I don’t know how many photo, slide show, video utilities are available for Mac OS X, but we’ve reviewed the good ones.
Except for PulpMotion. Not since ComicLife have I had this much fun with photos on my Mac. Seriously.
There’s all kinds of nifty neato Mac utilities that let you play fun and games with your digital photos from iLife, music from iTunes.
Slide shows? There must be a dozen ways to create them on the Mac, even turn them into classy looking videos, drop them into iDVD and create a family DVD of photos to movies.
We’ve reviewed some of the best Mac photo to movie tools ever, including two of my favorites, Boinx FotoMagico, and PhotoToMovie. Both are top notch, nearly professional level and easy as sinning with a sex cam.
Oh, sorry. SexCam was the only word that would fit into the headline space and attract attention at the same time. Isn’t that what headlines are supposed to do?
PulpMotion is one of those very slick Mac utilities that does more than you suspect, yet you wonder why someone didn’t figure out how to do it before now.
Do what? The brand new PulpMotion creates animation from your digital photos, and your iTunes music, and your movies, even from your iSight camera.
To get started, fire up PulpMotion and select a theme. There’s a couple dozen from which to choose (how’s my grammar so far? I’m trying to cut down on ending sentences with a preposition. That’s what grammar is for).
The themes are gaudy, vibrant, colorful, non-pastel pretty, and designed to evoke a response. If you’ve seen the themes in Sandvox, you’ve seen the same in PulpMotion.
The second step is simple, too. Drag your media (photos, movies, music, whatever) right onto the PulpMotion animation area timeline and arrange accordingly. This part works like iMovie.
Yep, there’s a “media viewer” just like you find in iPhoto and iMovie and it all works about the same way. Click Preview and enjoy what you created. How’s that for simple?
OK, it’s not quite that simple, but I have yet to read the Help files so how hard can it be?
What you create are streaming animations of video and photos with a music or sound background (including pieces of video recorded from your iSight camera, if you choose).
If you’ve seen those professional looking themes in iMovie then you have an idea of what you can do—only more.
This is really more of a fancy show than just a pretty movie.
Once you’re done creating an animated video, photo masterpiece, export your finished product to an iPod, to iWeb, to GarageBand (to add more tracks of audio, music, whatever), even to Final Cut Express or Pro.
PulpMotion even creates a screensaver of your own creation.
Tools are simple and straightforward. Slider bars let you adjust the speed of the photos or movies, change duration, add the Ken Burns moving-photo-look, change the text color.
Whoops. Did I forget to mention text? Yes, you can add onscreen text to the whole animation process. The right side of the screen is reserved for Media—audio, photos, video, and iSight screen capture (or any DV camera plugged in to your Mac via Firewire).
It’s been awhile since I’ve had so much fun with a brand new Mac media utility. As usual, it’s try before you buy so be willing to try. The only problem I’ve seen with this version is the screen real estate needed. The bigger the better.
PulpMotion is from Aquafadas, the same folks who develop iDive for the Mac. Click Here for a look at the details, then Click Here for the demo video.
Let’s try something different. Download the demo version and try it out. It won’t take long for you to figure out all the cool things you can do. Then, drop us a note with your first impression in the Comment section below.
About Alexis Kayhill
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