Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Killing a bit of time, non creatively. Recorded two new songs today, so decided to take a break and do something mindless. I had been meaning to write up this list for some time now. So here is my list of essential software I use for mostly doing all the creating stuff. Too lazy to link them.
HitFilm Express . Excellent, free video editor, with hooks for editing, post processing, color grading, etc. Full featured, with purchasable content packs (or a $350 pro version). Trumps Adobe Premiere for my needs.
iSkyVideoSoft Converter . Been using this for years. It's paid, but worth every penny for me. Constantly updated. Basically converts every format of audio or video to any other format, perfectly and painlessly every time. Comes with profiles for file types (mp4, avi, etc) or even exporting to specific device types for ease of us (i.e., android phone, iPad air 2, etc)
LogicPro X . My DAW of choice, what I use for all my music production. As well, plugins I love - iZotope Ozone (mastering), Positive Grid Bias (guitar sim), Amplitube 3 (guitar sim), Peavy Revalver 4 (guitar sim), iZotope Nectar 2 (full vocal suite), Hornet AutoGain & Spikes (gain rider & non threshold based compressor-esque), T-Racks (compressors/leveler/maximizer/eq), Valhalla VintageVerb & Room (reverb sims)
CollageIt Pro . Excellent app for quickly creating a photo collage.
PhoShow Gold . Full featured slideshow app (osx and win), with purchasable transition/effect packs. Use it all the time.
Skrivener . Great tool for authors. Allows you to organize your chapters/notes/storyboards/characters in multiple ways, provides publisher friendly exports/etc.
Dropbox . Keep all my notes, song exports in sync. Run it on my pc's, laptops, and mobile devices so I have access to everything (although the apps kinda suck. no folder syncing, iffy with updated files that don't auto save to device). In this area I also use a few SimpleNote based client apps - but they are os specific using a simplenote storage DB backend.
Google Drive . Pay for 1TB monthly, so I back up all my music arrangements (like 20 GB for 80 songs), videos, photos, etc here.
Evernote . Also on the notes, I do use this for tracking/organizing everything I write/send/promote/etc. The marketing in this can be way heavy handed (and the constant pushiness to sync your notes).
OmniDisk Sweeper . Beautiful little tool for seeing exactly where your space is being eaten on your mac.
Photoshop (Essentials right now) . Nothing really to add.
Silver Efex Pro 2 . Recently free-wared by Google, a great little Nikon tool for adding effects (B&W and old film/camera) to your photos. While true photogs will opt to not use presets, this works great in a pinch when you don't need to tinker too much manually. Actually, you still can tinker with levels, exposure, etc here too if you want.
Android Studio & Xcode . For developing android & iOS apps. Pretty self explanatory.
Libre Office . I track all the songs with their ad copy, state of recordings, instrumentation, etc through a spreadsheet. How business like of me.
Apple Motion . Hidden in this app is a really great set of color grading tools for video at an affordable price.