MacHeist Bundle 3…is it for artists?

Last week I talked brei­fly about the MacHeist bun­dle some­thing I gen­er­ally take part in. Since then, I’ve received a few ques­tions ask­ing about the lit­er­acy level of the apps. So first, they are pretty basic but more impor­tantly the ques­tion you should be ask­ing your­self is whether the apps will help you do what you do.

I gen­er­ally buy the bun­dle for two rea­sons: 1. It’s a good cause and 2. It is a really good way to get some higher priced soft­ware at a much dis­counted rate. Every bun­dle I have pur­chased has included at least one app that was well worth the pur­chase price of the whole bun­dle. How­ever, and this is a BIG HOWEVER I work on my com­puter all day and use lots of dif­fer­ent apps to do what I do, so I know my needs. This bun­dle offered sev­eral apps that are promis­ing for mak­ing my life easier…so I snatched it up.

Since I am focused on help­ing artists and one of the things that seems to be hang­ing many folks up, is the whole Zap­pli­ca­tion process as in resiz­ing images, I have been on the look­out for sim­ple inex­pen­sive graphic pro­grams that help artists.

So..with artists and the uses of the appli­ca­tions in mind I have put together a lit­tle guide here to help you decide.

Graphics/Image manip­u­la­tion

Pic­turesque

This app is great for cre­at­ing quick and easy pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats for images, but not much more. You can use it to cre­ate those funky per­spec­tivezed images that are part of OSX Leop­ard.

Acorn

This app is really like a very tiny ver­sion of some of Photohop’s best tricks, you can apply lay­ers, add text, apply some cool fil­ter effects that Pho­to­shop doesn’t do eas­ily and as with Pic­turesque you can do all of these likety-split. BUT you can’t do the can­vas resize, make square, with black ground thing demanded by Zapp.…Bummer!

Audio

Wire Tap Studio

This is an audio pro­gram that has had pretty good reviews, I’ve been look­ing for one that is easy to use, so the price was right any­thing is bet­ter than  Garage Band. I haven’t had a chance to really jump in to it but it does look promis­ing so far and a lot less counter intu­itive tha either Garage Band or Audac­ity.

Video/Animation

Kine­matic

This a 3D ani­ma­tion soft­ware and once you fig­ure out how to use it you’ll be able to cre­ate some pretty cool stuff. The learn­ing curve on this one looks to be pretty high even for a geek like me. Once you learn it though you’ll be able to pretty eas­ily make some slick effects for videos espe­cially if you want to use them on your blog.

Boinxtv

If you always wanted to have your own TV show this is the way to go. Say you want to record a video cast for your blog or site that shows you doing your thing, just con­nect your cam­eras, find some­body to man the key­board and mouse and off you go. It is really designed for Pod­cast­ers and on-line video pro­duc­tion that is done live and be edited in real time. Seriously…this could be fun to use and def­i­nitely add a touch to your blog that few other artists will have.

Web

Espresso

This a very basic web site builder and edi­tor, and it is made by the same folks as CSSedit a great app for edit­ing CSS on or off line. Espresso will be a good fit for some­one who knows just enough to be dan­ger­ous and wants to know more about web devel­op­ment. By focus­ing on crisp work­flow that makes sense it looks promis­ing both as a reg­u­lar tool and a learn­ing device.

Odds & Sods

Lit­tle Snapper

a screen grab app but to be hon­est it kept crash­ing, any­way for what I do I pre­fer Skitch which is FREE!!

Hit List

a basic task man­ager (todo list man­ager) I use the Omni-Outliner which comes with most Macs.

Remem­ber…

Now… don’t get me wrong these are all out­stand­ing apps …just make sure you need what they have to offer, If so then put your money down and hit the down­load button!!