’t close. In most other apps, clicking the Inspector button opens as well as closes the window.

The main window of Gluestick is very simple. You click “Add Layer” to add either a text layer or an image layer. You click “Remove Layer” to remove the currently selected layer. In the Tool Select toolbar item, you can choose to either move a layer (the first one), resize a layer (the second one), or zoom (the last one). The zoom toolbar item lets you specify a percentage to zoom to.

The final thing I want to touch on is templates. These give you a guide for creating a certain type of icon. The choices are: Badged Folder, Disk Image Icon, Document Icon, or Plugin Icon. When you click on one of these templates (in the Templates menubar item), Gluestick will create a base for your icon (i.e. a disk image icon for the disk image template). Gluestick also creates a layer with the perspective of the base. You could do this yourself in another application, but this makes the process much simpler and quicker. As I have said before, this app really is for making icons.

Consonance Software’s Gluestick retails for $24.99, and there is a free trial available at their website. Gluestick makes the process of making icons and doing some repetitive tasks very simple. The price tag is a little high for what it does, but it can help a lot for these tasks, so you may find it invaluable.

A few weeks ago an application by the name of Decompose was featured on MacUpdate’s MU Promo (I suggest subscribing to both MU Promo and MacZOT’s mailing list. It’s a great was to build up your Applications Folder on the cheap). Decompose is an application that lets you remove the background from an image by selecting the foreground, outline and background of the subject you want the background removed from.

When you open up Decompose, you must select the image that you want to remove the background from. From here, the steps are pretty straight forward to remove the background of your image. The top of the app consists of 11 buttons and two sliders. The interface isn’t the most intuitive I’ve ever used, but all the tools are laid out in a way that it is still simple to get the job done.

To start the background removing process, you must trace the contour of the object. There are 5 tools to help you do this (from left to right- Brush, Fill, Lasso, Rectangle, and Wand). I found that out of all the tools just using the brush and fill was the easiest. The Lasso wasn’t very helpful, the wand is a little too sensitive, and in my tests, none of the images had anything that was perfectly square or rectangular. Your experiences may vary. You can change the size of the tools with the slider that is under the tool buttons.

After you have finished drawing the outline of your object, yo must select the foreground of the object. The easiest tool for this is just the fill tool. Clicking on the little person who is filled in (the left-most button in the group of buttons with people on them) tells Decompose that you are now selecting pixels in the foreground. Assuming you have completely enclosed your object with the brush, filling the foreground should be simple.

The last step is to select the background. Clicking the person who is un-filled with a black background tells Decompose that the remaining pixels are the background.

To see your finished image minus the pesky background, click result. Matte will let you see the space that the object used to occupy. How accurate your result is depends on how much time you want to spend to outline your object as best you can. As you can see in my example, since I didn’t follow the contour of the building all that accurately, you can still see some of the sky in the result. If you do it quickly with no precision, your result will not be good. If you take your time, the result is pretty decent.

If there was anything I would add to Decompose, it would be a straight line tool. As you can see in my example image, the subject is a building. Trying to trace the straight edges of the building was a little difficult, and could have been made much easier (therefore more accurate result) if there was a straight line tool. Also, the zoom slider in the bottom left corner is quite sensitive, and when you zoom out, the image moves into the bottom left corner, instead of staying centered as you would think.

Decompose shows the object on a transparent background, and exports them as a .TIFF file.

In the end, Decompose v1.0.2 can produce quite good results depending on how much time you want to spend, and is an application that I will definitely be using in the future. You can pick up your very own copy of Decompose from Metakine for $29.99 USD.

When you start up Comic life the welcome screen appears, where you can select a theme for a new comic or load an old one. Comic Life includes 12 different themes, along with a blank one and the ability to save your own. I’ll start with a blank template. After selecting the template the main creation window opens. On the top of the window you can see the different pages of the comic, along with a few buttons; there are buttons to add a new page, undo changes, make text smaller and bigger, and save and print options. On the bottom you can view different spray paint patterns, props, and text. On the left is the style toolbar, which lets you edit everything in your comic: text, objects, add effects, change opacity — everything is covered in the style bar. And finally, on the right, you can add panel layouts, template pages, and photos.

The first thing to do is add some comic panels. Under Panel Layouts there are many different types of layouts. After clicking on a panel you can warp it into any shape you want.

Now we need to fill up those panels with some pictures! On the right side you can navigate through folders, your iPhoto library, and (something I don’t see much in shareware) your Aperture library. You can also just take a picture with your iSight. Once you’re ready, just drag and drop photos to the panels. Then you can change the position of the object in the panel and move it to other panels by dragging it around.

Now for one of the coolest features — the Magiq image editor. Just click on the picture you want to edit and click the painting palette icon in the top right of the image. The window dims and the image editor shows up. As you can see, it looks just like a color palette. On the top are the different editing layers. You can choose options in each layer with the pink buttons on the right. If you mess up something on the layer, just click the Reset Layer button under the image or click the arrows on top to undo and redo changes.

The first layer is Color. On the left the choices are control, sharpen, exposure, hue, invert, monochrome, and crop. When you click a choice customization options will show up on the right of the image. Then when you move onto the next choice the icon will turn purple. Now click the next layer, Cut-Out. This will allow you to cut out an object in the image to use as a prop or to get rid of the background. The easiest way is with the Magiq Snip option. To use it, click the Keep button and draw a shape in the border of the object you want to keep. Then click the discard button and draw another shape around the outside of the object. With the other options you can cut out a certain color, a shape, or you can paint your own mask. The next layer is the Warp layer. The warping options are vortex, twirl, bump, pinch, bulge, dent, squeeze and smudge. The forth layer is Skin. This will allow you to paint on a different skin overlay into image. You can choose from a variety of skins, from steel to alien. The fifth layer is Filter, which allows you to add one of three different blur effects to the image. And the final choice is Paint, which simply allows you to choose a paintbrush and paint on the picture. Click Done and the picture is updated in the comic.

Next up, lettering and text bubbles. To add text just click theme on the bottom bar and click All to view all the options. There are 8 different bubble styles as well as a text box and one customizable lettering choice. The lettering can be edited just like the panels and can also be warped into different shapes. Even the bubbles can be changed to create any style you want. To quickly change the bubble types just click the bubble and click the black button in the top left of the bubble. This will display a wheel with the different options. Just click the option to change it. Once you are done with your comic just click Save and then print it out with the print button. Or, if you prefer, you can export it to an email, Flickr, HTML, photo file, PDF, iPhoto, or iWeb.

Comic Life Magiq has so many different options to make your comic, and it also makes an amazing and simple image editor. You don’t need to just make a comic in Comic Life, you could use it for whatever you want, even to create a photo book. Comic Life Magiq is available from Plasq for $44.95 for a full version or $29.95 for a cross-grade from Comic Life. Currently they are having an introductory price of $39.95 for a license and $19.95 for a cross-grade for a limited time. You can learn more about Comic Life Magiq, watch a video overview, and download a 30 day trial on the Plasq website. Comic Life Magiq requires Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard.

I have been keeping a eye open for some of these new releases the past few days, and have compiled a list of some of the applications that have been introduced, and ones that have been updated.

The first application on my list is TapeDeck. TapeDeck is an application that was released as version 1.0 on May 9th. The basic premise behind TapeDeck is being able to record audio quickly and easily. This is a Leopard-only application, that takes advantage of technologies like Core Animation, and Core Audio. Each new “tape” that you record is stored in a sliding panel, that is easy to search. When you record, the little wheels of the deck even spin, which is a nice touch. TapeDeck has been released for $25; look for a full review on MacApper soon.

The next app on my list is Bokeh. Bokeh, a joint application from Ollie Wagner and Geoff Pado, is an application that was born from Freeze Frame. It allows you to stop an application from using the processor, freeing it up for other applications to use. For example, you could freeze every other application you have open except for Final Cut Express if you were rendering a scene and wanted FCS to be able to use all of your processor. When you “Focus” on an app (freezing all other applications except for one) the screen behind the app blurs, hence the name Bokeh. A full review of Bokeh is currently in the pipes, to be consumed by you readers in the near future.

Next up we have a few application updates. Pixelmator got a big update yesterday, bringing it up to v1.2 (Draftsman). This update was free to all registered users and brought plenty of bug fixes, and some new functionality. Most notably was the introduction of rulers, a curves feature for “adjusting the entire tonal range or making precise adjustments to individual color channels in an image, and a new color balance tool essential for controlling the overall color mixture in an image for color correction work,” (Pixelmator Weblog) an enhance tool, and a polygonal lasso. The documentation of Pixelmator has also been updated, as well as a few enhanced Automator actions. You can pick up the update right from within Pixelmator, or from the Pixelmator Team’s Website.

Another application that received quite a considerable update is Picturesque, from Acqualia. I reviewed Picturesque v1.0 way back in May of 2007, and with this update, you won’t even recognize Picturesque anymore. The interface of Picturesque has been completely redone, doing away with the floating inspector window. This update in addition to a new interface, has brought a few new tools, like Perspective and Crop. A review of Picturesque has just been posted to MacApper, by our very own Joe Turner.

Now those are the only ones that I found in my travels through the internet, but I would be happy to hear some of the other ones that I may have missed.

We will find out the winners of the ADAs in a months time at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference this June.

Picturesque, by Acqualia, has just been updated to version 2.0 (for the Apple Design Awards). Version 2.0 has improved the interface, the ease of use, and the utilization of new Leopard features. It makes adding some of these simple effects very simple. You really just have to click a few buttons and you’re off.

When you first open Picturesque you will get one of those drag-and-drop screens. You simply drag a photo there! (Or two, or three or as many as you want.) Picturesque 2 adds a thumbnail bar at the top that shows you all the images you have opened. This makes it simple to edit one image, and with a click of the mouse, start on another. In the bottom of the window you will see the options for editing your image.

All of the options work pretty much the same way. You click on the text for the option (the name) and it will turn it either on or off. You then click on the picture above the text to specify the options for that effect. The options vary for each effect, but almost all of them make perfect sense. The only option that works differently is the background option. You will always have a background when you are editing your images, but not always when you save them. If you save to PNG of TIFF, it will not automatically add a background color. In order for it to save a background you have to deselect the Transparent Background checkbox in the save panel. When you’re finished working with it you can save your images at anywhere from 0-100% of the image’s original size. Picturesque will calculate the proportions of length to width based on the effects you add, so you don’t need to worry about that! You just need to give it a percent or a number of pixels for the length or width.

One of the biggest features added in version 2.0 is presets. You can make a preset of the effects that you did to a certain image, and it can apply those on other images! Once you have added the effects that you want to use as a preset, just click the Presets button and then the [+] button in the panel that appears. Now you just name it, and you are off. Whenever you want to use that preset, you just click on its name.

Presets are extremely helpful for batch editing of images. Once you have edited a batch of images, you just have to click Save All… from the bottom of the screen. It will present you with a save dialog that asks you for a folder to save all of your images to. It gives you the normal options that were in the regular save dialog, but it also has a few more. You can add a suffix and number them (which will add a suffix to the suffix). These are extremely helpful for batch, because sometimes you need them numbered. You can also check the Fit Into checkbox to fit all of the images into a certain size. This does no cropping, or changing of proportion. It just makes sure that all the images are smaller or equal to the size specified.

One new feature that is really just for show is the ability to see the image that you are editing in the dock. In the general preferences, just select Show current image in dock icon. This actually puts your image into the dock icon where the picture of the lady used to be.

Picturesque, by Acqualia is a free update for people who bought Picturesque 1 after April 4th, and retails for $34.95 for the rest of us. Just compare that price to the alternative apps that may have more features, but end up not doing simple tasks like reflections. Picturesque really adds that ‘extra mile’ to your images, so you can have professional looking images at a non-professional price.

LiveQuartz has most of the standard image editing tools you might expect from a modern image editing application: layers, a rudimentary brush engine, selection lasso tools, a text engine, and filters. Like other editors powered by Core Image, LiveQuartz is fast and its filters operate in near realtime. Notable features which LiveQuartz lacks include layer styles and alpha masks.

With the exception of tool pallets, such as the color and fonts picker, everything in LiveQuartz is accessible through it’s single window interface. Two collapsible sidebars, the left for layers and the right for filters, flank the image workspace in the middle. This relatively simplistic interface is not only space efficient, but is intuitive for newcomers to the application.

The exciting new feature in the newest release, version 1.8, is support for Multi-touch gestures. If you have a supported laptop, a MacBook Air or the newest MacBook Pros, certain features and tools can be activated with gestures. For example, the Pinch and Expand gesture controls zoom magnification while the Swipe gesture toggles between different image editing tools. These features are certainly a welcome addition, and help streamline image editing once you get used to the gestures.

With support for Core Image filters and multi-touch gestures, LiveQuartz is a lean and fast image editor. Even with it’s limitations, at a price of Free, it’s a steal. LiveQuartz requires OS X 10.5 Leopard and is available from Rhapsoft.