ZeusDraw review

ZeusDraw is a vector application that I found a few days ago on MacZot. At first glance it didn't seem interesting, but I took the time to watch the demonstration videos and was blown away by the simplicity and intuitiveness of it's brush and color controls. I'm no expert with graphic applications, but brush capabilities are something even I have found sorely lacking in the cheaper (i.e. not made by Adobe) graphic applications for Mac. They all allow you to paint with a brush, but usually the only things you can customize are the size, color, and softness. With ZeusDraw, on the other hand, it's a different story entirely.

ZeusDraw on MacZot

ZeusDraw, a vector drawing application, is on special this weekend at MacZot. At first glance it didn't interest me much, but after watching the videos I was blown away by it's brush and colour controls! Stay tuned for a full review ;)

Interview with VectorDesigner developer Marco Pifferi

Marco Pifferi of TweakerSoft is the developer of VectorDesigner, a vector application for the Mac and winner of the Macworld Best of Show Award in January 2008. In this interview we will find out how VectorDesigner was born, and where it's going in the future.

Coming soon: interview with VectorDesigner developer!

Soon I will be posting an interview with Marco Pifferi, the developer of VectorDesigner.
Subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you don't miss it!

Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman released

It seems today is the day for graphic application releases - earlier today VectorDesigner was updated, and now the much-awaited Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman has been released too! The updates include curves, grids and rulers, a masks palette, a polygonal lasso tool, a more in-depth help file, and many more Automator actions.

The masks palette makes working with selections and masks much easier, and the help file is great for beginners or for finding out the use or shortcuts of a tool. The images illustrating the effects of the filters and other tools are a very useful learning aid, enabling you to see what effects they will have without having to test each one. Unfortunately there aren't previews for the Quartz Composer filters, but I guess we can't have everything ;)

All in all I'm very pleased with Pixelmator Draftsman, and the regular updates give me confidence that Pixelmator will keep improving steadily. Keep up the good work, Pixelmator team!

VectorDesigner updated to version 1.2.0

Today VectorDesigner was updated to version 1.2.0. The core updates are:
- Smart snap on elements, points and intersections
- Export selection
New video tutorials have also been added to their website.

Unfortunately the Path Tips that pop up now every time you put your cursor over a line, point or intersection can get quite annoying and distracting - hopefully they will soon add an option to turn them off.

Update:
The option to disable Path Tips has been added. Thanks Marco for the super-fast addition!

Download: workflows to batch convert Pixelmator brushes

In a previous post I explained how to manually convert .png brushes for use in Pixelmator. After many trials and errors, I was finally able to make an Automator workflow to convert batches of brushes automatically. As Pixelmator doesn’t have the actions I needed in Automator, I had to use the new “Watch Me Do” feature, so these scripts probably won’t work in Tiger.

I was unable to get Pixelmator to apply the specified actions to each images in a batch, so I got around this by having it repeat the actions multiple times. Unfortunately it will continue repeating these actions the specified number of times even if there are no more images, so I made multiple scripts to enable you to choose the one closest to the number of images to convert: this way you won’t waste too much time waiting for it to finish. Read under the cut for step by step intructions.