ArtMatic Pro for Mac

Complex, yet powerful graphics synthesizer

I'm no artistic genius and so any helping hand that makes me look like one is fine in my book. ArtMatic is what's known as a 'modular graphics synthesizer' which means it does the same job with images as an audio synthesizer does with sound.

The result is some pretty weird and wonderful creations that go way beyond what most users are capable of. The downside, however, is that it's a pretty complex program that requires more than a little reading on the developer website to work out how to use it. If you don't, you end up clicking everywhere like a madman producing pretty images but with no idea how you've created them.

Difficulties aside though, ArtMatic Pro can create a huge range of images, animation, special effects, animation and sounds. There are many different examples provided with the program to inspire you. The manual consists of a series of tutorials that you need to perform in order to learn how to use the program. You'll need to print this out and make sure you have a good few hours spare to get the best out of ArtMatic Pro.

If you do ever make it as far as the structure tree, you'll see that you can mix and match everything from fractals to 3D effect to create some truly stunning designs. It does, however, seems to slow down a lot when you switch to full screen mode - ArtMatic Pro obviously requires quite a lot of processing power to render the images.

If you've got the time to study the manual and complete the tutorials, you could create some superb graphics and animations with ArtMatic pro.