Mac users have all the treats these days while Windows users have all the warts. Easy to use OS, security, stability, dependability, low cost (Mac mini), ultra cool factor (iPods), and great applications.
I’m not talking word processors, spreadsheets, or graphic applications like Photoshop. I’m talking applications that have a “wow factor.”
These are the cool applications that you’ve been waiting for; the ones that do something you normally can’t do (even when spending tons on Photoshop, Photoshop books, tutorials, lessons, etc.).
A good example is comics. I love comics. Dilbert. Doonesbury. Superman. X-Men. The Flash (there’s something about a muscular guy in red tights). Opus. Calvin. The Far Side.
Creating your own comic strip, comic book, or comic fun is a little tougher when you have no talent. Actually, in my case, that’s NO talent.
I’ve long wanted to create something in the comic book or comic strip vein. Attempts at drawing characters you could recognize are described by others as “attempts in waiting.”
Get over it. There’s no graphic talent here, hence, no comic book or comic strip.
Enter the Mac developers at Plasq and Comic Life. Wow. Cool. What a treat.
Comic Life is more than just waaaaay cool, highly intuitive, integrates with iPhoto, and exports professional comic books, comic strips, comic panels within minutes of install.
All you need is a clever wit, a real comic book as an example, and a few photos. Comic Life does the rest.
Once installed, creating a “comic” anything is straightforward, intuitive, simple even.
First, choose a “paper size.” Standard comic page, smaller, larger, custom, whatever. Comic Life comes with over three dozen comic page layouts that you can mix and match.
Drag a layout to the page. In the right hand column your iPhoto photographs appear. Drag a photograph and drop it into a comic strip “pane.”
Below the comic strip page are the dialog balloons. Drag and drop. Then type in something witty.
See? It’s easy. Drag and drop.
It’s also drag and drop if you’re talented enough to create your own images in Photoshop Elements, or any other graphic application for the Mac.
Oh, everything on the page is re-sizeable. The frames. The images. The balloons. Drag and move. Drag and resize. Drag because you can. Drag because there’s a cool sound effect with each movement.
You can create a whole comic book with dozens of pages. Or a single frame comic. Captions, text balloons, and any graphic can be added and resized.
The fun is in the finished product. It’s your creation from the ground up but can be exported as a printable comic book, a QuickTime slide show (each page becomes an image slide—you can even add audio), or, my favorite, export an HTML page with all the images as pop-up pages.
You can even export as an iPhoto Book layout to print and give away as gifts. If you’re a .Mac account user, you can publish your comic book to the Web.
Of course, Comic Life isn’t limited to just plain old comic strips or comic books. It can be used to create colorful family photo albums, children’s story books, “how to” guides, scrap books, and greeting cards.
Try it. You’ll see what I mean.
Comic Life is easily one of the best new Mac applications of the year. Click Here to download it from the Plasq site, try it out, show me one of your creations. Click Here for one of mine. This took about 4 minutes to create with drag and drop from iPhoto.
Comic Life is only $25 and will make you a comic book artist-to-publisher within an hour. Let’s see what you can do.
About Bambi Brannan
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