Planet Quark » Software (other)

Ron & Joe’s Art Parts

Jeff Gamet — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:58:22 +0000

Ron & Joe have been producing their Art Parts illustrations for many years, with great success. One set of collections that’s different from the others is their Letter Parts, and through the end of the year, they’re 50% off. These are photos of actual letter-shaped objects, with each collection containing 115 to 700 images in both hi- and low-resolution.

Their other whimsical and engaging drawn Art Parts are available in individual themed sets for $35 each. You may find the the new Green set useful for upcoming projects.

Their Faces set is also timeless.

If find it inspiring to just flip through their collection. Have a look at www.ronandjoe.com!

Sample Colors with Your iPhone

Jeff Gamet — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:23:02 +0000

Code Line’s Color Expert is an amazingly cool iPhone application that turns your iPhone into a color sampler and color scheme builder. You can take photos with the iPhone’s camera, match colors in the photos to Pantone PMS and Goe swatches, build custom Monochromatic, Analogous, Complementary, Split Complementary and Triadic color palettes, email your color schemes, and more.

This is not only a great tool for on-location color sampling, it’ll impress your clients. It costs $9.99 and is available at the iTunes store or through the link at Code Line’s website.

Professionally Fix Photos in iPhoto

Jeff Gamet — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:50:48 +0000

onOne Software’s Essentials 2 for iPhoto is an incredible bargain at $59.95. It combines the best of their professional Photoshop plug-ins into one helper for iPhoto:

The “Make It Better” tool lets you compare color, contrast and brightness adjustments side-by-side, then choose the best result. Based on their fabulous PhotoTune technology, it works like an eye test: it presents two versions of your image and you click on the one you like best. Repeat, repeat, repeat, done!

“Blur It” adjusts depth of field, plane of focus and selective focus for professional blur effects.

“Frame It” lets you add edge and border effects such as torn paper, brush strokes and real frames and mats. More than 500 frames are included.

“Enlarge It” can resize images up to 400 percent without losing sharp edges and small details. Seriously.

A version is also available for Photoshop Elements.

Publishing Tool for Young People

Jeff Gamet — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:40:33 +0000

Currently on sale for just $20, Canvastic 3.5 is the publishing tool you want to give a child so that as they grow, their knowledge can be used when they graduate to professional page layout, graphics and presentation tools. In other words, it’s a toned-down version of the tools we use.

Intended for use by students from kindergarten through 8th grade, Canvastic’s interface can be as simple or as complex as you like — just turn on new features as the user’s knowledge grows. You can use Canvastic to create illustrations, reports, and even full-screen presentations with music. You can even record voiceovers and use music from your iTunes collection. It also includes more than 200 templates. A free demo version is available for Mac or Windows. The normal price for Canvastic is $59 or $39 for education.

Affordable, Professional Film Clips

Jeff Gamet — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:03:52 +0000

As you’re creating your multimedia projects in the Interactive Layout space of QuarkXPress, you may run into the need for a great video clip. When you do, consider this:

Thought Equity has a new approach to providing high quality film, video and music clips: provide world-class content at $49 for Web resolution. The collection includes several kinds of content: news video clips from NBC news programs, film-quality video clips of standard scenes, such as a pan of the New York skyline, sharks off the Great Barrier Reef, or a stadium full of cheering fans; and footage from Paramount, MGM, Sony Pictures, TriStar, National Geographic, HBO, and many others.

Thought Equity researchers are available 24/7 to assist film editors in finding just the right clip quickly. Thought Equity also provides licensing and rights management, in addition to its large collection of royalty free clips.

Graphic Inspector is Unusually Useful

Jeff Gamet — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:05:44 +0000

Zevrix’s Graphic Inspector is a remarkably handy, affordable utility for seeing every attribute of a vector or raster graphic file, and also for quickly finding all files that match any chosen criteria. For example, you could ask it to warn you about images below a certain resolution, or with/without particular ICC profiles, RGB mode, compression, camera settings, spot colors, or fonts.

Unfortunately for Windows users, Graphic Inspector only runs on Mac OS X 10.4.2 and higher.

To use Graphic Inspector, you drag one or more files or folders onto its icon or into its inspector window. You can also choose them from within its clever, built-in file navigator. For the amount of information displayed, its interface is impressively straightforward. You can even export file data as a text file, preview images, and open or reveal files in the Finder. I’m impressed with its rare combination of price, utility and thoughtful design.

Graphic Inspector costs $40.

Open XML Converter for Office 2004

Jeff Gamet — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:11:51 +0000

With the release of Open XML Converter (free), Microsoft finally makes it possible for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac and Office v. X to open documents from Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac. This is great news for users of applications that can’t import Word 2007/2008 documents, such as QuarkXPress 8 and earlier.

The utility uses your copy of Office 2004 to convert the 2007/2008 Office Suite file format into a format that older Office applications recognize. It also lets Office 2004 save files in the 2008 format, and can convert batches of documents. An additional benefit is that Office 2004 users can now work with Office 2008 documents without giving up their macros — a feature that Microsoft removed from Office 2008.

Download Microsoft’s Open XML Converter here.

Professional Stock Layouts

Jeff Gamet — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:05:12 +0000

Sometimes, what would really save your bacon (and turn a profit) is instant access to a ready-made layout for a project — something you don’t have to create, but still gets the job done.

One option is StockLayouts. They provide fully customizable templates for QuarkXPress, and other applications, either on CD or downloaded from their website.

The templates were designed by award-winning graphic designers and include royalty-free stock photos and original artwork, and a defined color palette.

Everything is suitable for commercial printing, and fonts are specified but not included. Templates include brochures, newsletters, stationery, postcards, ads and menus for a variety of businesses.

Each CD contains dozens of layouts and is priced between $249 and $399, while individual layouts cost $29–$99. You can see the designs and download a free sample template from their website.

Another option is Chuck Green’s “Ideabook”, which Planet Quark mentioned back in January. It’s a book and a CD that contains more than 300 prebuilt projects. Grab one and go!

Professional Creative Management Software

Jeff Gamet — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:00:43 +0000

Creative Manager Pro, also known as Workamajig, is designed for creative firms, departments and ad agencies to completely manage finances and projects, including contacts, calendars, time sheets, billing, artwork approval, manage assets, calculate project milestone dates, and much more.

It integrates with Apple’s iCal, iSync and Address Book to allow use across local or wide networks, and you can schedule projects from the end date backwards, to determine a start date.

The interface uses a Web browser, to provide cross-platform use from anywhere. The server software can reside on your own server, or their Web server. There are many other features — I encourage you to take a test drive. Priced at $380 per month for ten users.

XRAY: Amazing, Instant Info on Web Elements

Jeff Gamet — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:00:07 +0000

When you’re designing a Web page in QuarkXPress, you sometimes need to know the exact measurements and structure of an existing page on the Internet. Westciv’s XRAY is a free bookmarklet for Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and other Web browsers that lets you see the underlying structure of any Web page.

Just click on XRAY and then click on any item on a Web page. A floating window appears that displays all the essential information about that item: its location, size, margin, padding, CSS class, and much more. It’s an extremely easy way to study a Web page design, or grab the dimensions of an item.

XRAY is a “bookmarklet”. To install it, you just drag it onto the Bookmarks bar of your Web browser. Strange, but true.