Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later
Wish you could have an iTunes-like app for playing your movie files? This app does just that, allowing you to organize movies into customizable playlists and view them in a number of ways, including full screen. Sort clips by size, time, or any other relevant criteria, search through playlists for particular movies, and have all your movies available for viewing at your fingertips. It features a built-in player, speed control, bass and treble control, volume, QuickTime VR support, and ability to export movies to other file formats.
Requirements: Power Mac, Mac OS 9.x or OS X 10.0 or later, Photoshop plug-in-compatible host program
This Photoshop plug-in allows you to bend any full-sphere, panoramic image into different views. It accepts equirectangular, mirror ball, polar, cylindrical, fisheye, and other similar images as input, and can crank them back out in 46 unique view types, including origami, Lego plans, cube maps, and a spikeball, with high-quality resampling. With it, you can simulate impossible lenses, print out panoramic images and fold them into origami creations, make hyper-wide-angle views, and more. Try it out to really understand it. This package contains both the OS 9 and OS X plug-ins.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later
Find all of your movies fast. This iPhoto-like app allows you to catalog and organize all of your digital video files on your hard drive. It also allows you to compress DV footage so that you can permanently store clips on your local hard drive. The app features an iPhoto-esque interface, a Video Clip Inspector that allows you to get info about clips and edit it, a Tape Inspector that displays start and end recording dates and tape descriptions, and a clip viewer to watch movies.
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.
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.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later, local area network
This uniquely cool app combines a drawing app and a chatting program together into one. iChalk uses Rendezvous technology to let all users on your LAN collaborate drawings on a shared chalkboard to sketch out ideas that can be exported as JPEG or QuickTime movie files. The interface supports full color and requires no network configuration to use. Create collaborative animated movies, illustrations, and storyboards; swap ideas graphically, tutor others using its blackboard to teach; and more. It even supports pressure sensitivity for tablet users.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.0 or later
If you’ve got tons of icons, this handy app will help you organize them for easier finding and viewing. The app (which resembles iPhoto) generates libraries for your collection, and allows you to preview icons at any size, search for icons by name, export icon images as TIFF files, paste icons onto files, and more.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later
This little icon creator allows you to combine two 128x128-pixel graphics, modify them, and then fuse them into one icon. Just drag any two images into the app interface’s foreground and background frames; feel free to alter the sizes, positions, and colors, or add shadows, gradients, text, and frames; and then either stamp it onto a file or folder, or save it for later use.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.0 or later
This great app, which features some nifty bells and whistles, allows you to design page layouts from your digital photos for printing. Rotate, resize, crop, mask, and arrange your photos in the interface and add text for custom print-outs, or call-up one of ImageBuddy’s Event Layout pages, which allows you to print photos using a built-in template (similar to those old photo packages in grade school). Print contact sheets, pages of multi-sized images, or create your own photo book pages easily.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later, 128MB RAM, QuickTime 5.0.2 or later
Run your own television station right from your Mac desktop. Live Channel allows you to stream live broadcasts right from your Mac to video projectors, monitors, local TV networks, and to the Web masses. Take video from any number of sources and then layer video tracks, add text titling, overlay graphics, add video effects and transitions, add voice-overs, mix and process audio, and more directly from its interface.
Requirements: Power Mac, Mac OS 8.6-9.x with CarbonLib or OS X 10.0 or later
This handy PostScript and PDF previewer lets you view graphics, like EPS files, without actually having to open the file. If you’re a Unix head, it’s similar to the ghostview program found on most machines.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later
This fun app allows you to warp an image or take two images and create a QuickTime movie that morphs the images from one to the other. Watch as the app can turn a photo of yourself into Steve Jobs, your cat, or even your mother. Morph Age allows you to animate warp curves independently so that you can morph different facial features at different times. It also features animation effects to add even more bizarreness to your movie.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later, QuickTime 6 or later (for MP4 support)
iTunes for your digital movie collection. This movie manager and player allows you to organize and display your collection—whether your movie files are stored on your hard drive, CD, DVD, or on a network—and even play them if the movie is on a local drive or network. The app even includes an Internet search engine that’ll scope out movie posters and/or box covers for you to display with the file. It also features editable playlists; .mov, .mpg, .avi, and .mp4 support; drag-and-drop support; a customizable display; full-screen playback; and more.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.1 or later, 128MB RAM, QuickTime 5 or later
Producing interactive multimedia is a natural yearn for us in these days of the digital hub and associated lifestyle—too bad it’s still so darn expensive to get started. That’s where MovieWorks comes in, providing you with the basic tools for creating and combining audio, video, photo, and animation into clickable QuickTime movies for Web, CD, or DVD distribution. This trial gives you the full, umlimited version for 15 days.
Requirements: Power Mac, Mac OS 9.1-9.x or OS X 10.1 or later
It’s a common dilemma: You want in on the desktop video revolution—multimedia and all that—but you’re either tone deaf or audio illiterate, and need another means for adding some cool soundtrack-style music to your videos. Sonicfire Pro solves that dilemma, giving you access to a massive library of music, plus the tools to visually strectch, shrink, and otherwise “massage” a tune into the perfect accompaniment for your visual masterwork.
You’ve snapped batch loads of photos, now what? With this app, you can easily turn your digital images into a photo gallery for your Web site or print them out without all the usual fuss of other similar apps. The app features easy-to-use controls so that you can print full-frame images on any color printer, fix under- or overexposed images, rotate and crop pictures, print contact sheets, create slideshows with music, add text annotations, create Web galleries with QiockTime movies and VRs, and more.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.0 or later
You’ve snapped batch loads of photos, now what? With this app, you can easily turn your digital images into a photo gallery for your Web site or print them out without all the usual fuss of other similar apps. The app features easy-to-use controls so that you can print full-frame images on any color printer, fix under- or overexposed images, rotate and crop pictures, print contact sheets, create slideshows with music, add text annotations, create Web galleries with QiockTime movies and VRs, and more.
Requirements: Power Mac, Mac OS 9.2.x or OS X 10.2 or later
Wanna create your own font? You can fairly easily with this cool program—and it won’t cost you a fortune either. Just draw letters, numbers, and other characters into each glyph box, hint and kern your characters, and generate a suitcase. The app features VectorPaint tools to design sophisticated glyphs, automated and manual hinting and kerning features to format your characters, expanded encodings to create characters for virtually every language, and more. Check out this month’s “Design Your Own Font” how-to for a complete walk-through.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.0 or later
Here’s an open-source, free alternative to Apple’s DVD player. VideoLAN Client (VLC) allows you to play DVDs, VCDs, or any MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, or streaming file on your Mac.
Requirements: G3 or faster Mac, Mac OS X 10.2 or later
This OS X-native image browser allows you to view and manage images, rename them, convert files, create thumbnails, show or hide hidden files, delete files, add text, and more. It also features a grab tool which lets you download pictures from a Web page; resize, rotate, zoom, and crop tools; plug-ins and AppleScript support; batch processing capabilities; slideshow creation; font manager; and more.
