Imaginator: A New Reason To Own A Mac.

If you lilke graphics and Macs, you already know what I know—we live in the best of times. More graphics utilities, more effects, more capability, all built in. It just works.

So it is with Imaginator. Graphics effects that just work.

I’m a grapics pro. Of sorts. I’ve been a Mac Photoshop user since about version 2.x. Illustrator, too. Even Canvas. So, through the years I’ve collected every graphic utility, plug in, add-on you can find (or I could afford).

If plug ins for Photoshop would fit in a box, I’ve got 12 shoeboxes full. Yes, I use GraphicConverter and have for years. Yes, I try out new tools all the time.

Don’t you? Of course you do. Graphics really means tools; which tools, how you use them, what they do, how easy they get the job done, and their heritage.

Stone Design has a heritage that extends to the early early days of Mac OS X. So, it’s no surprise that when Mac OS X Tiger hit the streets, it wasn’t long after that Stone unleased Imaginator.

Imaginator. “One who imagines” is the tag line. What Imaginator does is what most Mac OS X graphics applications don’t do. Take advantage of Mac OS X Tiger’s built in Core Image effects.

To this day, many Mac users don’t know about Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Image.

These are professional effects built right into the operating system.

Imaginator takes advantage of Core Image effects and gives the digital tool bag new life. Do you take digital photos? Duh. Who doesn’t?

Imaginator was made for those of us who have adopted the Digital Hub as home, don’t want the complexity of Photoshop for quick jobs, and are always looking for something new.

Drag and drop. 100 effects and filters. Nine plug ins. Paint and erase. Lay on text, drop in full screen movies, too.

The feature list alone will leave you drooling for more. More is what you get. Imaginator is mature at version 2.3.2.

Gush, gush, gush, Carol. What’s Imaginator do? Effects. Loads of effects. Layers of effects. Effects on effects. Effects in effects.

You get the simple ones like distort, oval mask, perspective, sharpen image. Then, Imaginator takes the effects and layers them, tiles them, adds them, chains them. The end result graphic is actually a package of effects.

In Photoshop, it’s often necessary to build your own effects, or buy plug ins which give the effects you need or want. That also requires endless tweaking.

Imaginator takes that laborious process and brings it down to drag and drop, point and click. Think layers of effects, not just layers that you apply effects on.

Add a photo, add text in a drop shadow, add a stretch or bump in the text, swirl only the photo, add a glass texture to the photo. Photoshop takes longer to open than Imaginator takes to do that series.

It’s all about effects and how you apply them, in what order, and what they do. There’s blur effects, color adjustment effects, color filters.

There’s gradients, distortion effects, a cool color blend mode, the standard array of sharpen and halftones and stylized effects, all of which can be added to tile effects, page transition effects…

Oh, those are just the categories of the ones built in.

For the real pros, Imaginator is also Apple Scriptable, which means there are Automator Actions to improve workflow. Save a series of actions and apply them to any photo, automatically.

With the possible exception of GraphicConverter, this is the best $49 I’ve spent on a graphics tool in a long, long time.

One of the problems I had with Photoshop in the early years was the learning curve. If you’re new to graphic design, Photoshop is the standard but not for the faint of heart.

Imaginator comes with a bundle of 12 online movie (QuickTime) tutorials so you get up to speed quickly. Once you’ve gone through the movies, start in on the 30 new effects chains to see what you can do to a digital photo.

Still thinking like a professional? OK, try Imaginator’s RAW image format capability. There’s also a property manager which lets you inspect and modify tags; EXIF to iPhoto.

Those Image Units built in to OS X Tiger are instantly accessible with Imaginator. That brings a whole world of effects in an array of tools that will leave you smiling. Why? Because you found something cool and so good it’ll pay for itself on the first graphics job.

Click Here for the details. The download is also a full featured demo. If Tera and Bambi let us give stars, this one would get 4.5.