Tool Much Fun 16
Greetings and welcome to Tool Much Fun, the publication that I always wanted. It gives you an overview of what’s available in the world of creative software without getting bogged down in too many details. Use it as a to-do list to learn more about what’s available to make your project ”better, stronger, faster”. Clicking the “More…” links at the end of each section takes you to a list of all previous editions where that tag appears. This edition offers:
Video, Music, Samples, Kontakt, 3D, Graphics, Fonts, Mac, iOS, Writing, Development, Work, AI, Social Media, Training, Podcasts and Media Consumption.
Video
Never have I seen so many people in search of a video app after they discovered that CapCut was owned by ByteDance and banned in the US. Meanwhile there were several competing products in the social media video space, and people either hadn’t heard of them or said they weren’t as good. I haven’t seen a feature-by-feature comparison so it’s hard to know how true that is. Aside from the big three of Final Cut Pro, Premiere and Davinci Resolve, There’s also LumaFusion and others. Click the More Video link at the bottom of this section to find all my video apps, utilities and asset packs. There’s a whole world of stuff out there, and I’m glad you came to my site to help you discover it.
Features include Slow-mo, Cutout, Captions, AI assisted cuts, HSL color control, speed curves, goofy stickers and object tracking. A number of fancy effects and transitions are offered, plus licensed music beds.
Auto subtitles (captions?), branding, dubbing, text to video AI, avatars and a screen recorder function. Basic feedback and reviewing options.
Templates, effects, filters, transitions, text overlay and corny stickers, music beds and picture-in-picture.
Drag-and-drop editing, and unlimited audio and video tracks, video segmentation, trimming, speed shifting, reverse playback, scale adjustment, keyframe animation, chroma keying, masking, tone curves, over 300 effects and transitions, plus installable effects plugins.
They make it wonderful to share your films.
Take your vitamins
Multicam, magnetic timeline like FinalCut Pro, Planar tracking, path curves, language translation, auto reframing, AI assisted subject cutouts, cuts and image enhancement.
It stands for Vlog Now, which isn’t a great name. VN sounds a bit like a nerve gas though.
Cut vivaciously with VivaCut
For Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. Apple users can AirDrop their projects between their devices and work on either. Import music, sound effects, fonts, LUTs filters, and stickers. LUTs, speed curves with 6 presets, keyframe animations with 10 presets, freeze frame, auto subtitles (captions?),export in 4K/60FPS, direct export to Youtube and TikTok (US users will have to wait for their beloved site to return), tempo tapping to help align the music cuts.
Over 20,000 assets for making videos. I bought one of these from another vendor and a lot of the assets were sound effects, all in mp3 format which was disappointing. They do list item numbers for some of the categories and we can see that half of them are fonts, so caveat emptor.
Allows creation of interactive video: “choose your own adventure, making decision, answering questions”. Also has a feature for making custom audiences. Analytics for all the viewer’s choices. Compare with Rapt, Wirewax, Hapyak, Dot and Near-life, all of which I hadn’t heard of before, and are more costly.
ksetselect Interference Textures
129 glitch-inspired video textures, 4 presets for After Effects and Premiere, and 5 LUTs for lo-fi degraded VHS, interference, static and other formerly-to-be-avoided problems. The samples of the VHS problems are good enough to dupe young folk who never had a VHS player, but a sharp eye will notice the dissimilarities. There are some cool abstract video textures for dark psychedelia.
Start with 18 presets and upload your music file, then start customizing. Add your logo, text, choose a color for the waves which react to the audio, choose a shape for the visualizer and multiple attributes for particles. Maximum video length is one hour. Work files are stored in your account, but perhaps not the movie files.
Add some visuals to your tunes
Similar to the above but with 32 templates to get you going. Except they are just the album cover, logo or text with some small reactive waveforms on the sides. I don’t like this style as much as the other kind.
“The World's Leading Video Review and Approval Platform”. Maybe the Frame.io folks would like a word about that?
“Your Video Editing Assistant in Premiere Pro”. Support for other editors coming later.
Dirty up your video with scratches and torn paper.
A reasonably large library of transitions, textures and title packs for Davinci Resolve and Premiere Pro, plus other assets like animated icons.
Keep scrolling for even more creative goodies
♫♬ 🎥 📸
Keep scrolling for even more creative goodies ♫♬ 🎥 📸
Music
For DJs- scan and organize music into “crates” to make finding the perfect song quicker.
Looks like a rompler with onboard effects which is expandable by adding new sound packs. Although it is interesting I skipped downloading it as I have a backlog of other purchases as well as the fact that I have a couple of other samplers where I can load any of my own samples already. If you’re just starting out gathering sounds, give it a try.
Online music making which appears to be aimed at music education.
Possibly aimed at beginners, this is an online DAW which includes access to over 24,000 loops you can use. Includes vocal tuning as well as standard DAW features like virtual instruments, automation, midi grid and beatmaking
Music making aimed at kids. For Web, Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.
A simple open source sampler plugin. Includes onboard distortion, chorus, EQ and reverb, all routable.
A simple sample player. It can have 5 scenes with 9 samples each. You can choose the starting point for each sample. No MIDI, no looping or syncing, just press the key to hear the sound you want. It doesn’t appear to have any way to use it with other apps, so for that you would need Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro to funnel its sounds into another app.
Trap your sound. Can you make more than Trap?
When you’re not sure if the plugin is in bypass.
Use this tool to check in on what your other plugins are doing. Analyze frequency response, compression, and distortion, including a spectrum analyze, oscilloscope and signal generator.
High-gain British distrain pedal plugin with two channels, IR mixer and 4 band EQ.
An instrument that uses the free MNDALA sound engine which is aimed at ethereal, drone, meditative, introspective soundtracky and experimental music.
Melodic MIDI Files to help you compose catchy songs.
Reverb including spring, plate, room, concert hall and cathedral spaces, plus a random hall option. A shimmer feature is built in, as well as a reverb tail visualizer.
Not just for Egyptian music
A unique take on modulation based on some 70s gear created by Keith Adkins. Overseen by Alan Parsons, so he’s kind of the Producer. Combination of phasing, flanging and Leslie cabinet pulsing. Plus add saturation and “ageing” characteristics. It sounds nice!
A dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity
Safari Pedals Bull Sub-Machine
Add subharmonics to give more low end to whatever channel you add it to. Use drive and resonance knobs plus a punch attribute to give the bass more impact.
Interactive composition songwriting tool.
Not actually a breakfast cereal for kids
Take this one by the horns
A vendor that offers not only loops and oneshots but Kontakt libraries as well. Drums, Piano, Harp, Guitar, Sax, Flute and more are offered. I listen to a few and they seem kind of entry-level to me, so please evaluate and compare with whatever came with your DAW.
A newcomer developer, this one offers a compressor and distortion plugin for free.
Presets
50 presets for Arturia Acid V.
With this, everything looks like a nail
Samples
Techno, acid, hard techno, hardcore, schranz sample packs.
Sound Effects Master Sound Collection
An unnumbered selection of sound effects consisting of the categories Ambience, Camera Shutters, Cinematic Elements, Fantasy, Impacts, Risers, Sci-Fi and Whooshes.
Hardstyle, harder style, Rawphoric, Frenchcore and Uptempo sounds. Hadn’t heard of those styles until just now? Join the club.
“Organic” song starters and loops. Only untested chemicals were used to grow them.
Three packs including dub and bass.
Beats you can buy licenses for. All usage meticulously specified. Genres include indie rock, techno, and “clams casino” which by discovering this site I just became cool enough to have heard of.
147 Drum/percussion one shots, 65 instrument oneshots, 69 drum loops, 46 percussion loops, 8 samplers (not sure what they mean), 6 stems and more for making psychedelic hip hop, drone and groove tunes.
Basslines, percussion, 295 loops, 95 drum oneshots. Deluxe edition includes 69 MIDI files. Nice!
Vaciermusic Hard Techno Bundle Vol.1
indepenjend SAFARI - Full Bundle
Deep House loops.
Exotic Music Production Everything Bundle
“The Ultimate Music Production Pack“
“Sonic branding” for radio, podcasts and social media videos or campaigns. Meaning probably more whole songs for music beds than beats or samples for making your own. Free taster pack available.
Kontakt Instruments
A prepared piano instrument with multiple object used to mangle the sounds of a piano into unusual tones. Probably good for soundtrack work or when you need something creepy.
Battersea Audio ECLIPSER Synth
Futuristic synth tones blended with vocals and wind instruments.
Where’s Charles Xavier?
Graphics
Free Photoshop Brushes for getting (the) ripped (look).
Premium Lightroom Bundle
Brush & texture system which works in Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, Clip Studio and Affinity Photo.
Interactive PNG/SVG halftone pattern generator.
A very cool web animation tool for making a string of text go around in a circle with many attributes you can play with including multiple stacked rings. It also uses the native system color picker when you choose your colors. Nice!
Add some rizz to your crafts
Challenge your design skills by making simple designs with only curves and lines.
Photoshop post-production tools
Creator Foundry Atmosphere Designer
680 atmosphere effects in Photoshop. 15 collections of atmosphere plugins including Dramatic Rays, Fog, Dust, Haze, Smoke and Directional Light.
Image generator and upscaling tool.
AI assisted photo sorting and editing plus job tracking all from within Lightroom. Subscription based, pro level pricing.
“Digital painting distilled to it's rawest form.” This includes colour jitter and distortion to get a more loose style. Looks like the brushes are kinda thick to get a flowing, loaded brush, impressionist style. Available for iOS, Mac and Android.
3D texture painting. Import your 3D models and paint on them using procedural materials while using a true light simulation. “Bake” texture maps directly on your iPad, but an M1 or later is required. See also Z-Brush from TMF9.
A selection of over 10,000 images that are in the public domain so no need for paying licensing fees.
Galadriel would be proud
A smart and strong looking sans serif face with a large number of weights.
Take them with a grano of salt
Have some French Fonts with your French Fries
A wide range of fonts from France, with both solid readable and some more playful display styles represented.
You’ll be fond of these fonts
Large range of mostly very smart and readable body copy workhorses, a few headline fonts and a smattering of display faces. Check them out to freshen up your design work.
A mix of strong headline sans-serifs and a few body copy or attention-getters as well, nothing garish or overly hard to read.
Yes I did upload this at the correct resolution
The other 36 Fs didn’t make it, this one will
Go retro with a grunge/lo-fi pixelated font that looks like what we saw out of a fax or cheapo printer in the 90s. Available in superfine, fine and standard resolutions.
You want a piece of me?
Mac
Switch apps with a circular interface the likes of which I haven’t seen for several years.
Create Mermaid diagrams (which I hadn’t heard of before) using a Markdown-style text syntax. He also makes Dependencies. See the Development section.
ICYMI
I saw a few posts about keyboards not working the way people want them to. This is the king of keyboard remapping for the Mac. The interface is a little confusing at first, at least it was the last time I used it. So make sure you set aside a few minutes to get into the nitty gritty.
iOS
A rival to Apple’s journal app.
Use this to send audio messages to your contacts without relying on Meta or other sites.
Another addition to a crowded space of photo editors to give tone to your pictures.
A utility app to help you choose the best of large numbers of similar photos.
A contender for the Media Consumption category, this allows watching movies from Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Twitch, IPTV, TikTok (when it exists) Facebook, plus music from Last.fm which I’ve never used and Soundcloud which I have.
Pay peanuts, get monkeys
iOS Music
Add modulated tube style distortion with this AUv3 plugin.
Another contender for the Media Consumption category — does this need a new subcategory perhaps?— this one lets you discover and stream new and possibly exclusive music.
Writing
Dropping that “e” in your product name, a time-honored tradition
“The creative writing workspace designed with your writing goals in mind”. Distraction free interface with goals and heaps of analytics. Notes and sharing features, and multi-device support. Upgrade to pro for grammar and style checking and an inbuilt thesaurus. Free tier offered, then US$6 a month.
Write about dogs… or finches
Improve your writing in an editor built by authors for authors. Book goals and writing habit tracker. Organize your chapters with drag and drop. Format with 17 templates and over 1200 unique combinations, Custom theme builder. Export in EPUB, PDF and DOCX format. Single purchase, no subscription. Works on Mac, Windows, or Linux.
Development
“In-App feature requests made easy.” Capture your user’s thoughts on improving your app in-the-moment rather than losing them to visit your website to fill out a form where they’ll forget half their ideas.
An open-source terminal that includes the ability to add graphical widgets, like dashboardy type stuff so you can keep an eye on things you need to monitor while staying in the terminal.
A Mac app for creating diagrams of the architenture of your app. Works with Swift, Objective-C, C++ and Qt. A pro version offers more features such as a command line version.
Make building apps look cool again
A Mac and iPhone app suite to help build iOS apps. Copy and paste from Figma, then let it create SwiftUI code so you can test your prototypes —including the camera and haptic sensors— responsively.
Work
Email newsletter management platform. I’ve been considering adding an email option to Tool Much Fun, I just don’t know how many people still want emails, and I would have to charge for that as it would incur a cost to me.
Teradici Remote Desktop software. Compare with Screens and Acronis Cyber Connect, formerly Remotix.
A multi-player web browser. You know how in Excel or Word you can see your collaborator’s cursor or on some collaborative systems like Miro you can see their lil’ avatar? Now imagine if your browser also shared their voice so you can all talk about the given website as well. No more emailing or Slack-posting screenshots back and forth.
Need a good old fashioned web page with some text and maybe a picture? Try this static site generator.
Text your customers using your landline or VoIP number so they don’t see weird mobile numbers and assume scamming is occurring. Features one-to-one texts, scheduled reminders, auto-replies, custom templates, and more. Currently US only.
What’s on the tabl?
AI
A recent entry into the AI space from the Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Company in China, their landing page gets into the technical details a little too quickly, as they have two offerings, the backend API stuff and the user facing app. Here’s the link to the app. Apple’s App Store team has approved their claim that they do take some user data, but it’s not linked to your identity.
Generate synchronized audio from video or text.
I spy with my little eye
A “place recognition“ site that purports to allow you to find a location of where an image was taken when there is no embedded GPS data.
The pro versions is aimed (read: priced) at enterprise, law enforcement and government.
Mysterious AI site which lists the tools Translator, Summarizer, Writer, Rephraser and Generator, but only one out of five of my search terms found anything, and when it did it took me to their Team site where they display clearly AI generated (or at least processed) avatars! My Spidey sense is tingling about this one. Beware.
All-in-one/aggregator subscription which gives you accounts for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Flux, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Ideogram and Luma for US$15 per month.
Choose from over 20 templates to assist writing blog posts, social media posts, articles or other documents. Plus other tools like summarisation, Youtube video or podcast script generation, and product descriptions. Image generation is included. Over 75 languages supported.
I found another one from China but the site wasn’t loading.
3D model generator. Use text prompts or convert photos or other images and it will create a 3D model in OBJ, FBX, USDZ, GLB, STL and BLEND formats, or create textures including PBR support. Plugins for Unity and Blender available.
Apply the writecream to the affected area
AI powered email client. Import from Gmail, Spark or Superhuman which I don’t recall hearing of before, so there’s another entry for the Work section.
Summarize, search, answers with clickable citations, tag and organize your PDF library. Supports over 90 languages. Also works with Word, Powerpoint, ebooks, and text files.
“The first AI voice changer plugin.” I’m not sure anyone but software historians are interested in who was first to market, they just want the best results.
An AI-powered writing assistant. Voice-to-text features, translate to over 180 languages. US$48 per year.
Using Kling and Luma, this one is for making videos. They claim there is a free tier but I don’t see it. The tiers I can see get you 50, 300 or 900 video generations per month, all private and lacking watermarks.
“Open-source generative audio tools.” However unless I sign up there’s not much more I can tell you without Googling, DuckDuckGoing or using another AI to give me more information.
Social Media
“Fresh discoveries every day” this is a supposed successor to TikTok but be warned that it’s also from China.
An open-source alternative to Instagram and Flickr, purportedly ad-free and decentralised.
Feast on fresh pixels
Training
Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing
“The ultimate guide to editing video with FCP for Mac”
Unreal Engine for Filmmakers Course
Photography and image editing. 21 hours of video courses, plus over 500 Lightroom presets, 200 textures and just under 60 Photoshop brushes.
Online audio/ear training to recognise notes and frequencies.
Podcasts
Squadcast shmodcast…
A cloud-based recording solution for recording up to 9 contributors. All presenters/participants have their audio recorded in high quality and synced to the cloud to ensure reliability. It then aligns the audio for you and offers audio improvement options. Integrates with other tools and services such as Dropbox, Zapier, Descript and Camo Studio.
Travelling riverside blues
A full-featured podcast recording system, this one includes text-to-speech, lip-sync, awkward pauses and “umm” fillers, caption and transcription creation and audio cleanup and improvement.
As above but this one mentions automatic clip making, analytics, hosting and monetization.
This one mentions streaming to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Twitch, and more, including viewer comment handling. The On-Air product is aimed at the webinar market. Appears to be web based. I hope it’s not Chrome only.
A search engine customised for listeners, business or podcast creators. See how many new podcasts were started when we all had to stay home in order to quell the spread of a famous virus here.
Use the search bar to find More Podcasts…
Stream from your yard, or anywhere with decent WiFi signal
Media Consumption
A free software media system where you stream your downloads or movies, shows and music using their server software. Much like Kodi. No fees and no tracking.
“Because life's too short for a book you're not in the mood for.” This site lets you track your reading and then uses that information to recommend new books that you might like.
A podcast playing app designed to make it all less complicated. Your subscriptions go into a queue and you can see the show notes and either play them or archive them. Listening habits analytics and top podcasts from your country and for other Queue users features are also offered.
Use the search bar to find More Consumption…
For booklovers who love analytics
as much as reading
This concludes the tour, please dispose of any rubbish as you leave. Remember to check your emails for all subscriptions you’ve signed up to, charge your Magic Mice when you take even the shortest break, prefer the mute button to the block button if you disagree with someone online, customize the Photos app to your liking, learn how to use the Shortcuts app to do impressively useful things, and lastly: you’re rarely “locked in to an ecosystem” — there are usually alternatives.
Use the search bar to search the whole site: