I’ve finished coding ImageFramer version 2.1 and it’ll be released in the coming days, after the Japanese translation is finished updating. So, what’s new in 2.1? Lots of beautiful stuff:
Additions of bevels for mats. Many users have asked for this and I didn’t realize the power of this until after I implemented this feature and saw the results. Mats can now have a white-like bevel to add depth to the resulting image. The bevel’s width is controllable.
It’s now possible to add shadows under frame and beveled mats. This is really exciting as well, as the addition of shadows really adds to the 3D look, and together with bevels it just looks fantastic.
Light direction can be controlled using a simple control in the image tab. Light direction changes where the shadows fall and also changes the lighting on the bevels to give a consistent look on the shadows. Note that the frame themselves don’t change as result of the lighting change. So your best bet is to adapt the light source to look consistent with the frame’s lighting.
I also added a new set to the real frames collection, called Linen Liners, I put 4 different linen liners there that are very good to put under frames, instead or in addition to mats.
So what result can you expect with the new features? Take a look at the pictures below:
To see the new features in action, see the new screencast that shows them:
I’ve released ImageFramer version 2.0.3 with 2 UI changes:
1. The Hue and Saturation sliders are now disabled when frame colorize effect is applied, since they don’t affect the frame’s appearance and may only confuse the user.
2. Removed the bottom light gray bar from the main window, as it only served for resizing and looked bad. Resizing is of course still possible by dragging the bottom right corner.
On another note, design for ImageFramer 3 is going quite well and it will be an application of another class.
I have been given the link to this article by my lately hired designer. The article, called “Indie Fever“ was researched and written by Michiel van Meeteren for the University of Amsterdam, its conception was supported by a research grant from Sofa (a Mac software and design company).
It is above 100 pages long (inlcuding bibliography) and it covers the areas of the unusual friendly competitors in the Mac Indie community, the relationship between Apple and the developers, the business model, various bundles and how they affect the community etc.
It is a must read for any Mac developer or a wannabe.
I’m glad to announce that starting 1st of July, a designer, specializing in interactive design will join Apparent Software. She will join me for about 3 months to take ImageFramer to the next level.
She’ll be working on usability improvement, UI design for the planned features of ImageFramer 3, illustration work on icons and on the design of new frames.
She’ll also produce more screencasts to compement the one I’ve prepared earlier.
I’ve come to this decision after realizing that I’m not the best UI designer around and certainly not a great graphic artist. This will also leave me more time to actually program.
I hope her involvement in ImageFramer design will take it to the next level.
My application is localized in English and in Japanese. A Japanese company (ACT2), who sell ImageFramer in Japan also does the localization. We worked together and it is a good experience. One of the things I’ve added in version 2.0.1 is a default startup image that loads in ImageFramer, when user launches it.
Below is the picture that I selected for this task. It’s a photo I took in Spain about 8 years ago.
So, I sent the Photoshop file with to the Japanese team to replace the text with the Japanese one. They did. Same apparent font, same effect but something changed .
Yes, the whole image was translated into Japanese, it seems.
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