Not every useful tool arrives with a keynote. These three turned up in CreativePro's October roundup, and each solves one annoying job well.
Pigment, for palettes that actually sit together
ShapeFactory's Pigment builds colour schemes from lighting and pigment settings rather than random hue jumps, so the results feel like they belong in the same room. It's free and exports to Adobe Swatch Exchange, SVG or Sketch.
Smol, for shrinking files without uploading them
Smol is a Mac app that compresses and converts images, PDFs, video and audio entirely on your machine. It batch-processes, strips metadata and can upscale with AI. It costs $29 once, with no subscription and no quotas, which is refreshing.
Avellio, for typography QA in InDesign
Avellio adds a proofing pass to InDesign that flags style overrides, spacing problems, widows and orphans before a document goes to print. Pricing is $40 a year for solo users or $70 for a lifetime licence.
Our take
If you send client files by email, Smol pays for itself quickly. If you lay out long documents, Avellio catches the mistakes that are embarrassing to explain after the print run. Pigment is simply a nice way to start a palette.
Sources
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