Customer Reviews

Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Comic Life Deluxe is an ingenious piece of software that is designed to help you layout and create comic strips using your existing iPhoto library, or by capturing images with an attached iSight camera. You can use it for a variety of other tasks if you choose, but it is primarily built for fun in creating comic strips.

It has the same look and feel of the interface used in most native Mac applications that use an integrated system allowing you to work with your iPhoto albums. You just drag and drop your photos onto your page where you can instantly "comicify" or digitally alter your photos to look like comic drawings. There are many different filters and effects included. The built in fonts, templates, word/thought balloons, and page layouts provide a wide array of choices and options and everything works on a simple drag and drop method.

When you are finished you can print, export to HTML, save as PDF or publish directly to your .Mac account and share your comics with the entire world. From what I can tell, this product appears to be rock solid and very intuitive. If you are familiar with iPhoto, iMovie or iDVD, then you should have no problem finding your way around in this program. It provides all of the basic tools you need to allow your imagination explore the depths of your creativity. I love it. One of the best apps I've ever purchased for a mere $30.

While others may not be thrilled with the "additions" included in Freeverse's "Deluxe" package I purchased it because I wanted to support two companies that are selling a good product.

No, Comic Life does not supply comic book art, nor does it help you draw. What it does is offer a layout program with a very "mac-like" drag-and-drop interface that allows anyone to assemble photo stories from their collection of digital images.

It's a layout program specializing in comics. Want a thought bubble? Drag it onto the layout and type in your dialog. Changing the format of the bubble is as easy as pulling down a menu. Pointy bubbles, the ubiquitous speech balloon you see in Peanuts, and a handful of more specialized shapes are offered.

Various elements of the story panels are adjustable as well. The shape, color, and design of the panels can be changed on a whim along with the images you place within them. Numerous page layouts are included and various means of output are superb. You can export to iPhoto, .Mac, 72 to 1200 dpi image files of various formats, or Quicktime.

The program allows you to go as deep as you want. Out of the box it's a fun thing to mess around with, plain and simple. If you want to customize you can delve into templates and styles for layout elements.

There are interface oddities such as the inability to resize the application window, but that's due to the "everything in one window" design of the program. With that in mind I've had no problems with the program on a 1024 x 768 screen. Some of the included fonts aren't to my taste, but the program allow you to use any font on your system.

I enjoy using it. With Comic Life Deluxe I've produced a fair number of comics for my website, which has garnered attention of local professionals. You might say, "Isn't that more about your content than Comic Life itself?" Perhaps, but Comic Life made it easier for me to bring those ideas to life.

Now that Apple has included Comic Life on all the new Intel Macs my secret is out. Highly recommended.

Like many digital photographers, for years, I did a comic strip of my family. It was never easy stuffing everything into my made up frames so eventually I stopped (OK, really my family refused to let me take their pictures anymore, so unless I wanted a comic strip fully made up of upraised middle fingers, ...). So I purchased Comic Life Deluxe recently and this makes it all so easy - I am back in business! Am thinking of doing my life story in comic book form, its that fun! So, if you have a digital camera and an excellent printer, and a desire for notoriety, get this program! mz

First, to answer the inevitable question, "What's the difference between the standard and deluxe versions?" the answer is: More. The standard version of Comic Life gives you 7 fonts, 78 templates, and 78 styles (headlines, etc). The deluxe version gives you 40 fonts, 322 templates, and 180 styles. Otherwise the two apps are identical. (PS: The most current version is a Universal binary, and there's a free updater on Freeverse's web site.)

This is truly a unique app, one which has the potential to be an awful lot of fun and produce surprisingly high quality results with a minimum of effort. On the surface the app is just a "fun" app with no practical purpose; it's great to make things like mementos for your kids' friends from a birthday party, or a fun vacation photo album. But in reality it's a Godsend to any aspiring comic book artist. Scan your artwork, place it in the prefabricated templates, add lettering and headlines, and you can very easily - and realistically - design and publish your own professional looking comic book. You can export your pages as high res PDFs thanks to OS X's built-in PDF engine and send 'em right to press.

The app has fairly low system requirements. It flies on my dual 2GHz G5, but it performs quite nicely even on a 500MHz iBook G3 and is tolerable on a 233MHz bondi iMac (given sufficient memory). My ONLY wish for this app is an "auto-fill" button that will automatically populate the templates with selected pictures (or entire albums) from my iPhoto library. As it is now, you have to manually drag them over one at a time. While this is only the slightest of inconveniences when dealing with a simple one or two page comic, it gets to be a royal pain when you're dealing with dozens of pages and hundreds of images. It's for this reason alone that I give it four rather than five stars.

HIGHLY reccomended
I use this every year with my special needs class, they make comic books with it.

The kids still have to draw their own stuff, and you scan it in.
LOVE the program so much and so do my students!

I have used this software on a Mac for several years but I understand it is now available for Windows users as well. This is a great value and offers a creative outlet for all types of projects. I have made photo pages for a scrap book, a comic birth announcement, and more. Not-for-profit institutions can purchase a "Site" license for all their computers for only $500 from the company (direct buy. Our local school district purchased that license for some 5,000 computers or .10 cents per machine. Many student with "writing problems" have enjoyed this software to write simple reports.

Easy to use and ties into your iPhoto library for Mac users.

This is a wonderful and inexpensive bit of software! Although, I am not into comics I love the templates for my photography. There are all kinds of possibilities. Do have a go at it.

This inexpensive software is so easy to use, and is a lot of fun. I was developing comic type layouts of my photos within 1 hour of loading the software.

I highly recommend it.

Ed Astolfi

This is a great product for those of you out there who have a knack at making comics or can use them in another creative way. This is especially great for Mac users who don't get much decent products besides Final Cut Pro. I highly recommend this product for those who want to try it out. I sure don't regret it!

This program is extremely easy to use. The results are professional. I made a comic book for a client, which he bought upon seeing it!