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VIDEO: Windows Management with Divvy

Divvy 318x278 VIDEO: Windows Management with Divvy As boring and uninspiring as managing onscreen windows is, Divvy from Mizage makes it dead sexy. I know Mac OS X has Spaces and Exposé and I was all excited about those before they came out too but, now that I have them, they drive me crazy. Spaces I just have turned off and Exposé, though it helps me every so often when I lose a window, is just not a part of my geek utility belt as much as I had envisioned.

Divvy, on the other hand, does what I need doing and does it well. I can tell it, “I want this window to take up exactly 4/7 of the left side of my screen and I want this other window wit take up the other 3/7.” Heck, I can even tell it to make them overlap a bit. All I have to do is summon Divvy’s little window, drag and draw the area on the miniature screen it shows and the window snaps into submission.Then I can save those dimensions and setups to Divvy’s shortcuts menu and reduce the whole procedure down to summoning Divvy’s window and hitting a shortcut key.

Divvy does suffer from some logistical problems with complicated application interfaces like Adobe Photoshop, where there are windows and palettes and multiple navigation bars, but it does work—you may have to adjust the grid in Divvy’s Appearance tab to get better handling around the toolbars. Divvy is fabulous and sells for $14 US.

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 VIDEO: Windows Management with Divvy
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VIDEO: How to use Actions in Photoshop

Many, many years ago, I devised and wrote the Original Comic Art Effect tutorial for Photoshop. Since then, it continues to be one of the most popular items on the site—day in, day out. It also crops up in all kinds of interesting places—even video.

ComicElementsFinal8 VIDEO: How to use Actions in Photoshop

It wasn’t long before Photoshop power users wanted to apply the effect to dozens of images to create actual comic books. To do that meant many hours altering many images…following each step of the tutorial manually. They started to demand that I offer a Photoshop Action for the effect.

So I did.

This was great—the power users loved it. The problem was, those just-a-bit-newer to Photoshop were confused by it. Many thought it was supposed to be a Filter and would show up in that menu. They had no idea how to install it or use it—they just wanted to create the Comic Art Effect!!

So now, after many years, I have now created a video to show how it’s done. And the procedure is dead easy. In fact, since you will soon know exactly how to install and use Photoshop Actions, you’ll be happy to know that there are many places online that offer highly productive ones. For instance, here is Smashing Magazine’s Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions.

But, for now, power up Photoshop, download the Comic Art Effect Action and watch this quick video tutorial. Then get to it!!

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The LogMeIn Dropbox trick

logmeindropbox 318x122 The LogMeIn Dropbox trick

In a previous video, I reviewed LogMeIn Ignition and mentioned that it would be really handy in those situations where you’re out on the road away from your computer and you receive an email from a client on your iPhone or iPad saying that they desperately need a file sent to them…I file that is both too large to email and not on your iPhone.

With LogMeIn and Dropbox, you can actually manipulate your home computer from your iDevice and end up with a link that you can email your client so that they can quickly access that file without you having to race home to send it to them.

In today’s video, I show you just how that is done while also giving a quick plug to YemuZip.

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 The LogMeIn Dropbox trick