I was at the Apple store the other day and I came across the box for Manga Studio Debut.

I've seen all the "How To" Manga books at Barnes and Noble and I'm always skeptical of a product that is so specific.

I get suspicious and start smelling "trend exploitation".

After checking out the box and noticing the $49 buck price I decided to pick it up and give it a shot.

I took it home and found that they had misprinted my serial number on my disc.

I spent the next week and a half getting a new number. This included scanning my disc and the envelope it came in and uploading that to the company's server.

I would have paid $49 bucks to not own this product at that point.

Finally I got the software opened and running and to my shock it's actually a handy program.

Most everything you can do in MSD you can do in Photoshop. The good thing about MSD is that for it's price it's really useful and powerful.

You could go from start to finish and do a complete comic in it. That's a serious plus for it's price.

The Good:

Cheap

Organizes your work into Story and Pages.

Gives you a large choice of pre-made page layouts that are print friendly.

Pencil tool control is great. You could pencil digitally in this program with ease.

Inking tool needs a little work but still handy.

Panel cutter tool helps you make panels on and their borders with speed and ease.

Double click on the panel and it separates it into another window where you can work on it without having to deal with the whole page.

The most powerful and helpful element is the screen tone tool. You can make any size screen tone and you don't have to worry about morie patterns.

It also comes with it's own lettering and pre-designed Manga-centric balloons.



The Bad.

You can can do all of this in Photoshop and Illustrator.

That being said for someone on a budget it's a fantastic deal.



The Ugly:
What a mistake with the serial numbers. This really made me lose faith in the company. Hopefully they will work things out and save them selves disgruntled users.


They also have a "pro" version.

more info here.

[link]


As I mess with it some more I'll post some of the art I've done with it. I think it would be great for making layouts and keeping them organized.


-k


PS
Thanks to everyone who sent me color samples. I passed them on to the editor of the book and I'll be contacting you as things develop.