Tool Much Fun 18
Welcome to Tool Much Fun, a blog where I collect every useful-looking app, plugin or website for creative projects. Full reviews are great but who has time to read them, unless you are almost ready to buy something but can’t decide between several options. This blog gives you a bite-sized overview of many different discplines all in one place.
The way the winds blew in the last few days has been favoring iOS apps, so for this edition there is a bumper crop. Here’s the table of contents:
iOS, Music, Samples, Kontakt, Work, Fonts, Mac, 3D, Graphics, Animation, Video, Development, Social Media, Language, File sharing and Media Consumption.
Please note the ads don’t really pay anything yet. If you found something useful and want to support me, the best way is to send me a couple of dollars via Paypal. I don’t have Venmo or Cashapp in my country, sorry.
iOS
Shift workers have some feature needs that go beyond standard calendar apps, so if you or someone you know works this way, check this out to see if it helps organize their Innie life.
Tiny App Studio Be Great Journal
A journal app crafted for you to document your wins and achievements you are proud of.
An app to provoke creativity by showing you a selection of unique words. This technique has been discussed by Edward De Bono in his book Six Thinking Hats and I also heard about a similar technique by Brian Eno in this podcast episode of Cautionary Tales: “Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano”.
You’re great. Now just document it.
No calligraphy required
iOS Music
Back in the 90s my uncle took me into his work for a day and I got to use Unix for the first time. I noticed someone had changed the prompt to include the time in human described fashion i.e. “it’s nearly quarter to three”. This app lets you do that.
A kind of audio visualizer but not one that makes movies in realtime. This makes a spectrogram that is similar to ones found in izotope RX11 and Steinberg Spectralayers, but as there is no frequency listed on the axes, it appears more for interest and exploration rather than proper analysis.
We all scream for Eyesound
If you have very basic needs of cutting out a part of an audio file or chopping off the head or tail, and have a budget of $0 give this a look. Otherwise go for a more advanced one like TwistedWave.
Wave & say hi
Fingerlab’s been around for a while, so it’s good to see them still around. This is a common Drum machine and Synth that includes 172 drum kits, a bass and lead synth. So you'll have plenty to get your song started. Also comes as a Mac version.
What happened to the other 9?
Visualise pitches and chords of a song in real time. It sounds good in theory but from the example screenshots it doesn't look like I am going to gain much useful information.
A polyphonic synth based on Oberheim Matrix from the 1980s. Built-in Effects include delay, chorus, flanger, reverb, eq and compressor. It also includes a sequencer which features a piano roll editor and parameter automation. Works on iPad, iPhone and Mac.
An app for creating simulated singing. Note that this uses the Vocaloid style of synthesis which relies upon licensed recording data, not any AI based algorithms.
iOS Animation
Scan those tones
Full featured animation app that requires an Apple Pencil. Supports up to 4K animation output. For some reason I couldn't get this to appear in the App Store app on my Mac.
Another one to consider. The list of features is too dissimilar for me to compare them, but this one notes that it can export projects which can be imported to Adobe Animate, After Effects, and Toon Boom Harmony.
iOS graphics
By adding “Lab” in the name they get to release it in the weird space between a demo and beta app. By Sony Semiconductor? Who approved this?
What do they get up to in this lab?
This is a free app for importing a photo and grabbing the colors that are in it. There appears to be a share button but it does not say what format the output is in. I doubt it’s in Adobe Swatch Exchange format. I assume it’s a text file with the RGB values in Hexadecimal for use in webpage design.
Free app to let you create gradients or colors and save them as favourites. Hex codes, RGB, HSL and CYMK values are shown but there does not appear to be an export function.
iOS Media Consumption
An app to play locally downloaded video files in a variety of formats. Like VLC.
An app for playing music files that you have saved to your device, for people who don‘t want to or can‘t use streaming services. MP3, FLAC and other formats are supported.
Oddities
I found this an another unusually expensive apps while wandering in the App Store. I found it unnerving that Apple let it in when the description is so vague and the screenshots are so small and unclear. It seems to be an If You Know You Know type situation but a helpful fellow Threader did some searching and found this app in some way connects to a micro printer so you can make printouts of whatever you need appear, when you’re… have you guessed it yet? A magician.
An app for self-control. This lets you block yourself from social meed or other distracting apps, and will only unlock them if you go outside and record a short video of you actually touching grass.
Music
With only four controls, this one is a single-job effect, that being a filter. They also make seven other effects available in a bundle for around the price of two of them, so check that out.
MIDI rhythms in over 10 styles. Set up (i.e. mapped) for use in 10 drum plugins.
The closest the description gets is that it is kind of like an FM synth, but not really.
“Percussive signal extraction and resynthesis software, for drum sound-design and music production.” Available as VST3 only for Mac and Windows.
Another photography-related plugin name
You can be shure it’s good
A compressor with added saturation. Includes pre- and post-filtering, dry/wet mix and sidechain features.
Make your song good with bad speakers
Another to an ever-growing category of lo-fi distortion, this can help your sound be heard as if it was coming out of a portable radio, cassette deck or a speaker. It might be worth a look for filmmakers or sound designers where there’s a scene that needs audio like that.
Tickle those particles
More than just a granular audio effect, this includes a number of parameters all for making your sound into a lush soundscape, for dreamy, poignant and ambient type audio.
A free physical modelling synth which can make sounds similar to AAS Chromaphone and Ableton Collision.
A high-end compressor with a very attractive and informative interface to help you visualise what your settings are doing to the sound.
Audio Watermarking Sonic Decloner
A program which can detect duplicates by comparing the actual audio data rather than just file attributes like size and date.
The second plugin from Mimugloves continues with their love of granular sound. This one is a granular delay which lets you add 4 extra pitch shifted channels with independent grain
Sounds like a job from a Tarantino movie
A spectral processing plugin to shift the “body” of the incoming sound, which seems to be the set of frequencies that are most noticeable. So if you have a track that is too trebly and thin you can add bassier tones, I suppose. Kind of like an EQ but without adding harmonics and distortion.
Samples
A large selection of loops & royalty-free music samples in the genres: House, Synthwave, Lo-FI, Hiphop, Trap, Drill, RNB, Dubstep, Indie Rock, EDM, Future Bass, standard and Futuristic Electronica, Neuro, Experimental, Techno, Drum & Bass, Glitch, NeuroFunk, ChipTune and Cyberpunk. Where’s the Jazz? Choose by instrument or mood.
This crew from Germany offers ten sample packs made of “high quality” guitar compositions.
Black Dragon River Hemispheres
Free Psychill Sample Pack
Analog Pitch isn’t selling endless collections of drum machine packs, this crew sells sample collection with a lo-fi/analog vibe made with Rhodes keyboards, guitars, bass, synths, lofi tape and “vinyl sounds” (is that crackling?). Very cool and somewhat hipsterish.
Kontakt Instruments
Free library of harmonics played on a cello.
Another one that claims to be the “Ultimate Cinematic Sound Design Tool”. Consisting of >3GB of samples and 264 presets.
Work & Productivity
For those of you who need a calendar app on an Android device which is compatible with the iCalendar standard (RFC 5545). They also mention another app DAVx5 which can sync with any CalDAV server so you can use your own private calendar server, or just sync with iCloud or a long list of other services.
A file sharing and cloud storage platform tweaked for large files often used by Video editors and animation designers. Pricing status at US$7 per member per month at 100GB/member.
A screen recording, editing and hosting solution. Compare with Komodo decks from TMF10 and Zight.
Tella me how you really feel
QR you?
Create barcodes that send people to websites, email addresses, videos, social media profiles and more. A tracking feature is offered plus customize the design of your QR code. Pricing starts at $35/month which seems a little steep to me, but that does include custom landing pages for dynamic QR codes. That is, the code image stays the same as you can get it printed, and you can then change the content on the landing page.
As many of you know, a few years ago a famous virus changed office dynamics and ushered in a surge of hotdesking. But who sits where? This site lets you create a floor plan of your office and allow employees to book desks.
“Find Your Focus”. A subscription based todo and time organiser app for desktop and mobile, this one has reminders, task timers, soundscapes for lowering distractions, different alarm types and templates for tasks you have to set often. Seems to be popular in the ADHD community but of course people without it can use it too.
Fonts
This foundry is from Berlin, Germany and they make some very classy, useful fonts.
Type random words in these cool fonts
Mac
A bit of a highlight on Window Managers this edition, as I was wanting the feature where you can auto-raise a window when your mouse hovers over it without having to click. The first utility I used that had this feature was Zooom2 but that has been discontinued. Some folks suggested BetterTouchTool but that doesn’t seem to have auto-raise without moving the mouse, even for 1 pixel.
“Window management made elegant.” This one uses an intuitive circular (that”s the loop, get it) interface gadget to “throw” your windows into the sides or corners. Check out the videos to be impressed.
A utility that adds functions and more file format support to quicklook, which if you don’t use, you should. Press the space bar when in the Finder to preview a file.
“Moves makes it easier than ever to position your windows just right.”
Arguably a feature that Apple should have added somewhere, this enables automatically raising where whatever window your cursor is over to the top so it can accept focus. Once again GitHub’s anything-goes interface makes it hard to find the download. For this one there is no assets section, the .dmg file is in with the source code, so click the green “code” button and look in the zip file for it.
Like the venerable Zooom2, this one lets you hold down a key on your keyboard to invoke moving or resizing a window without raising it to the front. Much less clicking required for certain actions, like dragging and dropping an item into a destination app’s window. It doesn’t seem to have the feature I liked from Zooom2 which was to auto-raise a window just by hovering and waiting for a set time period.
A free menubar-based app specifically designed to store all your commonly used commands for the Terminal so you don’t have to rely on the unreliable history command to find that useful command you need. Yes, iTerm does have some of this functionality with its notes section, but this looks more convenient, especially when you have a large library of commands.
Although a contender for the graphics section this is a Mac-only app. It’s what it says on the tin, for editing EXIF, IPTC, XMP and GPS coordinates in JPEGs, PNG, TIFF, HEIC, RAW, MOV, MP4 and other formats.
I never metadata I didn’t like
A website this time, rather than an app, which lists a bunch of functions — some of which Apple has removed or never had a GUI option for — and then lists the Terminal command to set it.
A catch-all type app, a la Evernote that allows saving text and images. Browser plugins let you grab things on the go.
I see you have the machine that goes “bleep”
3D
FREE 3D models, textures and other Blender assets.
Standalone 3D software that lets you create keyframe animation. AI physics assistance. Supports .FBX, .DAE and .USD files. Works on Mac, Windows or Ubuntu Linux.
Graphics
If you love color, you know how important it is. This platform lets you find trending palettes and create your own. They offer apps for iOS and Android, plus a Figma plugin, Chrome extension (ugh) and Adobe extension.
A free digital painting app from Japan that seems to challenge Corel Painter, Rebelle and Clipstudio Paint.
FlowMasters Ultimate Procreate Bundle
A massive amount of Bushes and stamps for Procreate, including bonus categories City, Water & Clouds and “Scary”.
Video
More replacements for the much loved CapCut came out of the woodwork in the weeks following the app’s removal from the US App Store.
If you love zany or artistic effects, this may be one to have a look at. This offers over 100 effects plus keyframe control, masking, overlays, stickers, backgrounds, masking, fonts and text effects, reverse video and slow motion.
The company who makes it appears to be from a Turkish company called called Pixerylabs but the landing page website says AVCR Inc.
When I first saw people mentioning they use Splice for video editing, I thought they want this Splice which is about music, so I thought the latter had expanded. But the former is listed as being from Bending Spoons Apps ApS but the website says it’s from AI Creativity S.r.l. from Italy, which is a “Sole shareholder company subject to the management and coordination of Bending Spoons” Do humans have to have so many different company names? Anyhow this one appears to have a nice modern interface and all the expected video editing features such as Chroma Keying, plus adding songs from a library of >6,000 royalty free tracks and you can add a narration track in the app.
I’m not sure why this isn’t more popular, as it is available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. Feats transitions, titles, stickers, speed changing, plus access to a resource library of still images, music and sound effects. Subscription based.
A tool specifically aimed at making short videos. Includes popular transitions like Zoom (fast, slow and out), film burn, and film b-roll. AI algorithms grab the best parts of your video to help edit it down to “viral shorts” length. At least 6 different styles of captions can be added in up to 48 languages. Ever wonder how those accounts pump out so many videos so quickly? Using this type of thing could be one of the ways they do it.
Sporting a clean modern interface, this one includes the standard editing tools, music, filters, speed ramping, text and sticker overlay, plus AI software can analyze your footage to automatically select highlight moments and then apply them to one of their hundreds of templates for quick editing. Avialbl for iOS or Android.
For movie makers, this can import a script so you can start to design and render your shots. Draw and use thumbnails from a storyboard and drag and drop the order. Choose lens size and other technical attributes. Available for iOS and Mac.
List all the shots
Received some notes on your latest script? This lets you transfer them easily. Plus annotation, layers, include set plans or other diagrammatical images, auto highlighting as the script is read, rehearse scenes using a computer generated voice, tagging, PDF/CSV export. Note: some of the features require the Pro subscription.
Development
This Mac app shows you the keycodes for any combination of keys, plus the Unicode values and other information.
Social Media
Share photos, videos or text in an purportedly “algorithm-free” feed. The app for iOS is ready now and the Android version is in beta. The company is listed as being in the U.S. There is also a finance oriented platform and they run Vero Music, a record label.
This is a new platform for sharing short videos. No information on their landing page except a way to sign up for the prerelease. iOS and Android are supported.
Language
Learn a new language. A free account gives you access to >600 courses, a vocabulary trainer and ten lessons. Upgrade to pro for ad removal, mistakes review and unlimited usage. I counted 50 languages in their list.
File Sharing
Hivenet is a competitor to cloud storage services like Dropbox, Good Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, publishing lower costs per terabyte but sustainability is an aim of theirs. They also sell GPU compute time for organisations doing calculations that take many hours, competing with vendors like GCP, Azure and AWS.
Backup files and share them privately. 1TB for free to try, then US$3.50 a month to move to 2TB which provides features like 128GB maximum file length and no compression on playback of video files, plus encryption. Plans up to 5TB are offered. They also make a PDF scanning app, their own browser! and a file sharing utility app.
Unlimited cloud storage charged per terabyte, with separate charges for cold storage and for data egress. The data centres are in Portland USA, São Paulo, Frankfurt and Singapore.
Drain those pixels… up to their servers
Skynet’s little brother
Saw something you liked? Try this handy table of contents, but at the bottom. Or, click on a tag to see a page that lists all previous editions containing that tag.
iOS, Music, Samples, Kontakt, Work, Fonts, Mac, 3D, Graphics, Animation, Video, Development, Social Media, Language, File sharing and Media Consumption.