YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – We get a sunny day every once in a while, although the rainy season isn’t over. This is the season when we see hydrangeas here and there. They are quite beautiful, especially the purple ones.

Señor Tomato

Señor Tomato

Well, I’m ready to annouce a new macOS software title. This new release is called Quick Sub 2. Right, it’s an upgraded version of Quick Sub.

What’s New?

1. It’s developed with the SwiftUI framework from a scratch.
2. The application now allows you to create rectangle-type subtitle objects.
3. You can rescale subtitle objects between 0.1x and 10x in the timeline view at the bottom.
4. You can move a subtitle object in the timeline view left and right to change the corresponding start time.
5. You can position a subtitle object right over the movie screen with your mouse pointer.
6. You can rotate the selected subtitle object.
7. The application now supports undo and redo stacks.

The objective of Quick Sub 2 remains the same. Quick Sub 2 lets you add a group of subtitle objects over a video clip (.MOV, .MP4) you select. You now have two different subtitle objects: Text and Rectangle. If you select the text type, you have total control over its font family, text size, text color, text alignment, and pitch height. Quick Sub 2 separates the text part from its container so that you can set the margin between them. You also have control over the container background color, corner radius, and angle.

An oops happens along the way. So Quick Sub 2 now supports the undo manager, allowing you to undo and redo changes in most actions. If you want to apply the same size (width and height) of the selected text-type subtitle object to others, you are just one menu command selection away.

When you finish working on subtitle objects, simply click on the export toolbar button. Quick Sub 2 will show progress while writing a final movie file to disk. If necessary, click on the Abort button to stop the export process.

If you have dozens of subtitle objects, it will be impossible to replicate the same line of progress once you quit the application. Fortunately, Quick Sub 2 lets you save progress with a file type of its own (qsub2). Just double-click on a file of this type or drag and drop a file onto the application icon in the Dock to replicate progress.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It seems that we are in the midst of the rainy season. Last week, the weather forecast said that it would be rain all week. Yet, it doesn’t really rain much over this week.

Last week, I released a desktop application titled Split 1-2-3. It’s been more than 10 days since I released it. But to my sadness, it hasn’t even been reviewed by Apple, Inc.

The first time I laid my hands on Macromedia Fireworks was around the spring of 1998 when I bought a package including Dreamweaver and Fireworks with a student discount while I was a graduate student. I think it was US$198. It’s been more than 25 years since then. In fact, I used it until my iMac 2011 died last week, so I need a bitmap editor to replace Fireworks.

Adobe Fireworks was a horrible software title to the extent that it crashed frequently although it was very easy to use. Therefore, I’ve developed something that I can use without an Intel-based Mac. Finally, I’m ready to announce another desktop application after 10 days or so. This new release is called Firestorms 2.

Firestorm 2 is a bitmap editor that lets you resize and rotate an image, making a selection of an area so that you can crop part of it. Besides editing an image you select, you can add circle layers, ellipse layers, rectangle layers, text layers and SF symbol layers to the document.

Although it lets you open it as a source of bitmap data, Firestorm 2 doesn’t use the PNG format as a document file. It has its own file type (.storms2) so that you can save progress and then recover it from a saved file at any time.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It seems to me that the rainy season has started. Maybe, it’s because of Typhoon No. 6 that it’s been raining all day in the Tokyo area. Yet, according to the weather forecast, it’s going to be rainy next week.

It’s been just a week since I released the last software title? I thought that was two or three weeks ago. The last development project was relatively large, and I spent quite a lot of time for it although the initial iOS release took me just a week or less. Anyway, I’m ready to announce a new macOS software title. This new release is called Split 1-2-3.

Split 1-2-3 is a once-forgotten desktop application development project. I was forced to abandon it after spending two or three weeks because of Image Renderer, which rarely works in SwiftUI.

Split 1-2-3 is a mosaic style desktop application that lets you display a few dozen images in a grid at a time. The user starts by choosing a grid layout (for example, 3 rows by 4 columns), and the application splits the entire window into those exact divisions using interactive split view components. Each individual cell acts as an independent grid space where you can drag-and-drop or select an image file to display, scale, and reposition. Additionally, you can uniquely adjust the size of each space in the grid. If you select the Horizontal adjustment at the Startup screen, the grid space at 1,0 may have a width of 150 while the grid space at 2,0 may have a width of 200. Or you can adjust the height of each space if you select the Vertical adjustment at the Startup screen. The goal of using this application is to display fractional part of each of a few dozen images in a grid and then to export the exact layout as an image to disk.   Continue reading →

YOKOHAMA (Señor Tomato) – It’s been quite interesting days for the past two weeks. I started the last Design Mob project only reluctantly two weeks ago. And I’m releasing a desktop version of it today. This new release is called Design Mob Central.

Design Mob Central offers a real deal in designing mobile app and desktop application screen designs for a team of software developers and UI designers because it gives you full control of actual UI components from the operating system. As a team designer, you can publish the final design by selecting a project and then clicking on the Push button so that your entire software development team will receive it. And they will receive a notification alert.

Speaking of UI components, you can use actual tab names to create a picker layer. Use actual GPS coordinates with a map layer. Also, you can use the actual URL to show the web content with a web view layer.

Enroll team members by sending them deep links. There are no restrictions on how many people you can enroll. They don’t even need to sign up for an account. All you need is an Apple account. And they don’t have to be desktop computer users. iPhone and iPad users can use the iOS counterpart (Design Mob) to receive a design project through CloudKit.

In fact, you don’t even have to be constantly connected to the Internet. You can work on a design project locally. Once you are ready to push a project to CloudKit, make sure you are signed in to your iCloud account. And all team members will receive your design project with the click of a button.   Continue reading →