Although a frequent complaint concerning tablets of any stripe has been that they aren’t exactly conducive to creative design (since they’re really meant to act more as a mobile entertainment center than a work station). But thanks to the widespread availability of useful apps on the iTunes store, the iPad may actually be ahead of the pack in this regard (despite Apple’s notoriety for strict control of their products and what they produce). So if you’re a graphic designer looking for ways to make your life easier through the use of mobile technology, here are a few apps that you’ll definitely want to look into downloading.

1. Adobe Ideas. Just about everyone who ends up in the field of graphic design these days (be it in an amateur or professional capacity) started out by messing around with Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, or even After Effects if you dabble in motion graphics). This is not surprising considering how user-friendly (and yet comprehensive) the company’s product lineup is. And thankfully, they have expanded into mobile space with this virtual sketchpad that will help busy graphic designers to lay out ideas wherever they are and cart them between home, office, and meetings with clients. Plus, a bevy of tools, options for layers, and easy handling make this app a must-have.
2. Phaidon Design Classics. This is one app that serious graphic designers (or those that want to go pro) simply can’t live without. It features 1,000 carefully selected product designs that have stood the test of time, and while many were the work of famous designers, you’ll be surprised to discover that some of the ingenious objects we use every day were created anonymously (like the corkscrew, for example). You can search via timeline, category, designer, or keyword to instantly access the designs that won awards, made history, and even changed our lives for the better. Anyone in search of inspiration or education will get both out of this app.
3. iFontMaker. Tired of trolling the internet for free fonts, or worse, paying to get the best fonts for your clients? Thanks to this handy addition to the iVerse you can now create your own unique fonts specifically geared towards the needs of individual clients, and keep them on hand for reference or reuse down the road.
4. iDesign. Regardless of the type of graphics you create, it couldn’t hurt to start your process in 2D before expanding into another plane. The toolbar offers one-touch access to helpful functions, multiples layers let you separate your design into individual elements (for easy revision), and you can literally control every aspect of your graphics, from line width to font size to the unit of measurement. While it may be a bit overwhelming for those unfamiliar with graphics design, professionals will delight in the many options this program provides.
5. iThoughtsHD. Not all graphics designers are busy creating logos or designing websites (and even if they are, they could be doing website design Fargo, Fairbanks, or Fort Worth style, which is to say, without much hope of becoming a web sensation). However, there are a lot of corporate gigs out there for designers that are not at all averse to earning a big paycheck for helping execs put presentations together. It can be used to create visual representations of patterns because it showcases a series of interconnected items. So while anyone can use it during a brainstorming session, for example, corporate designers will find a myriad of uses for this app’s unique capabilities.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this quest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

There’s no denying that the state of the economy has made life even harder for the majority of teachers. While many schools have been facing budgetary concerns for years, the recession and cuts in state and federal funding have led to a lot of layoffs, meaning larger class sizes and fewer resources for the teaching staff that remains. This, of course, means that most teachers are either making do with less, or they’re using their personal resources to enhance the lessons they teach, whether that entails footing the bill for art supplies and books or spending a lot of unpaid time seeking creative solutions. So if you’re one of many teachers at your wits end when it comes to improving the lessons you offer while making your life easier, here are just a few clever apps for your iPad that could help you in the classroom setting.

1. TeacherTool One. This free app is like a godsend for overworked teachers. It lets you easily input and track grades and attendance by date, as well as file personal notes about particular students so that you can set reminders for yourself for upcoming lessons (i.e. “Joey needs to practice his multiplication tables” or “Susan needs help with sentence structure and spelling”). It’s a great way to instantly track students and each time you sync with your home or work computer it makes a backup copy.
2. GradePad. The nice thing about this app to help you make the grades is that it offers you a lot of handy options. While it will cost you $2.99 to download, there are some useful features, such as the ability to create groups (so you can make grades for joint projects), instantly track performance with rubrics that offer criteria and scaling options, and make assessments over time. And with an included web account it’s easy to upload class lists and other important information.
3. Dropbox. As freebies go, this one is a keeper. And considering how basic it is, you may wonder how you ever got by without it. It’s basically like a virtual backpack or briefcase. You simply drop in your files (docs, pics, even videos) from any device and you can view them on any other device. So you can take assignments from home to work (and back again) without having to keep track of physical copies, and if you find something that you want to share with your class (like snapshots from your weekend visit to the natural history museum) you can easily deposit them into Dropbox at home and then display them on your iPad in class.
4. Keynote. If your course is lecture-heavy, this app can provide you with a lot of time-saving tools that will help to spice up your speeches. At $9.99 it’s not the cheapest tool in iVerse, but once you get started you’ll use it all the time. You can utilize the templates provided to quickly insert text or graphics and you can even use it to create slide shows or animations to punch up your presentation.
5. Evernote. When you learn what this app can do, you may be surprised to see that it’s free. The functionality is pretty amazing; you can actually capture information anywhere to access and search later. On a basic level you can use the app to take snapshots for later reference or leave yourself voice memos, so if you see ads for home tuition services that would benefit your students, for example, you can just snap a pic of the info on the go. But you can also capture screen shots of web pages and then search the text later for further information. And you can download the app on several devices and use the sync function to access shared data from any of them.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this quest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

Well look at what we have here, the Alice Dev Team is having a nice holiday sale featuring all of their Mac App Store apps until December 29. By the looks of it, most of the apps are half so, so if you’ happen to have any money left over from other Christmas sales, you may want to consider investing in any of the apps below. Enjoy!

• Spy Cam $9.99 ->$5.99
• Security Camera $4.99 -> $2.99
• Memory Cleaner $5.99 -> $3.99
• Handy Calculator $1.99 -> $0.99
• Lines $1.99 -> $0.99

Sure, there’s a lot of paid, cheap ‘great’ Photoshop applications out there, but how do you know which one to choose from? Programs like Paint.NET and GIMP which are highly extensible and have lots of features, but what about Photoshop’s amazing deleting feature that allows you to correct images and remove unwanted objects from the photo and make it look like they were never there? Say hello to Snapheal for Mac from MacPhun, LLC coming tomorrow for $9.99.

Thanks to the developers, we’ve been able to get our hands on Snapheal before its release. I’ve spend a few hours with the app and thoroughly enjoyed it. In addition to that, the developers let me put together a hands on preview video that you can see below.

At launch, Snapheal for Mac will cost $9.99 for a limited time only sale promotion, then jump up to $19.99. Quick list of features that Snapheal for Mac includes:

• Erase unwanted objects, delete skin imperfections and text
• Fix images with clone&stamp tool
• Adjust saturation, gamma, exposure, color temperature, etc
• Reduce noise and sharpen images
• Control shadows and highlights
• Import pictures from Aperture and iPhoto
• Export to iPhoto
• Handle up to 32 megapixels
• Work with Tiff, Raw, etc.

We will have a full in-depth review post-release, so stay tuned!

Barely two months after Fishlabs‘ successful mobile hit Galaxy on Fire 2 blazed onto the Mac App Store, the developers have released Galaxy on Fire 2 HD on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. In the past, the title has been advertised by Apple several times and recently got featured as one of only seven reference games for the brand new iPhone 4S. On the App Store, the HD version of the action-packed space trader is available as a universal download for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 for $9.99.

The new installment of the popular premium game, which got awarded with five stars by more than 10.000 iPhone and iPad users, takes full advantage of the rendering power of Apple’s A5 chip. Thanks to the dual core GPU’s sevenfold performance capacities, all 3D models can be rendered with four-times as many polygons and textures at a four times higher resolution and the game will still run smoothly with 40 frames per second. Together with the new OpenGL 2.0 shaders, the different texture sets for diffuse, normal and specular maps for the 30 space ships, as well as all space stations, make for stunningly detailed surfaces in state-of-the-art console quality. In addition, the completely re-worked visuals appear as realistic as it can get on a mobile device due to additional light sources and enhanced post-, explosion- and special effects.

As a matter of course, the transferability of save games from Mac to iPad and vice versa via iCloud, which had already been announced when Galaxy on Fire 2™ Full HD came out, will now also be valid for the iPhone 4S. Said transferability will also include the add-on Valkyrie™ HD, which will presumably be released in the 1^st quarter of 2012. As soon as Valkyrie HS is on the market, users will also be able to freely transfer their save games between the regular instalment of Galaxy on Fire 2™ and the High Definition version of the game.

“With the release of Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, we now fulfil our promise of delivering a breath-taking cross-platform sci-fi adventure in unrivalled quality. In fact, Galaxy on Fire 2 is the world’s first premium game, which is fully playable on smartphones, tablets and PCs alike and which even allows the gamer to transfer his save games from one platform to the other whenever he wants. In our opinion, this is a truly revolutionary concept, because the gamers of the post-PC era want to be able to play their favourite games anywhere and anytime,” says Michael Schade, CEO of Fishlabs Entertainment.

In Galaxy on Fire 2™ HD, the gamer will be able to explore a vast universe with more than 20 star systems, 100 different space stations and over 30 fully mountable space ships, as well as follow an exciting story line with full voice acting and take on an infinite number of diversified freelance missions. The title’s epic plot puts the gamer right in the middle of the hard-fought struggle for survival of the galaxy’s four major factions, namely the Terrans, Midorians, Nivelians and Vossk. Due to a malfunction of his ship’s hyperdrive, Keith T. Maxwell, the hero of the first instalment of the series, is catapulted through space and time. 35 years into the future, he awakens at the far end of the galaxy and quickly realizes that a lot has changed during his absence. An aggressive alien menace known as Voids is lurking on the edge of known space and using sophisticated wormhole technology to raid cargo ships and convoys of all four factions. The unstable peace between the factions is on the line and Keith is the only one who can save the universe from its impending descend into chaos.

Special features of Galaxy on Fire 2 HD

• All 3D models and textures rebuild from scratch for console-quality visuals
• Up to four times higher textures, as well as additional details and multiple texture sets for extremely detailed depictions of all 30+ space ships and 100+ space stations
• Carefully reworked space backgrounds and planets in 1024 by 1024 pixel resolution for an ideal High Definition display
• Heavily enhanced special effects for explosions, fire, smoke and atmospheric effects
• OpenGL shader on all in-game assets for detailed and realistic surface designs
• Post effects for cinematic visualisation
• Additional light sources for realistic lighting
• Synchronisation of save games across platform borders via iCloud and Open Feint

Galaxy on Fire 2 HD for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is now available on the App Store for $9.99 and weighs in at 180 MB.

Galaxy on Fire 2™
Developer: FISHLABS

Rated: 12+

Price: $4.99 Download

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