Flare for Mac
I’m a big fan of the Iconfactory. Love their icons and love their software. So when they announced that they were launching an image application through the Mac App Store… I was intrigued.
Flare is a straightforward app for “developing” your digital images. Apply a variety of effects to your images. If you like Hipstamatic and Instagram for the iPhone, you’ll love Flare. The big difference of course is that with the full processing power of the Mac, you get a lot more flexibility and power. You can save your creations in JPG, PNG or TIFF. Or you can export to Flickr. It’s a simple, elegant app that’s a lot of fun to play around in.
Flare ships with a few dozen presets, but its real power is the ability to combine and assemble your own effects. And then export those effects to share with friends. (I’ve included a few of my presets below to download.)
Flare’s not perfect. I’m not sure the the Snapshot features works like I expect it to. Occassionally, it’s a little slow with larger images. And there are a few other minor little rough spots, but knowing the Iconfactory, those will be ironed out quickly.
For a limited time, Flare is available in the Mac App Store for $9.99. (Hurry, because I’m pretty sure the offer ends this weekend.) Normal price will be $19.99.
Sample Images
The following images are a few old images that I pulled out of the archives and enjoyed breathing new life into them in Flare.
Angry Crab
Windy CityCaboose P
Download Presets
Flare lets you export presets to share with friends. I’ve include the presets for the images above.