October, 2005

By: Robert Golding

Swift Publisher

First up is Swift Publisher. This program is everything Apple’s Pages is good at while avoiding Pages failure as a word processor. Swift Publisher realizes it is a simple page layout program with a good feature set and the ability to make very polished looking brochures, newsletters, posters, menus, cards, flyers and the like. Roughly 60 templates are included to get you started and you simply select one and modify it for your needs, you can of course start with empty templates and build them into finished designs. As a note; don’t be intimidated by the Latin place-holder text. This is an old method used by typesetters, simply select the text and replace it with your own prose.

The Swift Publisher interface in it's beauty

Once you have chosen a template (or started from scratch) you can dive into the programs very elegant interface and modify all the aspects of your document. A media browser is in the left quarter of the document pane and allows access to the artwork provided with the program along with your iPhoto Library, basic shapes and a file browser. BeLight smartly included a very rich set of graphics covering the gamut of needs: arrows, boxes, borders, and frames amongothers. As with all well written modern OS X programs you can directly access your iPhoto pictures and insert them in any document.

The Inspector pane allows you to manipulate the attributes of any selection you make: pictures, text, and shapes. Additionally you can activate the Font or Color panes to changes those attributes. If you need to edit an image in your document some powerful capabilities are included. Dozens of filters are included from the Image Tricks program; these include: color, exposure, gamma, hue, white point, unsharp, blur, and dozens of unique effects. This group of image editing abilities is a welcome addition to an already capable program.

As with Apple’s Pages program Swift Publisher has predefined text styles for each type of document template. This easily allows you to keep your work looking unified but still allow for different styles within the document. You can always over-ride these styles or even define new ones as needed.

Every Swift Publisher document has a foreground and background tab. This makes the insertion of background images, textures, frames or other objects easy and not interfere with your foreground items such as text. You could think of this as very simplified layers management. Within each of these areas you can still stack items into layers and easily move them forward, backward and change transparency.

BeLight has built-in the snap to grid feature found in Apple’s Pages and Keynote programs. Without much effort novice users can take advantage of this feature to make quite visually stunning documents by instantly placing objects with center, right or left alignments relative to each other. A great additional feature is the “distribute” command. With this you can select multiple items and have them instantly distributed with equal spacing.

Documents created in Swift Publisher can be exported as TIFF or JPG formatted graphic files along with Adobe PDF. As with most print oriented layout programs the complex nature of printed pages can not be reproduced in HTML format for web pages. This is not a fault of BeLight but rather the limitation of HTML to render complex documents.

Using Swift Publisher was a joy. The program is extremely well produced and includes a rich feature set that can compete with most consumer level publishing software on the market. If your in need of a simple yet powerful page layout program Swift Publisher should fit your needs. (5 of 5 Apples)

Image Tricks

Illustration I, the original Illustration II, Image Tricks magic Illustration III, magic applied

“So what are we going to do now?” my wife asked me, as I unbuttoned my tuxedo. A year’s worth of planning had just culminated with our daughter’s wedding. “I don’t know,” I smiled, “edit the pictures?”

Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait for the edding photographer’s proofs. Many of our guests emailed their digital pictures to us the moment they got home.

Normally, I use iPhoto as my “light box,” with Photoshop at the ready for heavy editing. Although I love using Photoshop, it is a daunting program. I’ve been looking for a simple alternative for quite some time now.

use image-editing program, “Image Tricks.” A freeware program by BeLight Software (www.BeLightSoft.com), “Image Tricks” makes extensive use of OS X’s Core Image technology. By taping into Core Image, the program produces incredible special effects without rendering time delays. You can import over 20 image formats (e.g. TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS), as well as those produced by LinkBack applications such as MacSQL.

In Illustration I, I’m about to add a mask to a picture of my daughter’s “first dance” (photo courtesy of Dr. Steven Resnick).

On the far right is the Mask Menu (which can be hidden through the View menu located in your Mac’s Menu Bar). A mask check-off box is located at the top of the menu, enabling you to easily toggle the mask effect on or off. Once you’ve selected a mask you like (see Illustration II), click the Apply button located below the image.

If your image’s exposure needs correcting or some enhancement, “Image Tricks” Effects Menu (located on the left – see Illustration II) has many features found in Photoshop. Here you can crop the image, as well as adjust its color and focus. You’ll also find many Core Image effects and filters that will blur, distort or stylize your image. You can combine multiple effects just by clicking the Apply button.

In Illustration III, I’ve added Sunbeams and Starshine. You’ll notice in the Effects Menu that some of the effects have a circular icon next their name. That indicates your mouse can move the effect within the image. In addition, a special set of sliders will then appear below the Effects menu, to give you more control of the result.

My wife couldn’t help but notice how much fun I was having. “Are you sure it’s the simplicity and features of the program that you’re enjoying?” she asked. “Or is it that you can mask or distort all of your in-laws!”

Form and function are both key elements to any program. It is a relatively rare program that accomplishes both elegance of form and marries that form to a great function. Many programs have to compromise between these two ideals. Apple’s iLife applications come to mind as very closely achieving both goals. BeLight Software has created a group of programs that all have very different functions they excel at while retaining simplicity and elegance of form.