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Faster than a speeding bullet! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Or, if you are anything like us, you possess no special powers at all (aside from the ability to squeeze your Suburban into any parking space). However, that doesn't mean your life doesn't deserve a comic book makeover, complete with paneled storyboards and bubble font captions. A new program, Comic Life, does that and more; it's one of the most fun, inventive and easy-to-use applications we've seen in a long time.
It's tremendously easy to get started with Comic Life. As soon as you launch the application, you're ready to go. A pane in the lower right side of the window shows all of the images in your iPhoto libraries (as thumbnails with image names; you can even drill down to specific albums) or the Finder (folders and files are shown as small icons). To begin your comic book, simply select a template from the Page Template pane (there are Basic, Mini, Picture-in-Picture and Songcatcher categories) and drag it into the main editing bay.
The templates are single pages broken up into geometric shapes; once selected, drag the images you'd like to use into the different shapes. Then expand or shrink images, center them or tilt them to the angle of your choosing. Once pictures are dropped in, you can change the shape of the template forms, morphing the geometric shapes into something more to your liking. Once images are set and the templates are jiggered, you may then add captions, thought and speaking bubbles by dragging them from a bottom pane. Place the cursor in the bubble, type away and make text larger or smaller, as well as change the font and color. There is even an action font option that works like the drag-and-drop captions, allowing users to write in their own Blam!s and Kaboom!s to spice up the paneled events. Still not enough? Creative sorts can also add colored gradients and shadows behind the images and edit the image attributes. The level of customization encourages creativity at every turn.
With each move, a sound effect accompanies the action. The noises aren't for everyone though, so it's great that they can be turned off in preferences. Each page can be exported as HTML, a TIFF, JPEG, GIF or PNG image (between 72 and 1,200 dpi), to iPhoto or as a slideshow QuickTime movie. You can also sync to your .Mac account (File>Publish to .Mac), so you can share your creations with the world. Managing these posted comics is easy thanks to the Manage .Mac Comics option (found in the File menu). All of this is extremely intuitive (most computer users will be up and running in a few minutes), however, if you find yourself stuck, there are wonderfully illustrated and articulated help files (the best we've seen for this kind of software).
Another great feature to mention is called Quick Comic. Just select which library you want your Quick Comic's images pulled from and let Comic Life do the work. It will select and arrange images according to the parameters you set (pulled from a layout scheme delineated on the main page) and create a completely editable comic for you. We had a lot of fun seeing what crazy storyboard Comic Life put together for us; the results were almost always inspiring.
The very best thing about the program, however, is that while it is designed to turn your life into a comic book, it can be used in any number of ways, including creating howtos (lining the bubbles up on a blank template as steps), a straightforward scrapbook (which you can then upload to a photo sharing site such as Flickr.com) and much more. We highly recommend this fun application for anyone wishing to use their photographs in a creative way.
-AMY R. WOOD
Comic Life: 
Plasq | http://plasq.com/comiclife | $25
Pros: Easy to use, creative, customizable.
Cons: Can't scale the window small enough.
Requires: OS 10.3 or higher
macHOME recommends: Lots of pictures and some free time
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