Comic Life for Mac

While essentially a graphic novels creator, Comic Life for Mac also excels at captioning photos and creating collages. Drag-and-drop interactions are used throughout this premium app for actions such as choosing a layout, inserting captions, and placing images. The app has many features and plenty of customizable options, making it a good choice for authors of graphic novels as well as photographers.

Comic Life for Mac's main interface features no less than five panes and a toolbar, but remains relatively accessible. If your display has a 1366x768 resolution or lower, however, the app's window will not fit entirely, even in fullscreen mode. To create a comic strip or add captions, you have to drag the appropriate objects from the side panes and drop them onto the main page. Images can be inserted in several ways: by dragging and dropping them from Finder, adding a folder to the app's image gallery, using the built-in FaceTime camera to take pictures, linking your iPhoto gallery while using the image names as titles or captions in the comic, and even inserting the most popular images on Flickr right from the app. When your work is done, you can export it as an EPUB or PDF file, as images, or you can post it on Facebook.

If you've always wanted to breathe life into your drawings, an app like Comic Life for Mac will prove a valuable asset. It's also good for making collages of your vacation photos and adding quirky captions. There may be better tools out there for professional authors and photographers, but for most users this app is just right.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Comic Life for Mac 3.0.3.