RealmacSoftware
Latest
Ember for Mac gains 'hugely-requested' screen recording feature
Popular web clipper and digital scrapbooking app Ember was updated today with a killer new feature -- the ability to make a video recording of your screen. No longer limited by only static images, Ember now allows you to capture your screen as you demo webpages, click through a presentation or showcase an app. The new scree recording feature in Ember version 1.8 allows you to capture more than just a static screen shot. You can now select a small section of your desktop or the entire screen (command-a in screen recording mode) and record in 60fps video. The recordings are saved in the Ember app and are treated just like any other Ember capture The video also can be synced between your iOS and OS X devices, shared with your friends or exported as a .MOV file that can be stored on your Mac The latest version of Ember with screen recording is available now in the Mac App Store for US$49.99.
Ember makes web clipping, digital scrapbooking a breeze
What's not to like about an app that can grab a web page and let you save, organize and mark it up, then share it in more than a half dozen ways? Ember is a powerful but simple application for saving and sharing web pages, images or just about anything you can see online. There's a lot to love in this focused app from Realmac Software. Once upon a time Realmac made an application called LittleSnapper, designed to grab web pages and the like and store them in a digital scrapbook of sorts. The app had some problems, and I never really quit using Skitch for marking up images and pages. Enter Ember, the successor to LittleSnapper, and a digital scrapbooking app that pretty much nails it in every way. Ember isn't iPhoto or Aperture, however. Think of Ember as a place to store photos, bits of the web or perhaps any visual projects you're working on, and realize Ember gives you several simple ways to annotate those images and share them with others. Use cases aren't just for designers, however. Anyone who has to bat ideas containing visual components around with someone else will find Ember useful, that includes wedding planners, architects, stage designers and so on. Grabbing images Ember provides a plethora of ways for you to add images to its library. I've always been a fan of drag and drop, and Ember handles it flawlessly. You can also click the camera icon to take a full screenshot, a timed screenshot (fullscreen only), grab just a portion of the screen or just a window. There's an RSS reader built in, so you can quickly browse image-intensive sites. Ember provides a few examples for inspiration, and in my testing the way Ember pulls graphics from RSS is quite good. Ember provides a browser within the app, which can make it easy to grab a page directly, but I found the extension (available for Safari and Chrome) to be the easiest to use, as with one click a panel opens up and allows me to name, tag, rate and sort a clipping before continuing. There's even a lovely animation as Ember processes the page before storing it in the library for you. The Library Storing and sorting in Ember itself is fantastic. I'm not sure which elves had to die for this magic, but Ember manages to make an educated guess about some of your photos, and automatically puts some into the Web, photo, tablet and phone collections. These are default, and of course you can add your own collections (aka "albums"), but the intelligent filtering was cool. It wasn't perfect, but I could tell there was some thought put into this feature that only becomes apparent when you start using it. Now if I pull over a bunch of screenshots and product pics, I'm less worried that I'll lose interface photos in the mix. To add more functionality to the library's automatic sorting, you can rate and tag your photos, and as mentioned sort them into custom collections. One of my few complaints about Ember is that getting to tags for an image requires clicking the i (for Inspector) button, as they cannot be accessed via right-clicking the image. Ratings can be accessed via right-click, however. You can show/hide your collections, and search and sort via tags, to an extent. Better yet, there are "smart collections" which is like a smart folder in OS X, or mail rules in Mail.app. Using a set of criteria, your Smart Collections can automatically sort by web address, rating, tag, title, date or other criteria. If you work on a number of projects at once, this is a lifesaver. Ember's parsing of metadata in photos (and sites) is a real help here as well, and a lot of your sorting will be done for you if you use these folders. I wasn't seeing much of a way to track design iterations per se, but you can set up Smart Folders to do this in a way. Editing and marking up images Ember is not a photo editing suite. Its tools are limited to cropping, rotating and adding some text or hand-drawn lines in a variety of colors. This brings a clarity to its purpose, as Ember is about intelligently storing images and sharing them with others, including any notes you may have. To that end there are layers, but only for the purpose of these notes. I do wish Ember provided just a few more drawing tools, however. I would immediately replace Skitch with Ember if it had built-in items like an arrow and box tool, not to mention the other callouts available in Evernote's software. For such a polished app, scribbling with my mouse seems inelegant. That said, you can easily hide annotations, and each item you draw on a photo is an individual element. So at any time you can go in and move things around, edit or delete them. Sharing images Ember really shines when it comes to sharing photos with or without notes. Although my GIFs were converted to JPG (sorry, no dancing Batman for you, Messages or Tumblr), gives you 9 ways to share easily. There's AirDrop, Email, Message, Export (as a JPG, PNG, PDF or Ember document), Facebook, Twitter, Cloudapp, Flickr and Tumblr. No Pinterest? No animated GIF support? No companion iOS app? These are all possible futures, I guess, but by and large I didn't miss them. Should you buy? Ember is nearly perfect for me, although I would like to see more built-in note features (arrows, other callouts). Support for animated GIFs would be nice, but aside from fun Tumblr fodder, that's not really a killer feature for me. OK, Ember is $49. While that may sound like a lot in today's $.99-or-GTFO world, it's pretty reasonable for a powerful design tool. If you find yourself constantly ping-ponging files between stakeholders -- be they clients or brides-to-be -- you'll find Ember is incredibly useful for keeping track of and sharing iterations in design.
Analog Camera for iPhone makes one-handed photo effects and sharing a reality
When Realmac Software created Clear a little over a year ago, the big attraction was the ability to perform most to-do list tasks with a single swipe or two. Today the company has introduced Analog Camera for iPhone (US$0.99 introductory price), an app that brings much of the same ease of use to applying photo effects to your iPhone images and then sharing them with others. Realmac decided not to pack as many filters and effects into the app as possible, and instead focused on making sure that the app was fast and fun to use. I think they've accomplished that goal with Analog Camera, as it is an app you'll want to use for those photos you capture with your iPhone. Like my favorite "pro" iPhone camera app, Camera+, Analog Camera provides a way to shoot images with separate focus and exposure points. You don't need to use the heads-up display for exposure and focus; in fact, Analog Camera launches in full auto mode and can return to that mode at any time with a double tap on the display. %Gallery-189566% For combined exposure and focus, you use a single tap, and to get to the separate exposure and focus, use two fingers to tap on the screen. There's a horizon line that appears on the screen to get your photos lined up. If you want to use Analog Camera to shap photos for Instagram, you're in luck -- the app only takes square format photos. You don't have to take new photos to apply effects or share them with your friends, as you have fast access to your camera roll and photo stream at the top of the screen while you're in camera mode. The last four photos are always in view, and a swipe down shows all of your camera roll. To visit the photo stream, you just swipe to the left. When you grab a rectangular image to apply filters, it is immediately shown with a square crop box overlayed. You can drag the crop box around to get the right composition, zoom in if necessary and then apply the crop with a tap. Unlike some photo apps I've reviewed previously, Analog Camera comes with only eight filters. They're all rather subtle, aiming to add a specific feel to your image without destroying it or adding a border. There's no current integration with Analog for Mac, which has been around for a while. However, the Realmac team says that a June update of the Mac app will add the eight iPhone filters. Sharing is also quite easy. Once you've finished with a photo, you can save it to the camera roll, send it via email or post it to Twitter, Facebook or Sina Weibo. Your images can also be sent to many other apps -- on my iPhone, it gave me the choice of opening the image in PhotoForge 2, QuickOffice, iPhoto, Tumblr, Halftone, Instashare, Dropbox, Camera+, Path, Instagram and more. If you're looking for tons of filters, you're not going to find them in Analog Camera -- at least not the current incarnation. I'd personally like to see at least eight or nine more filters added to the mix, just so I don't have to send images to another app to apply a favorite. For a 1.0 product, though, Analog Camera for iPhone is rock-solid, easy to use and a lot of fun. Get it while it's available for just a buck.
Realmac Software's sneak preview of Analog for iPhone
Remember what Realmac Software did for to-do lists with its best-seller Clear? In one stroke, the company grabbed the attention of millions of iPhone users with a gesture-driven app that was easy, understandable and colorful. Today Realmac teased us with a glimpse of Analog for iPhone, a slimmed-down version of the popular OS X app for adding beautiful photo effects to images. Realmac says the app will launch later this month, and no price was disclosed. It appears, though, that Realmac's thoughtful approach at user interface design brings one-handed effects and sharing to the iPhone. We'll have a full review when Analog for iPhone is launched in the App Store.
Realmac, Leap Motion demo gesture-based Clear Mac app
Remember Clear, the to-do app from Realmac Software with the impressively different user interface? It's a cross-platform favorite of the TUAW staff, with versions available for OS X (US$6.99) and iPhone ($1.99). Well, the guys at Realmac are going to build in support for the Leap Motion gesture-based controller, and they've provided a video demo featuring the ever-popular Nik Fletcher. There's no exact timeframe for the Leap Motion-enabled Mac version, other than "later this year".
Daily Update for October 31, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Realmac's Analog 1.2 adds filters, round-tripping to iPhoto and Aperture
Realmac Software has released version 1.2 of its Mac photo effects app Analog (US$19.99), adding a number of features that improve on an already fun and useful app. The new version allows photographers to move and scale images inside the borders to allow more control of cropping. For owners of Apple's newest MacBook Pro, Analog 1.2 now supports the Retina display. Performance of the app is improved over earlier versions, and there are four new filters -- Anchorage, Stereoscopic, Cairo and Odessa -- that supplement the variety that came with the original app. Probably the most talked-about new feature, however, is the support for iPhoto and Aperture's external editor feature. In Preferences for either of those Apple photo apps, a photographer can set up editing photos in another editor. While working with a photo, images can be sent to Analog by right-clicking an image and choosing "Edit in External Editor." Once effects have been applied and adjusted, a click on the Share button in Analog allows the image to be saved back to the original application. It's a simple and fast way to apply Instagram-type effects to your favorite photos on the Mac. The upgrade is available to current users immediately on the Updates tab of the Mac App Store.
Daily Update for February 23, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Ripoff of upcoming Clear app appears in App Store (Updated)
Days before the launch of Realmac Software's Clear to-do manager, developer Reejo Samuel, who is not on the Real Mac team, has ripped off the software and released it on the App Store. Clear has gotten quite a bit of buzz, and we got a sneak peek at it during Macworld | iWorld 2012. With the interface that is intuitive and simple to use, it's bound to be a hit for the Real Mac folks when it comes out. Samuel's app appears to copy everything about Clear. It's a Xerox from the logo and basic functionality right down to the color scheme, but it doesn't appear to have some of the more intricate functions of the app. It's not the first ripoff to appear in the App Store, by far, and it won't be the last. But for readers thinking Samuel's app is the real deal, it's not. We hope Apple takes notice and bans him as quickly as they approved the app, which went live today. As for the real Clear app, it'll be released Wednesday. We'll have a full hands-on review of it then as well. Update: The knockoff app has been pulled from the App Store. The developer's only other app remains available.
To-do list manager Clear demoed at Macworld iWorld 2012 (video)
There are tons of to-do list managers in the App Store, so many that you'd need another list manager just to keep track of them. Fortunately, a collaboration between Realmac Software, developer Milen Dzhumerov, and developer Phill Ryu's new studio Impending Inc. has created a to-do list management app that looks like it will make the rest of 'em obsolete. In the video embedded below, you'll see a quick demo of the gesture-driven UI that makes Clear so different from the competition. TUAW App Editor Megan Lavey-Heaton and I spent a few minutes with Realmac Product Manager Nik Fletcher on the floor at Macworld | iWorld 2012, and we have since had the thrill of putting Clear through its paces. While this isn't a review, let's just say that I wish every developer put this much time and attention into making apps that are intuitive and simple to use. Clear should be "shipping soon" at an as-yet undisclosed price. You'll hear about the release of the app as soon as it's in the App Store, and a review will follow close behind.
Daily Mac App: Analog (Updated)
It's funny. As the cameras in our iPhones get more spectacular capabilities, more apps are appearing every day to give those beautiful high-resolution photos scratches, tints, and frames that make them look ... well, not so nice. Analog (Realmac Software, US$7.99 introductory price) is another Mac app that lets you change the look of your photos with an assortment of filters and borders. Others that you might want to check out before you make your choice are Flare ($9.99 through the Mac App Store right now or $19.95 on the Iconfactory website) and FX Photo Studio ($9.99). All of these apps pretty much do the same thing. You open a photo file or drop it onto the app, and you're presented with a number of preset filters that change texture, blur, saturation, brightness, contrast and tint. There are probably more settings, but I'm just picking a few. Why would you want to do this to a nice, clear digital photo? A lot of photos look good, but seem to lack emotional impact. Adding an effect to a photo often brings back that impact, by reminding people of photos from the past or by adding dramatic coloration. %Gallery-136059% Of the apps I've listed here, Analog is by far the easiest to use. You just drag a photo to the app, drop it on the blank area of the Analog user interface, and then click on a filter or border. A small pop-up shows four icons, which are used to toggle between your original photo and the processed image, crop the image, rotate the image, or share. Sharing can be done a number of ways -- saving it to your disk, sending it via email, or saving to CloudApp, Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa. I ran into an interesting and very repeatable error when dragging photos from iPhoto version 9.1.5 (615) to Analog. Each time I did this, the image ended up with a black square in the middle of it. Once this bug started, any photo coming from either the Finder or iPhoto ended up with a black square in it. Analog comes with 19 filters (plus "normal"), some of which are quite nice. However, the app lacks the fine control that is included with Flare, where you can actually adjust each filter and setting. Flare even lets you save and share your self-designed filters, and there's actually a preset library where you can download new presets for free. That means that Flare not only has 31 filters -- 11 more than Analog -- but you can download well over 50 other effect presets to add to the capabilities of the app. There are also 13 frames that come with Analog. That's a bit of a bonus, since Flare doesn't come with many effects that add a border -- although you can add them through the preset editing function. Realmac needs to add to the number of filters in Analog as soon as possible, and should also consider adding the capability of tweaking the effects so users can create their own. All in all, Analog is an easy-to-use app, but either needs a price cut or more capabilities to compete against some of the existing photo effects apps. Update: Realmac Software spokesman Nik Fletcher noted that they're aware of the "black box" bug and are working on a fix. In addition, Realmac is working on adding more filters and upload destinations, and also adding the capability to adjust effects in the future.
LittleSnapper on the Mac App Store and on sale
LittleSnapper from RealMacSoftware is on sale for US$5 until January 17 through the Mac App Store. The app normally sells for $25, and it had sold for $40 before the Mac App Store. LittleSnapper is a screenshot management application. Think of it as a combination of Skitch and an iPhoto-like application for managing your screenshots. We covered LittleSnapper before, back when it was released in 2008, if you want more information about the app. You can also download a demo version of the app from RealMacSoftware's website.
Realmac talks about the future of the Mac App Store and reduces pricing
In anticipation of tomorrow's opening of the Mac App Store, Realmac Software announced pricing for its line of Macintosh software that will appear in the store. In a blog post yesterday, Realmac wrote that it believes the Mac App Store will usher in more focused apps that will do one thing and one thing well. The days of "Swiss Army Knife" programs may be winding down. Realmac also believes upgrade pricing is a thing of the past with software vendors taking a cue from Apple; the company sells its iLife and iWork suites for a set price and provides minor upgrades until a new full version is released, when the consumer is then charged the full price for the new version. Lastly, Realmac believes that prices of apps in the Mac App Store will get cheaper since the iOS App Store created an auction market that drove down prices. Where prices will end up is anyone's guess. In light of this, Realmac made some pretty big changes. RapidWeaver, the website creation tool, is dropping in price both on the Mac App Store and on the Realmac site, from US$79 down to $39.99 for a limited time. It seems like Realmac is taking a flyer on this, since they are interested in seeing how prices shake out, and intend to adjust the price accordingly as time goes by.
RapidWeaver 5.0: TUAW exclusive first look and promo code giveaway
RapidWeaver, the easy-to-use and incredibly powerful website creation tool from Realmac Software, has just been updated to version 5.0. I had a sneak peek at the Mac OS X app earlier this week, and I'd like to share the experience with you. From what I've seen in a few days of working with the application, a lot of RapidWeaver has undergone a complete rewrite. For example, the resource system that manages website resources like PDFs, images and ZIP archives was previously available only for individual pages. Now, they're available in a sidebar alongside of pages for easy access. It's a simple drag and drop operation to add resources, whether they're images, movies or sound files. There's a QuickLook button for seeing those resources close up as well. RapidWeaver 5 has new sitemap plug-ins that generate HTML sitemaps for projects, as well as an XML sitemap that details every page in a project. The XML sitemap is submitted to the appropriate search engines when a site is published. Realmac has added six new themes to the built-in theme library, bringing the total number of included themes up to 47. Of course, there are many more themes available from third-party developers. Realmac has also consolidated themes that are applied to a RapidWeaver project, and those themes can optionally be compressed for faster loading of sites.
TUAW first look and giveaway: Courier simplifies Mac media sharing
Sharing your files, photos, movies, and images with others through online services can sometimes be a hassle for Mac users. For some of us, it's possible to get all of the various interconnections between services set up in such a way that one tweet sends a photo to Facebook, Flickr, and a variety of other services. But for a surprising number of Mac users, it just isn't that easy. Realmac Software is in the business of making things easy. They're the folks who make website design easy with RapidWeaver, and they've just come out with a tool to make media sharing as easy as putting a stamp on an envelope. Courier (US$19.95 introductory price) is designed so that anyone, even your Mom, can easily upload photos, movies, and the like to a pile of services. A download of Courier is available for a limited trial, and you can make an in-app purchase of the app if you like it. We're going to be giving away five copies of Courier to TUAW readers, so read up on how the app works and then enter the giveaway. Check out the gallery below for a few screenshots, and then read on for a look at this Mac application. %Gallery-101620%
New Courier Mac app from RealMac teased
Usually, I'm not so hot on the vague teasers, especially for Mac software. If you want me to be interested in your movie or your game or your software, just let me know what it does and how, and I'll decide if I want it or not. But what the heck, it's the freakin' weekend, so here's a teaser short for a new RealMac app coming soon called Courier -- not to be confused with the Microsoft tablet. Frederico at MacStories says it might be one of the best apps of the year, and why not -- we'll take his word for it (at least until we can try it out ourselves). Plus, the teaser has a nice cover of Stand and Deliver, and I can't really argue with that. From the look of it, the app will allow you to collect and send whatever you want around the world, from music and movies to pictures, and ... toy horses? We'll keep an eye out for Courier when it releases sometime next week.
Socialite (formerly Eventbox) out of beta, into your Mac
Socialite, the Mac social networking application formerly known as "Eventbox," has been released out of beta. The application is intended as a "one stop" for Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Flickr, Digg, and any site that supports RSS. I've used Eventbox for some time now, as well as Socialite betas, and I was impressed enough to buy a license before RealMacSoftware purchased the application and changed the name. So far, I am impressed. Twitter support includes multiple accounts, and it makes it very easy to send Direct Messages as well as @replies. Socialite also includes support for Twitter's new "Lists" and "Re-tweet" features. As far as I know, Socialite is currently the only native Mac Twitter client that supports lists. The application is the only way that I ever bother to keep up with Facebook, and it can do so without all the "cruft" (ads, for instance) in the browser interface for Facebook. Socialite is also a great way to keep up with your Flickr contacts. Socialite sells for US$20.00, and a demo is available. If you previously purchased an Eventbox license, you will be contacted with instructions on getting a Socialite license within 24 hours. Without a license, Socialite is limited to three services, which will probably be plenty for some people. Download the 1.0 and check it out for yourself! Update: RealMacSoftware's website seems to be taking a dirt nap. You can download the 1.0 version directly from Amazon's S3 servers here. (MD5SUM = f06c92ce51b7f9a3db96d5e9051adbdb)
RapidWeaver 4.2.2 adds JS-Kit and improved Safari 4 support
Realmac Software has just released version 4.2.2 of TUAW favorite RapidWeaver. Although it may appear to be a minor point release, there are actually quite a few bug fixes and backend additions in this update. Highlights from the release notes: Completely re-written contact form with support for multiple attachments, better security and spam protection and better support for Windows servers. JS-Kit commenting for blogs. If you were using the previously built-in Haloscan comments, everything works just fine, whether you migrate your account to JS-Kit or not. Improved Safari 4 support Better RSS handling As a user who was using the 4.2.2 betas just for Safari 4 support, this update means the end of lots of headaches. Use the auto-update function within RapidWeaver or head to Realmac's site to download the latest version. RapidWeaver 4 requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and is $79 US.
LittleSnapper sneak peek
Video link Last month, our friends at Realmac Software teased us with some screenshots of their newest application, LittleSnapper. LittleSnapper is a program that will let you take screenshots of full web pages, with adjustment and sharing features similar to Skitch. The Realmac team has now produced a video (above) showing off how you can capture a web page, select a specific element from that page and quickly upload the image to Flickr. The video also shows off how LittleSnapper can be used to organize web screenshots into collections -- kind of like iPhoto -- complete with metadata. For me, the DOM selector (it looks similar to what CSSEdit uses) is the most intriguing aspect of LittleSnapper. It isn't uncommon for me to want to grab a specific section from a web page, only to find that the image is embedded within the stylesheet. I can manually select that section with Snapz Pro or Skitch, but that can lack precision and will ultimately require me to spend more time prepping screenshots. LittleSnapper is expected to be released at the end of the year.
Rapidweaver 4.1 released
RapidWeaver is our "favourite" WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web design tool that gives you more flexibility than what iWeb. Realmac Software, the developer of RapidWeaver, has updated the software to version 4.1, and included some new features that are worth a look, including: QuickLook support is now standard .Mac references have been changed to show "MobileMe" Images pasted into a Styled Text area keep their names as specified in Finder Page inspector updates when/if a page changes PPC support for iMedia Browser Owners of RapidWeaver 4.0 and 3.6 are eligible for a free update to version 4.1. You can see all of the updates on the RapidWeaver Version History page. RapidWeaver 4 is available from the Realmac website for $79 (US). There is a free demo available as well. [via Ars Technica]
