Picturesque is the Mac’s one-trick pony for photos

For Mac users who publish photographs on the web, our tools are not limited. From Photoshop to GraphicConverter to iPhone, we have plenty of choices to enhance photos, display photos, crop photos, and one-click to a complete gallery. If you collect Mac utilities, you’ll like this one-trick pony that makes good photos look better—perfect for the web.

Skinning The Photo Cat

How many ways can Mac user improve their photos? iPhoto alone is loaded with the basics and beyond.

Start with crop. Or rotate. Or enhance. Or adjust color and effects. Retouch or fix the red eye. Those basics are fine for most users, and produce improved photos which display nicely on web pages.

Or, go to the other end of the scale, take out a second mortgage on your house or sell your first born male child, and delve into the world of Photoshop. Is there anything that Photoshop cannot do except remain affordable?

Fortunately, Mac software developers know there are many ways to skin a cat, so to speak, and offer up plenty of tools that do easily what is complex in Photoshop or can’t be done at all in iPhoto.

Picturesque

I refer to Picturesque as a one-trick pony, though it has far more than one trick just a click away. Advertising copy puts it nicely, but it doesn’t really say much.

Picturesque is an application designed to make images look gorgeous for the web.

What makes web page photos look special? A three dimensional look? The sometimes overused reflection? Shadows? Stokes in appropriate color combinations? Yes.

With an animated drag and drop style interface, Picturesque makes images gorgeous with tasteful effects like 3D perspective, reflection, glow, shadow, curve, and stroke in less time than it takes to open Photoshop.

Seriously, in about the same time it takes to fully open Photoshop, I can drag and drop a photo into Picturesque, add shadow, stroke, and reflection. And still have time to wonder why I upgrade Photoshop every so often.

One or Many

Picturesque is not just for a photographer wannabe with a few photos to plunk onto a web page. Automation exists for a reason. Instead of creating effects for a single photo, why not beautify the whole batch?

Picturesque can also beautify images in batch, and with the ability to resize, crop, and apply effects on a whole folder of images, Picturesque is an an easy way to make sophisticated thumbnails and refined full sized images.

Suddenly you see a little more potential in this one-trick pony with a few extra tricks, right?

7 Ways

How many ways do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

• 1-click Reflections. Blow people away with stunning reflections. No need to fiddle around with layers, just click reflection.
• Curves in all the right places. No more mucking around with masks. Curves are as simple as ticking boxes.
• Easy Shadows, Glows & Strokes. Traditional effects like shadows, glows and strokes are only a click away in Picturesque.
• Son of a Batch. Drop a folder of images onto Picturesque to beautify them all in less time than it takes to open Photoshop. You can also batch resize.
• Pretty Presets. Picturesque keeps track of all your favourite styles in style with presets.
• Automate with Applescript. Build Picturesque into your workflow with Applescriptability.
• Awesome 3D perspective. With just 2 sliders, Picturesque lets you create the gorgeous 3D perspective effect.

See? Picturesque does more than a single trick, but it does plenty with a single click.

Here’s the problem with this handy utility. It doesn’t do enough. It’s not a fault. It’s a desire. After using Picturesque for half an hour you start to want it to have more features, because what it gives is so good, so fast, so worthy. But the features end quickly (as would happen faster with a true one-trick pony). Highly recommended.