Review: Vector Designer

VectorDesigner is exactly what it sounds like...a design program that uses vector instead of raster graphics. VectorDesigner is a nice little application developed by TweakerSoft that contains most every major feature you would want inside of a vector graphics program - all for just $69.95, or you can try the demo out at their site. Alongside the basics such as bezier curves, smart shapes and gradients, it includes much more. For one, it has a built-in Flickr tool which allows you to find pictures over Flickr containing specific objects, numbers or even colours. The colour feature is one of my favourites and is a must see to believe kind of thing. Also, it uses the Quartz composer capabilities to allow you to place filters on your
objects to make them more interesting. Included, is also a nice layers pallet similar to the one found in Photoshop which can come in handy when you are creating a very intricate object inside of VectorDesigner.
Some other neat features include being able to convert raster graphics into vector ones which can be manipulated as if you had drawn them, being able to import pictures directly from the iSight atop your Mac, wrapping text around or inside of objects, the use of Boolean tools which allow you to subtract or add two objects together and, finally, being able to sketch things, which is a nice feature if you aren't very good with using the bezier tool.
I found no problems with using it and soon became quite comfortable with its simple user interface. Also, the creator appears hard at work because it seems as though every time I launch it, a new update has arrived with subtle but handy new features. Also worth noting is it received the "Best Of Show" award at Macworld this year - always a nice thing to have. Five stars.

Review: Pixelmator

For those of you who are unaware, Pixelmator is an inexpensive alternative to Adobe Photoshop that includes many of the same tools and filters found in the aforementioned. The standard price of Pixelmator is $59 but recently had been included in the Mac Heist bundle for $49 as well as being on the Mac Update Promo for $29.

Almost every tool found in the younger versions of Photoshop such as the clone stamp tool, the magic wand and eyedropper are included in the package. Also things like levels, masks, hue/saturation and blend modes for layers are there as well. The graphical interface of pixelmator is quite stunning. Every pallet and toolbar is displayed on a HUD thats semi-transparent, which gives it a very modern look. There are a lot of subtleties throughout the program that make it quite visually appealing, even more-so than Photoshop, itself. An example of this is when you select a tool in the toolbar, its icon will become larger than the others, indicating that it is in use. Finally, almost every keyboard shortcut that is in Photoshop is identical in Pixelmator with a few exceptions.

Now that all of the good things are out of the way, it's time for some of the bad things about Pixelmator. For one, there is no history pallet. This doesn't mean that it doesn't save your history (you can always use cmd+z) but there is no visual way to go back to a specific point like Photoshop. Another gripe that i have is the fact that there is no polygonal lasso tool. The polygonal lasso tool is one of my favorites in photoshop and I miss it dearly in Pixelmator. Also the outline that is normally encompassing your brush or pencil is gone completely. I found that to cause choosing the correct brush size the first time quite difficult. But also don't forget, Pixelmator is only at version 1.1.2 as of right now and will hopefully see many updates over the next couple of months.

Overall, Pixelmator carries a much larger bang-for-its-buck compared to Photoshop which retails for around $800. Hopefully, over the next little while Pixelmatr will see some updates that may very well bump this up to four and a half or even five stars. But as of the current program, I would have to give it three and a half stars.

Review: iWork '08

Overview

iWork '08, for those of you that don't know, is a

document suite made by Apple that is quite similar to other programs such as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. The reason I decided to go with iWork over Office was, simply, because it was much more intuitive and simpler to use than Microsoft Office. The interface is quite clean - like many other Apple programs - and is very direct and quite easy to get the hang of. There is a bit of a learning curve, I found, coming from a Windows machine running Office '03, but once you have the basics worked out, your ready to go. I found, that when making presentations and spreadsheets, the design aspects of everything seemed much easier to create and model compared to that of Office. Sorry for all of the Office comparisons, but there isn't much more to compare it to.

Pages '08

Pages is the equivalent to Word that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Where pages differs from Word is the page layout options that allow you to make even the simplest document look like it was designed by a professional. It comes with a large array of templates for you to chose and modify to your liking. If none of the suit your taste, you can decide to create your own, from scratch. It may sound like it would be a complicated task but Pages combined with the power of the options available make almost any task easy. I say "almost" because I found one minor thing that Apple decided not to include. The ability to make equations inside of pages, or any other of the programs inside iWork, for that matter, is completely absent. Things such as fractions or other symbols that could be found inside of Microsoft Office's "Symbols" menu, are nowhere to

be seen inside of iWork. Now, this will affect very few of you and this is hardly a deal-breaker, unless you find yourself commonly placing equations inside of documents or presentations. If anyone finds a workaround, please feel free t leave a comment below. Other than that, I have found Pages to be a pleasant alternative to Word and in many ways much, much better.

Numbers '08

Before you go and think Numbers is just another Excel clone, think again. The options inside of Numbers are seemingly endless when first presented with it. Numbers is very special, in that, it somehow combines the equations and data tables of Excel with the page layout ability from pages, as I mentioned above. This idea of combining the two, creates stunning charts and graphs that are much more appealing to others than a plain chart. Once again, Numbers comes with a large quantity of pre-defined templates ranging from school savings, to budget, to dinner parties. One of the nice features that I discovered inside of Numbers is the quick equation panel, which allows you t highlight a group of numbers and perform some standard calculations on them without ever having to figure out the whole "=(B3:B15*C4:C13)" formulas. I found this feature saved me a large chunk of time when making calculation-heavy charts. Also, Numbers gives you the option to resize your charts to fit more or less columns in a specific table. This feature will also let you input other tables inside of the single page, as well as pictures, text boxes and video. Finally, one of my personal favorite features inside of Numbers is the print view, and no, I'm not crazy. Inside of the print view, you are still able to drag around tables, graphics, text and pretty much anything else thats moveable, so that it suits your printing needs. Also, it has a "Content scale slider" which will shrink the entire document percent by percent so that it fist on your page exactly how you envisioned it.

Keynote '08

Keynote is pretty much Powerpoint's brother with some improvements and some not-so

improvements. For starters, the transitions and all around look-and-feel is quite nice and

polished making for some beautiful presentations. The ability to layout a slide is quite nice,

with the snap-to grids that appear when the object lines up with the edge of another object (this

feature is seen throughout iWork). There are a couple downsides though. For one, I haven't

been able to find an option to embed an online video inside of a presentation, but you are able

to embed one from your hard drive. Also, I found the bullets to be a tad irksome, just simply

because they always center inside the text box, instead of start at the top and work their way

down, but I'm sure there's a simple workaround for this problem and I just havent been worried

about it enough to figure it out.

Final Thoughts

After working with iWork '08 for a little bit I have come to love it and would never look at

using Microsoft Office as an alternative to it. There just aren't enough problems with it. Four

stars.

P.S. Sorry about the formatting of the Keynote '08 paragraph...I don't know what went wrong.