There are all kinds of software that profess to do this trick, some costing hundreds of pounds. This offering from NeatBerry is probably the best value you will find for an app of its kind. What’s more, it’s one of the quickest working apps of its type we’ve ever seen.

The premise is very simple: drop a picture onto it, select a filter and the app will take over. You can pick from pencil, watercolour, pastel, oil, paint blend and water mix. From there you can then change a number of other settings using the sliders below. When you are ready to make the changes you click the Process button at the bottom of the settings interface. What’s really good about the app is that you can mess around with the settings and just push the Process button again to make changes to the compositions. The processing is so quick that you can do this until it’s perfect.

The results can be very hit and miss depending on the colour and composition of your shot. It works really well with landscapes where there are sweeping contrast, like the sea and land together. It also works well when there is a primary focus, like a picture of boat or train, or house. Getting it to work for shots of people is a little more tricky and will require you to play with almost all of the settings to make them look decent. This is worth being patient with as the results can be pretty awesome. All in all this is a terrific product for the price. There are a couple of niggles that could become irksome, like the lack of iPhoto integration, but there is no doubt that this application is a complete bargain. We highly recommend that you give it a try.

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Whether you’ve just bought a new Mac Mini, you’re in the market for a second monitor to sit alongside your iMac, or even if you just want a desktop base to dock your MacBook into, choosing the right monitor is very important. We’ve taken a closer look at one of NEC’s business-targeted offerings to see if it can manage to hold its own in the consumer market.

The design of the MultiSync monitor makes it clear from the off that this is a display designed for offices – highlighted by a black plastic casing that is pretty uninspiring. However, it’s not all suits and ties; the bezel around the edge is thinner than on most displays, which is actually a real bonus, and the base of the display sits on a rotating plate that lets you spin the panel around with relative ease. The screen also rises and rotates through 90 degrees, allowing you to view documents or photos in portrait, or just increase the height to suit.

In terms of the screen itself, we were pleasantly surprised by the MultiSync’s PVA (Patterned Vertical Alignment) panel, which provides higher contrast ratios than many other rivals. The matte finish stopped us ever being blinded by reflected lights. However, the VA system did produce some serious issues with ghosting thanks to the 25ms response time, which made HD gaming extremely difficult.

The screen itself is a really nice size; if the thought of a 27-inch iMac worries you, but the 21-inch is just a little too small, this is a great middle ground. The controls for the display sit down in the bottom-left, and are touch based. Rather than all the controls being buttons, though, some are actually sliders. There are two eco modes in a well-designed menu system, which will stop settings like brightness going above a certain level, and an ambient light sensor to adjust it to the room’s lighting.

The biggest sticking point is the price. Next to a 27-inch Thunderbolt Display this is a bargain, but compared to other 23-inch monitors it’s costly. Still, we think the features included are worth the extra cash if you can afford it. It manages to show colours nicely, controls and connections are great, and the adaptability of the monitor as a whole is really impressive. If it ran games as well as it handles other tasks this would be the complete package.

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This drive holds a mammoth amount of memory for such a modest size – 500GB to be exact. This only makes it more attractive to design-minded modern consumers, as do its aesthetic qualities – the aluminium-grade case is a mere 9.9mm (0.4”) thick. 82mm width by 128.5mm length means it just about fits in your pocket, and is easily portable at around five ounces in weight. It’s easy to see how it utterly complements its intended host – the MacBook Air/Pro, or perhaps even iPad users (in possession of an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit).
The drive is also programmed for accessibility, which will again please Apple product users who need to just plug in and get downloading with their files. You can plug and play instantly on Mac OS X and sync directly to Time Machine. It’s also very capable of quick data transfer, with its 2.0 USB connection and Hitachi 5400 RPM hard drive. A 1GB file uploaded in around five seconds, and a copied file in just a few seconds more.
One glaring omission is FireWire connectability. Competitors such as the Iomega eGo Mac Edition 500GB do have this, and many will appreciate it as a faster means of transferring data, working your hard drive less. Another possible issue could be the Hitachi 5400 RPM hard drive itself – likely prone to overheating after extended use, due to the lack of a fan and expected generation of heat.
However, at 16p per gigabyte, the G-Drive slim matches performance with price and isn’t that bad a deal in comparison with rival devices – again, such as the Iomega eGo Mac Edition 500GB, which can’t match its modish design and costs more in UK sterling (and in US dollars depending on the supplier). As promised, the G-Drive slim keeps its promise of being a design-savvy, media-conscious and highly mobile device.

Western Digital’s My Book Studio Edition II is aimed at the ‘pro-sumer’ market, packing 6TB of storage (two 3TB drives) into a relatively unattractive frame. The array is ready for Mac OS X out of the box, and installing software onto your Mac before you plug in the device will enable you to configure how the drives behave.

The software is good and allows you to change between the various RAID settings. The default is RAID 0 and while this might be good for those who have a great deal of data to save, if either drive fails in this situation you lose everything. It’s likely that the majority will want to set up their array in RAID 1 format, which will split it into two 3TB drives that mirror each other. While this halves the storage potential, if one drive fails you will keep all of your data.

The two FireWire 800 ports allow the transfer speed to stay high and allow for daisy-chaining. The drive itself is surprisingly quiet, with the fans spinning efficiently and keeping the noise low. The array is also incredibly energy efficient; Western Digital claims that it uses 30% less energy than similar drives.

The My Book is easy to set up, with an incredibly simple plug-and-play for users who just want a quick way to back up their system. The transfer rates are also good, and while they don’t even come close to the speeds achievable with Thunderbolt, they’re as fast as we’ve seen using FireWire 800. This My Book won’t win any awards for its design, with silver plastic surrounding the drives. While this makes it simple to get into the top of the housing to access the drives, it also meant that picking up the array made it bend under our fingers, which was a little worrying.

All in all, though, this is a solid device, with a huge amount of storage at an affordable cost. If you’re after a simple storage solution with plenty of space, this is a great option.

In 2007, Valve released Portal as part of its Orange Box, a collection of console games which included Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2. Portal, which was almost an add-on to the main events in the box, turned out to be one of the biggest successes of the year and won a whole array of awards. In May last year, with the launch of Steam for Mac, Portal was offered as a free download, and now the sequel to one of the most original games ever made is hitting the Mac again, this time alongside other consoles.

The premise for Portal 2 is the same as the last game – you have a ‘gun’ that can fire two portals at walls, one orange and one blue. When you step through the first portal, you come out through the second, allowing you to travel around levels at high speed. Momentum is maintained through these portals, so if you shoot a portal in the floor and one in a wall, then fall into the first from a height, you will come flying out of the wall at the same speed as you entered the first portal.

It’s a simple enough idea, executed beautifully. If you haven’t played the first game, you really should try it now; not only is it a fantastic game, it will also lead you perfectly into this one. If you don’t want us to spoil the plot, you may want to skip the next paragraph…

You are in control of a woman named Chell, who in the first game woke up in a facility and was forced through a number of tests by the robot in charge, called GLaDOS. As you played through the game, it became clear that GLaDOS had killed every other test subject before you, and so it was up to you to get out of the facility and destroy the computer. At the end of Portal, GLaDOS lay in pieces, and you managed to get to the surface.

However, when Portal 2 starts, you wake up back in the facility. You’re accompanied by Wheatley, a small robotic sphere who works with you to help you escape again. It is here that you get the first indication of the scale of the game; the room you are in starts to move and wall falls off, showing you an immense factory with hundreds of rooms just like yours. Shards of wreckage fly around you and the impact of rooms clashing is tangible.

The other thing you immediately notice is the quite frankly stunning voice acting. Wheatley is voiced by Ricky Gervais’s writing partner Stephen Merchant, and the comments from both him and GLaDOS (who it turns out wasn’t quite dead) are both incredibly funny and brilliantly acted. It truly makes the game stand out when you feel more for a spherical robot in Portal 2 than you do about many human companions in other games. The graphics are impressive and while we played on a brand new iMac, even with anti-aliasing on maximum there were very few drops in the frame rate. The facility from the first game is here again, but it’s been neglected; the once white walls are now falling apart and plants dangle through ceiling panels. As the game progresses you’ll move through underground passages, vast caverns, clinically white rooms and warehouse-like areas, giving plenty of variety, and the puzzles get progressively harder as you play. The learning curve is smooth, slowly introducing you to new ideas and ways to place portals, and once you’ve mastered this, more elements will be introduced. In the end you’ll be redirecting lasers and bridges made from light, using catapults to fling yourself over gaps and using the newly added gels to help you reach the exits.

This certainly isn’t an out-and-out action game (Chell has no weapons or health bar), and you’ll spend time standing looking around at the levels trying to work out where you need to go. The puzzles really ramp up as you play, and they become really challenging in the end.

Multiplayer has been added for Portal 2, allowing you to connect with friends and play through an entirely new storyline, complete with new levels specifically designed for two players. Communication is key; if you don’t have a headset, there are a series of signals you can send to your friend to organise yourselves. It works surprisingly well; with two people, puzzles are even more challenging but incredibly fun, and dumping your friend into a spike pit by popping a portal underneath them is a great way to get back at them if they killed you in an earlier level.

This game is truly one of the best puzzle/action games we’ve ever seen. It’s brilliantly designed, has some absolutely incredible voice acting, a thoroughly engaging storyline and a great multiplayer mode. We cannot recommend this game more highly.

HDRFactory is sold as a one-stop- shop to produce instant and professional HDR effects. Upon opening the software, users are confronted with a host of options, some rather self- explanatory. This genericism filters down to the interface theme, which is unassuming. However, in its simplicity the software finds its charm, as new users will instantly be able to understand its functionality.
The HDRI tab is the only one that may need explanation and can only be accessed if you create an HDR image from the series of upload shots. Here users can firstly align all images on screen in the interface. This drop-menu bar includes Fast alignment, Normal alignment and High-quality alignment. The better the alignment quality, the longer the software will take to process. In most cases Normal will suffice to get you started.

From here, users can set about establishing what is known as Tone Mapping – an image processing technique used to map one set of colours to another in order to approximate the appearance of HDR. Activate the Standard Tone Curve checkbox for an instant preset application. We recommend this as a starting point otherwise unpredictable results may occur.
Each parameter can then be individually tweaked to affect specific image values – so experimentation is key, and in most cases you’ll stay within either end of the HDR spectrum for soft or strong effects. The Saturation parameter, for example, is used to change the intensity of the image colours; Lowlights i contrast control, the Highlights parameter does the opposite. Level of Detail defines the details detected – as the value is increased, the colour transition becomes sharper, just beware noise artefacts. The remaining Lightness, Dark detail and Light Detail parameters deal with designated luminosity to image details and as a whole.
Adjustment options are there for applying HDR effects to a single image, catering for digital artists rather than professional photographers. Photoshop and Lightroom users will be familiar with examples such as Levels (applied to channels and as a whole), Gradient Contrasts affecting contrast in gradient areas, Smoothing that reduces noise , and more intuitive examples such as Local Contrast. Tone Correction, Depth and Color Intensity are standard.
Furthermore, Post Process commands offer instant last-minute tweaks to tonal and light values, and everything can be saved as a Preset to be applied instantly to batched imagery later. Whether standalone or plug-in, this Akvis software is an additional tool to your workflow, not an all -inclusive suite; treat it as such and it will enhance your production.

It’s that time again, where we all decide after eating and drinking way too much, that this is the year we do things properly, that this is the year we get our lives in order. We here at iCreate are having exactly the same thoughts and So I  have decided to share some my favourite Mac, iPhone and iPad apps for doing just that with you. Here are my top productivity, health and fitness and general ‘new start’ apps for 2012.

Productivity Mac apps

For me, at least, the new year provides an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and make good on all of those ideas that surfaced in the previous year but that you never got around to getting started. I always find that a great app can add a huge amount to your creative process, allowing you to plan more effectively and execute those plans in a more timely fashion – whats more a great app invites you to use it again and again adding an element of interest to tasks that might usually put you off. My first pick is a note taking and todo app that will help you get all of the ideas you have on a daily basis down and organised in a really cool, minimal, Apple kind of way. Its called Thoughts (click here for the website) and it is available from the Mac App Store (click here). The reason I like this app so much is that it lets me organise my thoughts into books. So I can easily separate my work projects from my home projects and my serious ideas from the slightly more wacky ones. The interface is really clean but when you need it, all of the formatting options you’d expect from a great app are at your disposal. This is a really well considered and brilliantly executed app.

My next productivity app is actually two apps that I use in tandem. They are both iCal add-ons in as much as they prevent me from ever having to open it. It’s not that I really dislike iCal, it’s just that its a pain and it gets in my way . These two apps make the pain go away. The first is called Blotter (website here, Mac App Store link here) and it basically throws your iCal info onto a transparent viewer that lives on your desktop. So iCal is always there – without you having to load it. The app that works perfectly with this is called QuickCal(web here , App Store here) and it is beautiful. Launch a tiny window from your menu bar at any time and then type an event or meeting name in normal English like ‘meeting tomorrow at 2pm with Jon’ and it will figure out the details and add them to iCal. For more specific elements just type ‘to-do’ or  ’all-day’ and the app will figure it out. If you are like me and you love the idea of being organised but don’t want to load iCal and bugger about with a million options to do so, then (while we wait for Apple to bring Siri to the desktop) use these two wonderfully crafted apps and get your life in order in just a few clicks.

Getting healthy with iOS

For some reason, because of the ‘always there’ nature of the iPhone, it seems to be considered an incredibly useful tool for helping people stay healthy or get fit. There are literally thousands of apps out there that profess to help you do it but sadly none of them can actually make you eat less or exercise more. So, you need to find an app that will keep you interested enough to keep going back and keep being reminded of your goals. Fortunately in my years of writing app reviews for iCreate and for various related bookazines, I have experienced a vast number of health and fitness apps and I can say that the best ones are the ones that appeal to your geeky nature. iMapMyRun is the perfect example (link), offering you the ability to track where you jog or cycle on a map and offering some cool additional information like the pace you are going at and connectivity to some other third-party monitors. The upshot of all this wizadry is that you can set yourself goals based on more than just distance and you can become a statistician for your own progress – which makes the whole endeavour much more enjoyable.

Stay creative

When it comes to the iPad, there isn’t much it can help with exercise-wise (in the same way that the iPhone can – you could try strapping it to your bike I suppose?) but it can help keep your creative juices flowing and healthy, keeping those all important ideas bubbling at the surface. The reason for its success in this department is simple, it has a much more usable interface compared with an iPhone and it has portability advantages over a laptop. So, for me at least, the iPad is the perfect way to have a dabble at making something cool, which in turn fuels all kinds of fires for projects at work and at home. The app I’m most into at the moment and the one I’m recommending is called Snapseed (link). It’s an image editor that lets you add all kinds of new dimensions to your snaps. What I like most about it is the way that each of the effects can be dialled up or down and the way that different combinations of effects can be added in different measures to incredibly varying effect. Its one of those apps that can take a seemingly ordinary image and turn into something incredible and it has enough features to ensure that no picture ends up looking the same. If you are into image manipulation at all, or have ever fancied it, then this app is perfect. Beginners and pros can get something from it.

So, there you have it, a quick guide to my favourite apps for the new year. If you want to add your own to the list please do so in the comments. If there are any we haven’t featured in the magazine we will do our upmost to get them in there. Check back soon for some favourite hardware for the new year too.

Editing photos in iPhoto is pretty simple, but you have to edit every picture separately, which can be laborious, especially if you’re correcting a problem that has occurred across a whole batch of images. Luckily, there is a solution. Photo Sense is one of the most simplistic apps you’re ever likely to encounter on the Mac. It will let you throw batches of pictures at it and then it will convert all of them using a predetermined number of enhancements. These can be changed for each import or each photo.

The aim is that these changes will improve any photo. Of course that’s a wild exaggeration, but for the most part you’ll see subtle improvements in most types of pictures – especially those taken indoors or in low light. On top of the corrections that occur when you drop pictures into the app, you get a very useful comparison screen so that you can check to see if the processing has worked in your favour. The comparison screen springs to life each time you click on one of your loaded pictures and it has a zoom slider so you can get in close and check the detail. The preview screen means that you can quickly check whole batches of photos in no time at all. The app also has integration to let you view your iPhoto library, so there is no need to create extra folders anywhere on your Mac. If you add to this the ability to add simple effects like Black and White, Sepia and even pencil drawing, you get a nicely rounded app that is capable of delivering good results at a great price.
If you like to have all the pictures in your iPhoto library working their hardest and wish you could speed up the process of improving them, you ought to look at this app. It’s a great investment and will save you hours and hours, not to mention being so easy to use that it’s fun.

Anyone living in a house with more than one Mac will know how hard it can be to share content. With ever increasing amounts of music, movies and documents, it’s often a case of yearning for a central hub where all users can upload and then access each other’s media, even through iTunes. Luckily, the thought of setting up a home server needn’t fill you with dread. There are plenty of simple options out there and this very competent effort from Verbatim is one you should definitely consider. To start with, it’s very easy to use. Plug it in using Ethernet so it’s on your home network and all of the Macs in the house will be able to see it and communicate with it. You can plug a printer into it using USB and you can also add other drives to increase its capacity beyond the standard 1TB. There are two USB ports on the back and an eSATA port as well. The software that runs the MediaShare is a little clunky, but has a number of benefits that make it worth the effort. It’ll help you manage your photo, music and movies and will then give you access through iTunes so you need only stream media from the drive rather than constant dragging, dropping and waiting. It can talk to other devices like Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and even Windows ones.

So, if you live in a multi-platform, multi-console house, you can all access the files. There is an option for remote management too, so that you can get to any of the files while away from home. Again this isn’t the slickest process of all time, but it is perfectly functional and could save you taking every file you think you might need when you’re out and about. It would be great for MacBook Air owners, for example. You can also access the drive on your iPhone or iPad, which is a big plus and makes another compelling argument for purchasing the product. The final major argument for owning this device is its price tag. Not only do you get the 1TB drive, but all of the access and integration for a great price. If you’re looking for an entry-level home server, this is it.

It’s hard to believe that iTunes is now more than ten years old. Since 2001, it has seen Windows support added, the Genius feature, library sharing, playlists, books and, of course, the iTunes Store. If you’re anything like us, then during those ten years your music collection will have grown to an almost unmanageable size. It’s not uncommon to see iTunes music libraries several weeks in total play length, or duplicate music tracks that have become jumbled up in the playlist. As a result, an aging iTunes music library can soon become a mess, with missing cover art and albums split into several parts.

So how exactly does one go about tidying and re-organising an iTunes library that has bloated to a size of unimaginable scope? TuneUp is one solution. It’s a plug-in for iTunes that can fix mislabelled song information, add missing cover art, reorganise albums, display artist details, enable you to purchase concert tickets and share music with friends. Quite an impressive feature set, and one that’s surprisingly easy to use.

Three versions of the program are available: a free lite option will analyse and clean 100 songs and apply 100 cover artworks, an annual pass, priced $19.95, will sort and organise your music collection for a year, and a one-off payment of $29.95 gives you a Gold Pass, enabling unlimited song and cover art fixes. All three versions also include unlimited concert alerts and full access to the Tuniverse service.

Installing TuneUp is a breeze. After you’ve downloaded the program and dragged it to the Applications folder, TuneUp automatically opens iTunes and attaches itself to the right-hand side of the interface. From this new panel you can access five options for sorting and enhancing your iTunes library. The first, called Clean, analyses your music by listening to the audio fingerprint of each track and then comparing the results to the GraceNotes database of more than 90 million indexed songs. It works really well, renaming any errant tracks and reorganising albums in the blink of an eye. The second option, Cover Art, automatically scans your music collection for missing album art and offers a variety of results for you to choose from. It’s a convenient alternative to searching the web for album art when iTunes can’t find any from the iTunes Store. The third button is titled Tuniverse. This interesting feature scans any playing music tracks, then presents related music videos from YouTube, artist bios from Wikipedia, merchandise from eBay and song recommendations from Amazon. What’s surprising is how well this feature works. The constantly updating panel of information and media makes finding new content from your favourite band incredibly efficient, even more so than Ping. Tuniverse also includes a built-in Twitter feature that enables you to quickly tweet what track you’re listening too. Next to the Tuniverse button is a Concerts feature that quickly scans every album in your iTunes Library, then presents web-links to purchase tickets via Ticketmaster and Stubhub. We encountered an odd bug that resulted in no concert tickets appearing, but after a few days’ use the feature suddenly kicked in and began to show a selection of events that could be attended. Oddly enough, however, ticket prices were in Dollars and went up in price when we clicked through the link to the Ticketmaster website. The final button, Share, is aimed squarely at social networking fans. When clicked it displays the latest albums and tracks that you’ve played and enables you to quickly share these results with friends on Facebook. We can’t possibly imagine that our friends would be interested in seeing what music we listen to during the day, but if you’re supporting an up-and-coming band then this feature might potentially come to good use.

If we have a niggling issue with TuneUp, it’s that the program auto-runs every time iTunes is opened. Admittedly it’s possible to turn this feature off from the Preferences panel, but for a program that you’re unlikely to use on a regular basis, we’d prefer auto-run to be disabled by default. It can also take a large amount of time for TuneUp to scan massive music collections when looking for errant tracks and missing cover art.

TuneUp is a great addition to iTunes, with a handful of really handy features that enhance your music playing and sharing experience. It’s ability to tidy an iTunes Library is incredibly useful for anyone who has amassed music over a long period of time.

Every now and then a game can come along and completely take you by surprise. Such was the case with Trine, a game we stumbled upon quite by accident while perusing the Mac App Store.

The story concerns a thief, wizard and knight who all touch a magic crystal that binds them together into one body. You have control over all three, but can only use one at a time, switching between them with a press of a key. Each character has a different set of skills. The wizard can conjure boxes and bridges out of thin air, as well as levitate objects and move them around, but he isn’t great in a fight. The thief can use her bow to kill enemies at a distance, and has a grappling hook  that will attach to wooden objects and help her swing over large gaps. Finally, the knight is excellent at combat, and has a sword and a shield to both attack and defend. He can also use his strength to pick up and throw items around the levels.

Each skill is entirely different, but equally vital to helping you progress. The level design is excellent, and forces you to think about how you’re going to cross the traps and chasms that you are presented with regularity. There are often a number of ways to cross the obstacles you encounter, and looking for visual clues around the screen can also be important.

Speaking of visuals, the graphics on show within Trine are simply sumptuous. Lighting is pitched perfectly to create glowing plants and beautiful skies, and the depth of the world is simply spellbinding. As you scroll along a 2D plane you see huge amounts of detail in both the fore- and background, with waterfalls, turning cogs and enemy camps all being fully rendered in jaw-dropping detail. The animations are also incredibly smooth; the three characters move beautifully and the great physics engine makes the game feel incredibly realistic. There are a number of options to turn the graphics to a lower setting if you’re experiencing lag, but we tried Trine on both a MacBook Air and a basic Mac Mini and had no problems at all.

The three protagonists are deep and well built, and each has an individual character that is built as the story progresses. There is some excellent voice acting on show, and the conversations between the three souls trapped in one body can be really engaging, and sometimes funny. The characters can level-up as they gain experience, learning new abilities and collecting items that can boost their health and energy. These are all dealt with in the inventory screen, which is a little confusing at first with little explanation to help you out. Once you’ve worked everything out, though, you’ll be able to give each character the collected items that will help them the most.

The difficulty of the game is aimed pretty well too. There are three difficulty settings from the start, with a fourth unlockable difficulty if you found ‘hard’ still too easy. To be honest we played on medium and found ourselves dying a few times, which surprised us. The enemies aren’t exceptionally dangerous, but the need to switch between characters ramps up the concentration required. Boss fights are tough too, but add a welcome change to the rest of the platforming action, and regular checkpoints help to stop things becoming frustrating when you do die.

As we said at the start, Trine came from nowhere and impressed us hugely. The astounding graphics and tight controls drew us in and we haven’t stopped playing. With Trine 2 on the horizon, now is the perfect time to give the first game a try; we can’t recommend it highly enough.