Just a quick note to point out that Manga Studio 5 (the non EX version*) is currently on sale as a download for FIFTEEN DOLLARS:
http://smsi.me/1Csx1LY
Also, Comicraft have got a half price font** sale on until July 21st:
http://www.comicbookfonts.com
Cheers
Jim
*The 'basic' version has all the functions of EX, except for multi-page 'stories' and a couple of printing/export options, as far as I can tell...
**Always buy the OTF version of the font where available.
Speaking of software bargs, have you seen the new Serif Affinity apps for OS X? Designer and Photo are currently on the MAS for 30 quid each, and look like they could, respectively, tear bloody great chunks out of Illustrator and Photoshop.
Here's a video of Photo (https://vimeo.com/132757806)—amusing ending. Pretty obvious what company that's referring to...
I have both. There are couple of deal-breakers with Designer that stop me from migrating my Illustrator workflow, but those are on the developers' roadmap. In terms of actual features, it's pretty much all there as an AI replacement.
Likewise, there's a caveat on Photo — which I've already plugged yesterday under the "Adobe Monopolies" thread — which is that there's a hiccup in the brush engine (on my Cintiq, at least) that causes slight lag, and for short, light strokes to not register, which rules Photo out as an art application* but it's comfortably competent enough to replace Photoshop as a general purpose image editor/processor/manipulator.
Both very impressive; both absolute bargains.
Cheers
Jim
*Although plenty of people don't seem to be having this problem, so try the 30-day demo for yourself.
Thank you for the heads up on Manga Studio, I'll have that thank you very much.
Bugger, offer finished now and wanted to upgrade from 4 to 5. If only it had lasted till payday (Monday!!). :'( Anyway have signed up for newsletter now so hopefully if offer is on again soon, then I can snag it when I have a bit of cash. ;)