If you’re a whiz at creating interactive projects or coding HTML but come up a bit short on the artistic side, this package can help. Button Builder Extreme will help you create cool and elegant buttons no matter how badly you suck at drawing stick figures. It features over 100 different button designs to tweak to your heart’s content, automated rollover generation, shadow and bevel effects, and more. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X 10.1 or later.
Got video? Scrub your footage down to its most sparkling, stellar best and distribute it to the widest possible audience with this industry-standard DV primer. Cleaner lets you take your edited work and apply filters that can help reduce noise, optimize levels, fix colors, and more, and then encode your movie with one of many codecs for delivery to your medium of choice, including DVD, Video CD, Web, Web stream, PDA, and more. Apply more than 150 presets or tweak filters to your own perfection. This version proivdes all the compression codecs, but is limited to 50 sessions or 30 days, whichever comes first, and your output is limited to 15-second clips that’ll wear the Cleaner 6 logo. Requires a G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS 9.1-9.x or OS X 10.1 or later, 128MB RAM, 1024x768 minimum screen resolution, and QuickTime 5 or later.
Calling all artistic types, this fun piece of software lets you create and edit a wide scope of art—from line drawings and paintings to photo composites and retouching. It features plenty of tools to edit images, paint pictures, add filters and channel effects (over 165), create slide shows, clone and stamp images, and more. Requires a Power Mac and Mac OS 8-9.x.
Gimp-Print 4.2.4—Freeware
Gimp Print, http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
If you’re a Gimp user (that wonderfully cool OS X graphics app) this set of drivers will let you print out your work on many popular printers. Gimp-Print originated as the print facility for the open source Graphic Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). It has since matured into a suite of drivers that may be used with common UNIX spooling systems such as the CUPS spooler built-in to Mac OS X Jaguar. In many cases (especially for Epson printers) the Gimp-Print drivers provide printing quality equal to, or better than, the proprietary vendor-supplied drivers; they can be used for many of the most demanding printing tasks. Additionally, Gimp-Print provides OS X drivers for many printers that are otherwise unsupported on Mac OS X. The Gimp-Print drivers will print to any supported printer via direct USB, USB-to-parallel converter cables, TCP/IP (including through inexpensive ethernet-to-parallel port print servers and wireless routers with built-in print servers), and even to shared Windows printers via SAMBA. Also included in this pack is ESP Ghostscript for Mac OS X—an OS X-compatible, open source PostScript interpreter. When used in combination with the Gimp-Print printer drivers, ESP Ghostscript provides Postscript Level 3 printing to any supported raster printer. Postscript files can be printed easily via drag-and-drop onto the printer queue window! And for you coders out there, you’ll find the source code in this package as well. Requires a G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X, and GIMP.
GrabbyWindow 2.0.1—Shareware
End If Software, mail@end-if.de, http://www.end-if.com
If you’re a graphics designer, you’ll definitely want to check this one out. If you’re not, this nifty all-in-one app will come in handy when interacting with your daily activities. This floating file browser allows you to grab files littered all over your hard drive and bring them into your current project all from one window. It also allows you to preview graphics and view extensive information about a file without having to open it in a separate application. You can also play movies and music directly in the window, search for wayward files, and add copyright info to your work. Requires a Power Mac and Mac OS 9.0.4-9.x.
GrabbyWindow X 2.0.1—Shareware
End If Software, mail@end-if.de, http://www.end-if.com
If you’re a graphics designer, you’ll definitely want to check this one out. If you’re not, this nifty all-in-one app will come in handy when interacting with your daily activities. This floating file browser allows you to grab files littered all over your hard drive and bring them into your current project all from one window. It also allows you to preview graphics and view extensive information about a file without having to open it in a separate application. You can also play movies and music directly in the window, search for wayward files, and add copyright info to your work. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X 10.1 or later.
Looking for a fantastic graphics editor, but can’t afford Photoshop? This all-purpose, image-editing program lets you open, tweak, and save files in just about any graphics format. It features high-end editing tools for graphic manipulation, filters for special effects, and even supports Photoshop plug-ins. Plus, it also offers batch-conversion capabilities, lets you build your own slide show, supports AppleScript, and can import and export a helluva lot more file formats than you even knew existed. Requires a Power Mac and Mac OS 8.6-9.x.
Looking for a fantastic graphics editor, but can’t afford Photoshop? This all-purpose, image-editing program lets you open, tweak, and save files in just about any graphics format. It features high-end editing tools for graphic manipulation, filters for special effects, and even supports Photoshop plug-ins. Plus, it also offers batch-conversion capabilities, lets you build your own slide show, supports AppleScript, and can import and export a helluva lot more file formats than you even knew existed. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X.
Image Info X 3.0—Shareware
Kanzu, info@kanzu.com, http://www.kanzu.com
Ever have one of those moments when you went scouring your hard drive, looking for that high-res, CMYK, cat show winner photo that you’ve been tweaking, only to kick yourself for not properly naming it among the hundred some-odd kittyshow1, kittyshow2, kittyshow3 etc. images? Here’s a quick solution. Image Info allows you to view the crucial image information quickly, without having to open the image to get it. Get the facts about an image’s color profile, dimensions, EXIF and IPTC data, color space, channels, layers, clipping paths, and a whole lot more. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X.
InDesign 2.0.1—Tryout
Adobe Systems Inc., Voice 888-724-4508, http://www.adobe.com
InDesign is giving the almighty QuarkXPress a run for its money in the page-layout realm. With features like transparency and optical kerning, it’s worth a try if page design is your gig. InDesign delivers tools for creative freedom, productivity, and precision for designing superb pages. It works seamlessly with Photoshop and Illustrator, providing a single, integrated design environment that doesn't interrupt your creative process. InDesign even opens QuarkXPress and PageMaker files, so you can bring your work with you as you enter a new world of design possibilities. Requires a G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS 9.1 or later (including OS X), 128MB RAM, and 220MB free hard disk space.
Designer? Art director? Mock-up artist? This great little app generates random text that you can paste into text boxes to serve as placeholders when you layout pages. Rather than rely on the often repeating text babblings generated from other similar apps or settling for the usual TKTK, MacLorem produces non-repeating text that, on first glance, looks more realistic in the page. Requires a Power Mac and Mac OS 9.x or OS X.
This nifty DV app allows you to take movies on your Mac and stream them to a digital video device, like a DV camera. MovieOut supports just about every type of movie format, including DV file format, AVI, QuickTime, Internet streams, and even MP3s. The app also features simple editing tools. Requires a Power Mac and Mac OS 8.1-9.x or OS X 10.0 or later.
Photologist 1.0.1—Shareware
To The Point Software, contact@ttpsoftware.com, http://www.ttpsoftware.com
iPhoto too limited for you but GraphicConverter not intuitive enough? Give this new image-editing app a whirl. Photologist lets you manage, edit, and present your photos using an easy-to-use interface. Create custom photo albums to find your images fast, tweak and enhance your images to perfection (crop, rotate, scale, adjust brightness and contrast, adjust colors, remove red eye, apply shapes and backgrounds, and add effects and text), and run customizable slide shows. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X.
Got a DVD player in your Mac? Then we’re sure you’ve probably encountered the audio/video sync problem that can occur with certain movies. Here’s a terrific fix. Sync-Hole lets you offset either the audio or video track to get both in sync with each other, and banish that bad godzilla-esque dub job look from your desktop theater experience. Requires a G3 or faster Mac and Mac OS X.
