Cool Macworld Product: VectorDesigner
Pages: 1, 2

While these tools might seem pretty simple, they allow you to create very sophisticated images. The bike in Figure 2, for example, uses stars for the spokes and gears, a custom path for the seat and handlebars, and a series of rotated and added rectangles for the frame, and took less than 20 minutes to make.

Figure 2: Having never used VectorDesigner before—or any other vector drawing program for more than a couple minutes—it took me less than 20 minutes from the moment I opened the program to the moment this picture was finished.

Of course, creating images from scratch is the easy part; sometimes, you'll have to work with the improvised or incomplete work of someone else, or share your work with others. Fortunately, VectorDesigner can handle these tasks as well, easily importing standard vector (EPS) files and exporting to vector and raster formats (a useful feature if you'd like to convert your image for the web, for example). In addition, you can import any raster image and have VectorDesigner try to approximate it using vector shapes, thereby gaining the unlimited-resolution benefits of vector images without doing any drawing for yourself (Figure 1). (This feature is fairly primitive, however, so it helps to make your image grayscale and pump up the contrast to make it easier for VectorDesigner to trace the edges correctly.) All of these features are fairly intuitive, and any confusion is cleared up by the four short, helpful tutorial videos in the Help menu.

The Big Benefits

Most people who need to whip up a quick image for a newsletter, website, or printout fall back on what they're used to -- in most cases, a painting program. Practically speaking, though, it's often much better to do the work in a vector drawing program like VectorDesigner, since shapes are easier to manipulate long after you've created them, and the resulting files don't lose any of the resolution of your work. As a result, once you get over the very shallow learning curve, VectorDesigner may become your default program for quick designs, paying for itself many times over in saved time and clearer images.

Even if your primary goal isn't productivity, though, VectorDesigner allows you to make many professional-looking images more easily than other programs can. For example, VectorDesigner's text tool lets you place flowing text along any arbitrary path you've created -- a great way to make eye-catching logos. Plus, with a full selection of Quartz Composer filters, VectorDesigner lets you turn existing images into effects-laced spectacles in a way that older graphics programs can't.

Adam Goldstein is the author of Applescript: The Missing Manual.

Final Thoughts

Most of the features of VectorDesigner are available in higher-end vector drawing programs, but the $70 cost of VectorDesigner is hard to beat. Moreover, if you've never used a vector drawing program before, the simple features you'd end up using in a higher-end program aren't much different than the standard features in VectorDesigner -- and in VectorDesigner, they're easy to find.

Inevitably, though, VectorDesigner suffers many of the flaws of a version 1.0 release. Particularly annoying is the lack of common Mac OS X shortcuts: Option-dragging a shape doesn't duplicate it, dragging a color swatch to a shape doesn't automatically fill it in with that color, and there's no simple key combination for forcing an oval to become a circle or a rectangle to become a square.

For the most part, though, VectorDesigner is a competent, easy to use program that can introduce one of the most underutilized graphics styles to everyday users, and save lots of time and money in the process.