Comic Life for Mac

3.5.18

3.5.18

See all Versions

I have fun with this application,. It's amazing when you can find different elements to create some comic.

I purchased Comic Life Maqiq three years ago. Now, on my updated Mac (running MacOS Catalina 10.15.4), it is impossible to run Comic Life Magiq. Dear Plasq.com, if you think customers are going to purchase Comic Life 3 just because you "forgot" to update Comic Life Magiq, you are dead wrong. In my case, you got me once, but you won't get me twice.

I'm currently experiencing an issue with Comic life 3. Every time I attempt to launch comic life and I choose to open a template with graphics, I receive a problem report "Comic Life quit unexpectedly". I have tried to check online resources to resolve this issue but unfortunately, I can't find any solution. Please see the file attached.

Thanks for asking. Reason for removing it was simple: I never really used it and I don't need it..

Regarding my previous review...
I took up Comic Life Mark's invitation (below) to contact him directly about the problem I was having with Comic Life, and he promptly responded to my complaint. Without going into all the details here, Mark worked his magic on my Comic Life and the crashes became a thing of the past. The application is now running smoothly, without any problems. I now realise my previous 1-star rating was unfair, and I should have contacted Plasq directly rather than rant here. Sorry, Mark and the Comic Life crew!
Thanks, Mark, from one grateful (and happy!) Comic Life user.

I use it every night, it crashes every night. I have lost lots of work due to the instability of this application. Sent tons of crash reports to the developers, but they have not bothered to respond. The software should have incorporated an autosave feature, but it would need to autosave continuously, because the software, as previously stated, is not reliable.

This application has come a long way.
Pretty cool for single panels & smart cracks attached to photos.
You CAN storyboard effectively with it, even if you aren’t a killer artist.

AND they are about to release some type of draw application soon, too. I’d recommend Comic Life, if that means anything to anybody.

The multiple panel templates & type of “flyer” pages is really very nice as a starting point to generate “how-to’s” & gag flyers. The script page addition in version 3 was a nice touch.

Creating actual comic strips or graphic novels with it is quite possible, but not ideal.

Consistent line weights from frame-to-frame could become a problem, if you used this to generate an “approaching professional” level comic. For that it would be a little awkward production tool, though I have used it similarly. If you have to draw the panels in relative context - you are doing it elsewhere already.

Perhaps their new drawing app will address that part of the equation more robustly.

Get Comic Life anyway.
Its priced modestly & is sure worth the price.

While this app is clearly designed for casual consumer use, it's actually a fully functional professional tool as well. In my case, I have an artist that works in Manga Studio (Clip Studio Pro). Unfortunately, the English-language lettering tools in that software are a disaster (no kerning or ligatures at all, awkward, etc), so I need something else for lettering, and Comic Life is exactly the tool I need for that. It supports advanced OpenType text features (auto ligatures, etc), is extremely fast and smooth-feeling, and tweaking the size of a balloon-shaped dialogue box is fast and easy. The sound effect lettering tools are also great--you can stretch, bend, tweak, and outline fully-editable text to your heart's content. For my use, if I set up page sizes correctly, import full-page images, and set them to "actual size", I can then add lettering on top and export a 1:1 pixel-accurate PDF of each page with correctly anti-aliased text added. Works just as well in greyscale as color, too. The only disadvantage to using it in this completely non-standard way: If you're not using ComicLife to do the panels themselves, clipping SFX or dialogue balloons to the edge of panels is awkward--it requires adding an invisible, borderless panel overlaying the one in the image and putting the text inside it. Functional, but clumsy, so I usually end up adding balloons in Manga Studio. My only other complaints are that accessing the advanced text features is cumbersome, since most of it is buried in tiny tabs in a small floating properties window, and it's organized the way I'd expect. It's in there, but hard to find things if you don't know where they are, and they aren't always clearly labeled with what they do. Also, it's a shame there's no "outline" feature to SFX text--if you add a border to text, the border ends up centered on the text outline, with no option to give it an external "halo". For, say, black floating text with a white outside border, this has the effect of making the text itself look really spindly if the border is thicker.

I use this app to letter all my comics and to create tutorials with. Now that it can import TXT or RTF files, lettering comics couldn't be better!

A fine app indeed! Just uncertain about the best way to upgrade: as an owner of v. 2, I am entitled to upgrade at half price - but if I buy currently on the App Store, it is offered at half price as well. Wondering if I should seize the opportunity to switch to the App Store version, or continue to follow the usual upgrade route...

I put it through the paces for over an hour and readily sought to upgrade. Plasq is fine group with some serious talent and it shows in their products. The new styles are great as are the new features. I use Comic Life mostly for recaps of family events where I've managed to pull-off some tomfoolery and get away with it. ;) Here is a link to the many reasons to consider upgrading: http://plasq.com/products/comiclife3/whyupgrade

Love it! Fast and easy. Lots of features. Templates could be a bit more stylish and would be great to have hyperlinks when exported as HTML (can be achieved easily with further editing outside the program though).

I have to admit Comic Life isn't just a load of fun, but it's extremely well designed. No issues, kudos to the developer.

Improvements in 2.1.1 (v21672): Various bug fixes for issues encountered with the 2.1 update. That update incorporated a number of under the hood changes made in order to prepare for comic sharing with the iPad edition. Unfortunately it caused some issues which are addressed in this update. The bug fixes are: Trouble/crash opening some 1.X comics PDF output orientation locked to portrait PNG files losing transparency on export Image in panel moving when resizing the panel DigitalStrip limited to italics Lint McCree font line height differences between regular/italic/bold Slight misalignment of images in panels causing gaps Images missing from comics created from user templates Flickering editing area when working with vector images

Great! Now I'm using it even to make custom paper bookmark for my books. You may ask plasq.com for the template I expressly created.

It must have been difficult to improve an application like Comic Life 1.x but at plasq they succeeded in the deed! V. 2 is even better. Absolutely a must-have app and a great support.

Great fun!

it's a fun piece, I hope it could be free upgrade.

I have been using Comic for the last year or two and find it excellent for my purpose which is to tell a "story" with the pictures of my travels around Europe and with the outings with my kids and/or grandchildren. I usually have a one to two page "comic" which depicts the story, eg; my grandson giving me a violin concert, my so-called diet whilst in Florence, my motorcycle trips to Bruges, Gant, Venice, Milan, the Alps, the wine vendimia in Champagne, thru Andalucia, etc. So instead of having hundreds of pictures (which I do) I have to select the best, think about the composition and the messages, and then play around a bit until I have the finished product. It could use more page templates with other shapes. So I combine its use with iWatermark for watermarking and different titles, and with Picasa for collages. The software is easy to use, reliable, does not have any of the defects mentioned for the older versions (mine is 1.4.4) and it reflects the ease that Macintosh brings to daily digital life. I highly recommend it.

This software would be great if it wasn't so buggy. But it is. Small one-page comics work great, but every time you make a multipage comic with lots of editing, it eventually gets into some freaked out state whereby you cannot select/delete certain elements (like speech bubbles), and the undo system crashes, which makes it easy to lose the last bit of your work. Undo no longer does anything, so if you delete an element, it's gone forever. I don't know anything better for this task, but the bugginess is very irritating.

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. Even for producing professional Comics this is the be all and end all for Comic creation.

i thought 'uh wtf' when i first seen this on my new computer. Never tried it until recently. Never expected something this good, wow i love this app!!! Feels like it should be part of iLife. Great s/w, give it a whirl now!

I love this application and it's not for nothing that OSX integrated it in its baic package in its last version. I just have a problem now in opening the files that I did with the old version of Comic Life (similarly to what another dude experineced), I can actually open the files with Comic Life but I don't see anything in the main screen, while the miniatures on the left are there. Hope developer will be able to fix it cause I really don't want to loose the originals of my old comics !!! Thanks for giving my a new way of expressing my thoughts!!! Stefano

version has improved, working is fun now!

INSPIRED CONCEPT, FLAWED EXECUTION It's said that one thing people love best is creating narratives. In facilitating this, ComicLife scratches a VERY deep itch! CL seems like the kind of app that would actually sell Macs: everyone who sees it, loves it. I too want it to be the best it can be. However, right now, it's really more proof-of-concept than finished product -- it's buggy, slow, requires excessive horsepower for what it does, and gives users too little control. In the spirit of constructive criticism, then, here are some suggestions for the next version: * Users need more style management control -- the ability to disable/delete unused styles would be a good start * In any program this visual, all styles should be graphically represented, not just named * The background area outside the page should be a pasteboard (common to all pages) * Zooming in should center around the currently selected object * Alignment tools should let users align (and probably distribute) objects to each other (not just the page), just like in any draw program. * Grid-snapping should apply to everything, not just panels. * You should be able to batch-change multiple selections via the contextual menu * The details pane should more clearly indicate modes and subordinate hierarchies A Few Selected Bugs * At least in my testing, QuickComic rarely worked properly * page ranges don't appear in the "save as" dialog * user-created page templates only open correctly if dragged (not if double-clicked) These comments aside, everyone should buy it anyway, to support and encourage the plasq team. If they listen to their users and come through with a solid 3.0, it should be a smash hit, and rightly so.

POOR. simply hangs up. using 10.4.6, iphoto lib manager 3.1.2.

nice, easy, fun... a real Macintosh app!

It produces nice casual and semi-professional looking designs, but more importantly is a real blast to use. Simple and intuitive.

nice and fun app! but... "Houston, i have some problems" when i try to make a comic "droping" some picts, i dont know if my mind... but, CPU cycles arise and my HD sounds a lot... its like the application will use a lot of resources of my machine. other thing... i try to open "old" comic life files using this new 1.2 version and the application don't start, i try too starting application first and later opening some comic life file with same results... i need "force" to quit the application in both cases. I return to 1.1.1 version until developers dudes can fix that problems.

This program is really fun. I am not a comic nerd, but I really think this is cool. Easy to use, fun, very user friendly. Its a winner.

cool, really entertaining and totally customizeable- wonder how the full version is.

Awsome. Simply the best. Fast, intuitive and fun. A must have app for Mac and Comics lovers :)

What a freaking awesome application! Cheers to the developer.

Such software make me proud to be on Mac OS X.

Comic Life is pretty intuitive and has played nice with Tiger thus far. I appreciate the iPhoto-book page setup options. If you haven't tried it out and are curious, give it a whirl. Thanks for developing a fun tool.

Crashes on launch. I'm running a clean install of Tiger + 10.4.1 update.

Great software, but 1.1 release may be buggier than 1.0.1b (which was stable and great under Panther). Admittedly it may be me Tiger upgrade that causes the problems but so far I have had the following 3 bugs pop up: 1) The iPhoto library pictures will not all load into the preview window. No, my library is not corrupt as it works just fine within iPhoto itself. 2) The export to picture option would not let me choose any higher than 72 dpi. Very odd. 3) When I tried to save my project, I got the message "Cannot save project " What? All the work I did and I can't even save it? ugh I am operating on an older G4 with a Tiger upgrade, so that might have messed things up. I am getting a Mac Mini this week with a fresh install of Tiger and will try Comic Life on that machine to see if I get the same results.

Excellent piece of software, and well worth the price at each of the available tiers. It took only a second (well, a few minutes) to get something together to put a smile on my girlfriend's face. And she is not easily impressed by anything technical. It would be nice to see a grouping feature (correct me if it's already there and I missed it) for selected elements, and the corner scaling "thingies" are a little obstructive, but in all, a great package and near-perfect example of how Mac software should act and look.

An excellent piece of software and exactly the kind of thing that the Mac is renowed for. It's simple and yet very productive. After using it for a couple of days I put my money down today (and a very reasonable fee as well it is), and created a seven page comic in under an hour, with many of my PC using colleagues drooling around me as I worked. Also it is of note that even with version 1, the app is very stable and fully featured - something many developers could bear note of. A couple of nice features would be to be able to export the comic as a multipage PDF or TIFF. I exported mine today as individual TIFF files then used preview to convert them to PDF files, then pdfJoin to stitch them together. Viola, one portable comic. Keep it up guys.

This thing rocks! it's as simple as that. It's simple to use, so intuitive, very flexible - yet powerful and produces insanely great results. Just buy it - go on, put a smile on your face. I just love this thing.

With the 1.0.1b release, I decided to plunk down my $$$. Folks, this is one of the most intuitive, slick, and creative pieces of software I have ever seen for the Mac. I'm also much impressed with the way that Plasq listens to the public...There were a few comments in the forums, etc. about the high cost of the 1.0 release so they immediately came up with a tiered, much more reasonable cost scale....Good stuff and they get my $$$ for it!

I've played with this demo software (again, great that you provide it crippled free). I put my money where my mouth is. Now that the price went down to $25 and you have a $20 educational version there's really no excuse NOT to buy this gem. If you ever want to see jaws drop, get this bad boy. Its perfect for comic artist as a prototyping and maybe even full production work (MAYBE!). Web comics will explode with this (though you're probably get alot of cheesy comics. Nothing wrong with that). Mac people, it is these types of apps that make OS X a uniquely awesome place to be working in. Keep up to great work, gentlemen.

Crashes on launch. After clicking "not yet" on register screen, comic life 1.0.1 begins to show photos from my iPhoto library in the bottom right then unexpectedly quits. OS 10.3.9 (iPhoto5.0.2), G5 1.8mhz, 1.5GB Anyone have any luck running it? Anyone with similar problems?

This program is what OS X is all about. It is easy to use, intuitive, fun, and intigrates well with other applications. The built in help is very detailed. I was able to make a four-page comic of my daughter's birthday party in about one hour. The on-line version of the comic came out great and the print version looked fantastic. (We are going to use it as part of the thank you notes.) I reported a few small (non-threatening) bugs to the developers and they responded quickly and politely and are working on fixes. I feel that it is slightly overpriced, but I did not regret spending $40.00 as I am going to have loads of fun with it. I LOVE this program.

Brilliant! This is the first software I can recall that I've been thinking about for a couple of days after just a glance at it...the creative potential for this is wide open. In anticipation of fitting the purchase of Comic Life into the family budget, I showed the software to my wife. Her eyes lit up, and she immediately ejected "SCRAPBOOK! This is a perfect tool for making my scrapbook! Buy it!" So, just thought I'd toss that into the mix for ya there. Excellent job! I'm looking very much forward to playing with Comic Life and coming up with all sorts of things. (NOTE TO APPLE: You'd be insane not to jump all over this as a premium for .Mac members!)

Exactly what I've been hoping for and more! Expect my $40 very, very soon. But this isn't just for comics, create slick greeting cards, or share your photos in a cool and fun way by adding word balloons or sound effects. Comic Life is very Mac-like and clutter-free. You've done a wonderful job! I can't praise you enough!

Slick software that lets you present your photos comic book style. Has all the hallmarks of great Mac software: lots of creative options, easy to use, stylish interface, drag and drop galore, and humerous touches (check out the sound FX LOL). It IS a little pricey for shareware, but give the demo a spin (it's not crippled - thanks for that!) and it may hook you enough that you will want to cough up the $$$. I know I'm seriously considering doing that!

Absolutely one of the coolest, simplest and most intuitive pieces of software around. $40 is a bargain for pros, but $20 is about right for the average joe, and will sell a lot more copies.

This is a super cool piece of software that gives a unique way to display photos. - For The H*ll Of It

This is an amazing piece of software. Wow! I wish every piece of software could be this awesome. Yet one more reason to love my Mac.

A lovely piece of software... just the right touches of humour and consistency. If you're thinking of doing some project that could work with a comic approach, this is so what you want. If it were $19.95, I'd buy it in a heart-beat. If it were $25, I'd seriously consider it... But I've got to be pretty serious or have specific projects in mind before I'll spend $40. *Sigh* Maybe .mac will do a member's half-price deal...!!

This is one of the coolest pieces of software I have ever used. My kids absolutely love it. Think of all the awesome uses - scrapbooking, comicbooking, etc. Extremely well done! If Uncle Sam were kinder this year, I'd have plopped down the moolah today. Will buy when money becomes available. HIGHLY recommended.