Best Mac Apps For Designers 2016
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Jun 20, 2018 This week on the Tuesday Trio, we explore 3 free applications for graphic design. Graphic design apps come in all different shapes and sizes (and costs), from vector editors, to photo editors, to. Whether you're a pro designer animating 3D objects, a beginner experimenting with drawing apps, or someone in need of a PDF editor or converter, find the best graphic design software for the job here.
Anyone with a text editor, a good grasp of HTML and CSS, and enough time on their hands can create a beautiful website. But what if you don't have time to brush up on your coding skills? What if squinting at a page full of code makes your head hurt? Or what if you're, you know, lazy?
A bumper crop of Mac apps has sprung up to help people in just such a predicament, applying a friendly front end and familiar tools to the ever-more-complicated word of web coding. While none of the three polished apps we review here will be perfect for everyone, chances are that one of them has the right feature set to fit your needs.
TurboWeb
Though it's by far the least expensive option in this roundup — roughly $60 cheaper than its two rivals! — TurboWeb packs an impressive amount of power for its low price. It offers a freeform, drag-and-drop interface for placing text, images, and more. I particularly liked the customizable grid and guides that let you impose some order on what might otherwise be chaos. Each element you place on the page snaps automatically to the nearest guide, or into alignment with neighboring elements.
Unique among this lineup, TurboWeb boasts a huge, searchable library of royalty-free stock photos — a big help for zero-budget designers who want to spice up an otherwise text-heavy site. I also enjoyed TurboWeb's instant access to my personal Pictures folder and iPhoto or Photos library. That said, you can't search through those libraries from within TurboWeb, so if you've got a pile of pictures on your hard drive, be prepared to do a lot of scrolling until you find the one you want. I also found it odd that I couldn't use any of the program's stock photos in its photo-carousel widget.
On the whole, TurboWeb does most of what you'd want it to perfectly adequately, including a bare-bones but functional way to upload your site to the FTP server of your choice (or sign up for TurboWeb's own recommended hosting provider). The online help files are simple but sufficient as well.
Nonetheless, TurboWeb fell short in a few key areas. I couldn't get text to wrap around an image for the life of me. I couldn't create a button with different active, hover, or default states. TurboWeb's short list of font options can't be changed or expanded. Responsive design support — allowing you to display the same pages differently on devices with different-sized screens — was rudimentary at best; you can swap between desktop and tablet versions, but if you've finished creating one layout, you'll have to start all over from a blank page to create the other. And TurboWeb's ability to edit and apply custom classes is rudimentary at best. It applies only to text — not images, buttons, or anything else — and offers no control over margins or padding.
- $19.99 - Download now
EverWeb
Like TurboWeb, EverWeb offers a similar drag-and-drop interface (albeit without the handy grid or guides) and overall feature set, with the same limitations when it comes to customizing CSS style elements on your pages. And it shares TurboWeb's somewhat clunky approach to 'responsive design,' requiring you to create a whole separate set of mobile counterpart pages to those on your desktop site. It lacks TurboWeb's sizable stock image library, but makes up for it by automatically supporting any of Google's extensive library of free fonts, once you've downloaded and installed them on your Mac. So why should you even consider shelling out $60 more than TurboWeb for EverWeb?
First, EverWeb boasts outstanding help files, including an extensive and well-written manual running more than 100 pages, along with handy video tutorials available right from the app's opening screen.
Second, EverWeb's publishing tools are somewhat more robust, with more options for FTP server info, and the ability to add custom header/footer code and even a favicon for your site.
And finally — and perhaps most importantly, if you need it — EverWeb builds in the ability to set up a basic online store, including buy buttons and a shopping cart, using PayPal. Few other web design apps offer anything like this — neither TurboWeb nor Blocs do — and those that do often charge extra for the privilege.
With the few exceptions I've noted, like TurboWeb's searchable stock photo database, EverWeb does basically everything that TurboWeb does, but just a little bit better. However, unless you want to set up your own online store quickly, easily, and inexpensively, EverWeb may not be better enough to merit paying four times TurboWeb's price.
- Free, $79.99 after trial - Download now
Blocs
Packed with powerful but friendly features, and getting better all the time, Blocs is the app I wish I'd had back when I built sites for a living.
Rather than making you build a site from scratch, Blocs offers prebuilt page elements that you can quickly stack atop each other. Once you've roughed out the overall look of your page, it's easy to customize its content and fine-tune its appearance. Switching into 'drop mode' brings up a searchable palette of individual elements — buttons, headers, etc. — that you can place within the prebuilt frameworks to further tweak them to your liking.
Blocs boasts powerful control over CSS styles, including the ability to create custom classes and apply them to any element in your site. Tweak the custom class once — change the color from maroon to gold, for instance — and the change ripples through every element with that class, site-wide. And Blocs offers pinpoint precision over nearly every CSS style parameter you can think of, all in a clean, coherent interface.
Blocs' support for responsive design also leaves competitors eating its dust. Design a page for the desktop, and with one click you can see what it'll look like on tablets or phones, too. You can change elements of the design to improve its readability in one view without affecting how it'll look in the others. And you can even change or create custom classes specifically for phone or tablet pages as well. It's only fair to note that the sized-down versions of these pages don't always render on the actual devices exactly as they look in Blocs, but they tend to be close enough to fix with a little extra tweaking.
Blocs also supports a few fancy bells and whistles such as video backgrounds. Adding Google web fonts to Blocs' menu is as easy as pasting in the right URL. And it's the only program in this lineup to include support for several popular free or paid content management systems, including October and Pulse. Blocs's excellent help files and video tutorials can show you how to quickly set up a Blocs page as a front end for database-driven content in these systems, among many other useful tips and tricks.
Blocs isn't perfect. It's the work of a single programmer, so you'll find a few hiccups, twitches, and glitches here and there. Its prebuilt components mean you won't be able to indulge your wildest flights of design fancy. And the earnest 'helpful hint' blurbs that pop up whenever you try something new in the program quickly start to feel a little too much like Microsoft's notorious Clippy. But on the whole, it's my favorite app in this roundup by far.
- Free, $79.99 and up for licenses - Download now!
Which app is best?
If you just want an inexpensive way to build nice-looking, no-frills sites, TurboWeb's a solid bet. If you need to set up an online store without paying through the nose, consider EverWeb. But if you want to get the most bang for your buck, you can't beat Blocs.
If we've overlooked one of your favorite apps for web design — or if you just want to gripe about how text editors are the only way to build sites — please let us know in the comments below.
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Apps for watching multiple videos on mac. For example, when viewers finish an episode, the next one will automatically appear at the start of the Up Next queue, as will any new episodes as they become available. Siri is now aware of live sporting events across apps so users can simply say things like, “Watch the Stanford game” or “Which games are on right now?” Siri knows additional details of the games, can provide live scores and can take viewers directly to the live stream within the app that’s carrying it. Siri continues to gain powerful new capabilities, including making it really easy to tune right to live news and sporting events on Apple TV. Up Next: Users can enjoy the shows and movies they are currently watching, including recent iTunes rentals and purchases — all presented in the order they are most likely to watch first.
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“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” – Steve Jobs
Macintosh, as you know all too well, is the much beloved computer, made by Apple. Macintosh computers were the first ever manufactured so as to be accessible to average users, and dominated what little market there was for personal computers from the early 80’s to the early 90’s.
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After a short period of decline between the early and mid 90’s, Macs have regained popularity, and is currently pretty much dominating the hipster scene with Macbooks.
If you are a designer that’s only just recently made the switch from a Windows computer to a Mac, then you are probably looking for some apps for it, just so you can see what this puppy can do. We are here to help. To aid in your quest for Mac apps, we have decided to make a list of some of the best the internet has to offer.
1. Pixelmator
We could just start off our list with the Adobe Suite, but that would be just plain lazy of us, so instead we will be kicking off with a Mac exclusive. Taking full advantage of the latest Mac technologies, Pixelmator is a terrific image editing app that offers lots of tools for all your “photoshoping” needs.
2. Sketch
Whatever you are designing, be it UI, UX, icons, or anything else you might have in your head, Sketch is here to give you a helping hand. With its state of the art vector boolean operations and extensive layer styles, this app’s workflow makes the creative process streamlined, and significantly less of a hassle, allowing you to focus on being creative.
3. alpha
Calling itself a “composition engine”, alpha lets you work with whole images, rather than individual pixels, and its tools reflect that, meaning that it might take some time to get used to it. Once you do, however, you will discover an entirely new way thinking about image composition, thereby taking your designs to a whole new level.
4. BBEdit
If you are working with HTML, then you are definitely going to need BBEdit. It is the leading HTML and text editor for the Mac, boasting an intuitive interface, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, and Mac OS X Unix support, this is a must-have for web designers using Mac. Also, the developers are a humble bunch, using “It doesn’t suck.” as a slogan.
5. Ember
Keeping screenshots and photos in folders might seem organized enough, but once you have enough of them, looking for a specific one becomes a real nightmare. Ember is here to help you neatly organize all you design inspiration, by letting you drag and drop images off the web, and applying tags and other metadata to create “Smart Collections”.
It also might be if you had that font on your old computer, it came from an installed microsoft program like office. As print technology has evolved, the number of typeface styles available has grown to meet edwrdian vast variety of scriot. Please turn JavaScript back on and edwardian script itc mac this page. A description published on the Linotype website of Benguiat’s work to create the font says the letters of the script were “drawn and redrawn until the connective elements of the letters were perfected to create the look of true handwriting.Thanks for all the help, it made my day much easier. Edwardian script itc bold free download. I discovered these omissions when I was unable to use Bickham Script, which is a amc used on one of my client’s wine bottle labels.
6. Espresso
Time is of the essence in web design, and Espresso’s goal is to give you a caffeine buzz (pardon the pun). Extensive language support, contextual completions, and Zen actions are just a few of the words used to describe how this app will help you with your workflow, and as an added bonus, it also has CSSEdit 3 built in.
7. Diagramix
We’ve mentioned how important infographics and diagrams are, in a previous article, so an app just for creating them had find its way on our list. Diagramix is just the app you need if you are preparing a professional looking pitch for some up-tight corporate types.
8. Cornerstone
Built on Subversion, Cornerstone provides a tremendously useful version control tool, keeping all the changes done to a project over time in one, easy to access place. It focuses on user friendliness on all levels, beginning at price, and ending at UI, and it doesn’t loose performance along the way.
9. Hype 2
Nothing quite captures a user’s eye as animated and interactive elements. Websites can feel a bit samey at times, so it is your duty as a web designer to turn it up a notch. You can do that with Hype, which has a whole array of cool features and effects that you can use to make stunning animations (which are also IE6 compatible).
10. Antetype
As the developers themselves state, it’s design and layout software by UI designers, for UI designers, meaning that, once again, user friendliness reigns supreme. It also has a nifty tutorial section to help you ease into the app, which you can see here.
11. Logo Design Pro
We’ve discussed how important logos are before, and you will be thrilled to see how easy and fast making a logo becomes with this app. Thousands of logo templates, a great resizing tool and a great interface make this program a must-have if you have very little time to make a logo.
12. Transmit
Guess what this does. If you guessed “transmits files really fast”, then you are right.
13. Glyphs
Fonts, when done properly, are awesome. Fonts are one of those cool, little elements that most people don’t really notice, but make all the difference in the world in a design. Glyphs is a great app for the Mac, that lets you either create an entirely new font, or modify an existing one, making sure you will never be short on fonts.
14. Intesify
Intensify lets you work on your photos, the same way that Ableton lets you work on your songs (for creative purposes, we’re thinking of you as a DJ. Great show last night, by the way). Endorsed with nice words by Urs Buhlman and Lucas Gilman, this app is absolutely fantastic for creating gorgeous photos from even the banalest shots.
15. MacDraft PE 6
MacDraft is a great app if you like vector illustrations, and by “like” we mean “make”. The “PE” stands for personal edition, but it still has plenty of features from the award-winning professional edition, while being easier to learn than other available similar programs.
16. Gradient
It takes much, much longer to explain this app, then it takes to actually use it, and we are already kind of half-way done. Basically, you chose a color from either your mockups, or the standard color window, set the gradient, choose the browser prefix, color fallbacks, and output types, then Gradient will generate a ready-to-paste code for you to use in your web design.
17. SketchBook Pro 6
Best Mac Apps For Designers 2016 Download
If you are a pen tablet user, then you will absolutely fall in love with SketchBook. This app is especially designed to be used with the aforementioned pen tablets, making the process of drawing in the program feel natural.
18. mosaic
Out of all the apps on our list, it’s this one that can definitely get you hooked on it. It is incredibly easy to use, and the results can be pretty awesome. Seeing as it runs very fast, you can just keep on experimenting until you get a result you like, making it both a fantastic toy and tool.
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19. Icon Slate
Best Mac Apps For Designers 2016 List
Not much to say here other than what it does, with the mention that it does it really well. With Icon Slate you can compose, import, and export icons in several formats for both PC and mobile.
20. PhotoArtista – Oil
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And now we finally know where all those Impressionist paintings that you find in bars come from. Although you probably won’t get the classiest of results, it’s still impressive just how good the app is at creating “oil paintings” from photos, and you never know when that will come in handy.
That wraps our list of 20 awesome Mac apps. We hope you found them useful, and that they’ll help you make great designs. Please leave us your thoughts, along with any suggestions, in the comment section below.