8.7.2 - ComicLife 1.2.2
Comic Life is a comic-making program for Mac OSX.
Features: Unique toolset optimized for the creation of comics, with particular emphasis on speech/thought balloons, comic-y fonts, framing and page structure control, and the ability to import images, which is where the artwork (aside from the speech/thought and framing) comes from.
It is difficult to describe how much fun it is to sit down with your own photos and let your mind loose without any serious goal in mind. It it not, however, difficult to show the results to you, and so click on that link, peruse my very first Comic Life project, then come back.
The first thing you should know is that took me about half an hour. Mainly because I kept messing with it. Comic Life is easy, oh so easy, to use. The next thing you should know is that today, upon firing it up to get some info out of it for this mention, it told me there was a free upgrade for registered users (that'd include me, natch) which I was very pleased to see. Without going into the experience other than to say that it was uniformly pleasant, the kitties and I put our stamp of approval firmly upon this product.
I would like to see this product expanded by the addition of structured drawing and coloring tools, a la' Intaglio. That would turn it into a true comic creator, and that is something that is seriously lacking in graphics software — they're so close now, I can hardly bear it. But to be fair, that's not what they were selling, and I won't downrate the software because of it. I'll just whine about it a bit.
Comiclife is $24.95
Five out of five stars.
Link: ComicLife
8.7.3 - Cyberduck 2.5
Cyberduck is an open-source FTP applcation. It supports drag-and-drop, multiple simultaneous connections, various encodings, secure and standard FTP, all in a superb and friendly interface. Part of my job is to maintain about 30 web sites, and I've not needed anything other than Cyberduck since I found it. You can't do better than that.
Cyberduck is free. Donation recommended.
Five out of five stars.
Link: Cyberduck
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