Silhouette Studio for Mac

With Silhouette Studio for Mac you can create designs specifically developed for the range of cutting tools sold by Silhouette America, including scrapbook pages, custom clothing, decors, paper crafts, etched glass, and cards.

Pros

Snappy: Silhouette Studio hardly stutters. Working with it is smooth and hiccup-free. You can easily zoom in and out to work on finer details of your project without any problem. Projects are quickly saved in the application's .STUDIO format.

Compact interface: Every feature proves easy to access without having to dig into menus. The buttons for the lines, shapes, texts, color adjustments, and various other tools are conveniently pinned on the toolbars on top, on the left side, and at the bottom. A handy configuration sidebar appears as you work with some of the tools.

Scanner access and PSD file compatibility: If you have a scanner attached to your Mac, this application can directly access it. Just go to the File/Scan option. Also, you can open Photoshop projects with it.

Cons

Proprietary format: You can only save your projects in the .STUDIO format, which means that you cannot open them with other editing or design programs. There is an option to import files in PDF, but this is only available in the Designer Edition.

Nesting feature available only in the paid Designer Edition: A very useful function, the nesting feature rearranges images in a way that makes for optimal cutting and space efficiency.

Bottom Line

Silhouette Studio for Mac turns out to be a great design application that adequately covers the functions you need to create your design and finalize it with a Silhouette electronic cutting tool. However, because of its format limitations, it will appeal to you only if you are designing a project to be cut by a Silhouette cutting machine.