Recent Posts19951
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: TBS Cover Editor 1.6 - Create virtual boxes and covers for your software
« Last post by mouser on April 06, 2009, 01:19 PM »I really want one of these boxshot programs.. I compared a few of them today and my conclusions are as follows:
TBS Cover Editor seems like the most powerful tool, with basically a full editor that lets you place text and clipart exactly where you want it. Most boxshot editors require you to create an image file for each side of the box shot and use those. While that may be ok much of the time, it does make it significantly harder to tweak things and deal with odd proportioned areas like the spines of boxes, etc. The graphic editor in TBS is extremely impressive, and the real time preview is fast and snappy. Big thumbs up here:
The commercial box shot programs use templates that have different objects (like a box, a book, a cd, a dvd case), so all have the potential of supporting more fun designs.
However, the only thing causing me to hesitate in purchasing TBS Cover Editor is that they are missing some object designs that would be really nice to have. For example Insofta Cover Commander has must less control over placing your graphics and editing, but has some really neat object designs you can use, including a spiral book, and several designs which show a cd/dvd box with a cd standing next to it or half removed, which i personally like better than the designs in TBS:
Compare this to the meager collection of object designs in TBS:
And it should be said that the lack of a graphic editor has an unexpected benefit for a program like Insofta, which is that you can easily switch between different object designs and see how your box images would look on them, which you can't do in TBS because each object design template requires different graphics layout. However this may be less useful than it seems because its not often that the image files will be the right proportions for multiple object templates, which requires a cumbersom editing of the graphic image files in a separate program.
So my conclusion:
TBS Cover Editor could be an easy pick for top Box Shot Tool on the planet, if they created more object designs. Even without them, it's right up there at the top of the heap -- the only reason to choose another tool would be if you really wanted one of these other objects (like a box+cd combo image, which i think is pretty nice looking).
If and when TBS Cover editor adds some of these fancy object designs it will be an easy recommendation.
TBS Cover Editor seems like the most powerful tool, with basically a full editor that lets you place text and clipart exactly where you want it. Most boxshot editors require you to create an image file for each side of the box shot and use those. While that may be ok much of the time, it does make it significantly harder to tweak things and deal with odd proportioned areas like the spines of boxes, etc. The graphic editor in TBS is extremely impressive, and the real time preview is fast and snappy. Big thumbs up here:
The commercial box shot programs use templates that have different objects (like a box, a book, a cd, a dvd case), so all have the potential of supporting more fun designs.
However, the only thing causing me to hesitate in purchasing TBS Cover Editor is that they are missing some object designs that would be really nice to have. For example Insofta Cover Commander has must less control over placing your graphics and editing, but has some really neat object designs you can use, including a spiral book, and several designs which show a cd/dvd box with a cd standing next to it or half removed, which i personally like better than the designs in TBS:
Compare this to the meager collection of object designs in TBS:
And it should be said that the lack of a graphic editor has an unexpected benefit for a program like Insofta, which is that you can easily switch between different object designs and see how your box images would look on them, which you can't do in TBS because each object design template requires different graphics layout. However this may be less useful than it seems because its not often that the image files will be the right proportions for multiple object templates, which requires a cumbersom editing of the graphic image files in a separate program.
So my conclusion:
TBS Cover Editor could be an easy pick for top Box Shot Tool on the planet, if they created more object designs. Even without them, it's right up there at the top of the heap -- the only reason to choose another tool would be if you really wanted one of these other objects (like a box+cd combo image, which i think is pretty nice looking).
If and when TBS Cover editor adds some of these fancy object designs it will be an easy recommendation.
