Comic Life for Mac User Reviews
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"iComic, do you?"
Version: Comic Life 1.0.1b
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
.
A simple idea, made with a wonderfully simple but elegant
approach that is a breeze to pick up and use and that produces
very professional looking spreads. Child's play in the best sense
of the word - A really fun little app, My only negative is that the
twenty five buck price tag is a little expensive. Nearer fifteen would
seem more of an appropriate price but still an excellent, sophisticated
yet fun tool to have around. Could easily explode into a huge cult
phenomena - because it is so self-explanatory and easy to use.
. -
"very fun. Great Idea"
Version: Comic Life 1.0.1b
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
as a professional graphic artist who is used to professional layout programs, i must say i was skeptical.
But this program simple rocks, Its fun, intuitive and versatile. The iPhoto integration is awesome. Great app, a welcome tool to have fun with. Hope you have much success. -
"This is the greatest!"
Version: Comic Life 1.0.1
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Comic Life was released ten days ago at an initial price of $39.95. I played with it for less than an hour before I was hooked. The initial offering still had numerous bugs but the pure fun of the product was still worth it. Since the initial release all those bugs were squashed, the price was dropped, and new features added. Now this is a must have piece of software for anyone into graphics for fun (or profit, actually).
The developers have been in non-stop conversation with the users via their forums and have proven themselves to be extremely friendly, helpful, and responsive to the feedback they have been receiving about 'issues,' possible future enhancements, and price. Watch this app grow! Get it now, version 1.0.1 is really ready for prime time. -
"Extremely fun"
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This is a very cool software. Take some pictures of your kids and make a comic strip of it. Your kids will love the result for sure. More templates and layouts and this is worth every penny! -
"Good start, needs work"
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I played with Comic Life and found it a real hoot, though a wee bit pricey for what it does. A better price point would be $29.95 at which point it becomes an impulse purchase.
It's well designed and has huge potential, but a number of bugs plague the 1.0 version.
The iPhoto library integration is good, but not good enough. There is no way to identify the type of file. In my library I will have TIFF and JPEG files side by side, with the same names but different extensions. Comic Life doesn't show the extensions, nor does it show the type of file or the size of the image so you have to guess which one you're opening: the 200 pixel JPEG or the 3,000 pixel TIFF. Plus, the file names are in the cool but not very helpful comic strip font so they take up way too much space and the only way you can see the whole name is if you make the thumbnails fill the list window.
Exporting is restricted to HTML, JPEG, iPhoto (whatever that means in terms of format and resolution), or QuickTime. No TIFF as an option, which sucks because the JPEG files are very low res and don't print nicely except to very small sizes like 4x6 prints. If you try printing to letter-size sheets you get horrible jaggies.
Printing also is problematic at this time. I tried creating several pages with strips and while they exported exactly as shown on the screen, when printing, one of the pictures on each page printed as a tiny little thumbnail rather than as the full-sized image. I double-checked the image selected, and in some cases even re-applied a high res TIFF image and each time the particular image in that *spot* on the strip would print as a miniature thumbnail.
I also encountered the occasional bug, like an image just disappearing on its own with no explanation. This would happen when changing the order of items.
While there are an assortment of word balloons, it would be nice to be able to create your own designs, especially since these get a little tired because you can't modify the shapes, just the sizes and proportions. The ability to point the handle is very nice, but it would be better if you could apply a curve. The "Extend" feature is really cool as well, but unfortunately you can't apply a different balloon style to that if you wanted to.
But despite these problems, this is one of the most delightful apps I've played with in a long time. I think that once it matures it will become a Mac favorite, especially if the price point is made a little more reasonable for the typical home user its designed for. -
"Very Flexible, Easy to Use, Good Stability, Fair..."
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
...Price.... Nice Work!
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Positives: (1) Intergration with iPhoto (unexpected!) and Finder (expected) for getting images. (2) Lots of pages templates. (3) Easy to use. Have not read the manual. Maybe will never need to. (4) Very stable. Could not reproduce any of the reported crashes from the first reviewer. Those reports are probably local trouble with an older machine or too many add-on kernel extensions or something. (5) Really nice export to HTML. Have not tried export to QuickTime, etc.(5) Very fair price. (6) For those you read manuals, there's a printable one built in the help system. (7) Design your own panels with 3 to 8 sides. (8) Complete control over panel attributes. (9) Font and attributes controls for words like POW, WHIIIIIIZZZZZ! HOLY COW! Zap!, etc. (10) The name is Comic Life, not ComicLife. :) Cool. They actually put a space between Comic and Life. Interesting thought! (11) . . .
Negatives: (1) Does not import PDF images from the Finder. Picky. Picky. Picky. On my part that is. iPhoto 4 does support PDF images, so maybe this is not surprising. While this is easy to work around--use GraphicConverter to convert PDF's to PNG's--it would be nice to import PDF's. (2) No typing navigation in image browser.
Comment: You can sort of and somewhat reproduce some of the layout functionality of Comic Life by setting up templates in Pages, Keynote and OmniGraffle (My version of OG does not have image integration with iPhoto. Maybe newer ones do.) However, Comic Life is very flexible and has done the hard work work for you. The export to HTML, alone, is worth the price. So is the handling of words like POW! and Zap! So is the making of panels and templates. While I use Pages and Keynote for some stuff, Comic Life is becoming a regular part of what I do, which publish in print and on the web. -
"Hella Cool."
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
A product that I did not know I wanted, I know I don't need, but... I must possess it. I haven't had crashing problems - seems to work as it should. I like the .Mac publishing (maybe, someday, we could publish comic books through Apple book publishing/iPhoto link?!?). Reminds me of the thrill that KidPix gave me so long ago.
Price is a bit high for something that I don't need. But so cool. -
"GREAT SOFTWARE...GOOD PRICE"
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This is quite cool and works nicely and fast even with a large iPhoto library. There was a problem in printing scaled pictures (it printed them on one corner) but this was fixed within 8 hours of reporting it.
Prints nicely. Works well for me (10.3.8 with g4). Worked so well I bought it.
Keep up the good work! I love great shareware like this.
olddog -
"Cool tool"
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Hmmm. This does not crash for me on any of the combinations mentioned by the previous reviewer. Has not crashed at all.
This is quite cool and works nicely and fast even with a large iPhoto library. There was a problem in printing scaled pictures (it printed them on one corner) but this was fixed within 8 hours of reporting it.
Prints nicely. Works well for me (10.3.8 with g5). Worked so well I bought it.
--h -
"gg 1.0 ALPHA"
Version: Comic Life 1.0
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Awesome idea, couldn't wait to try it. Wanted to check it out so much I waited for it to crash out twenty whole times.
Crashes on switching to Finder preview/browse mode. Crashes on scrolling through media/folders. Crashes on clicking on folders. Crashes while preview window updates (with no user input whatsoever.)
It's not user error, either.
Hint for dev-types: take the time it took to come up with a pricing scheme for a v1.0 app and apply it to QA instead. And if it doesn't work on VERY vanilla setups out-of-the-box, call it alpha-version, because that's what it is.
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