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Apr 27 2009

Getting a Clearer Picture

Take screenshots, convert graphics and more with this week’s picks.

mu Getting a Clearer PictureScreenshot Helper

Switch to a less distracting background while taking screenshots with this free gem. This app hides your desktop picture and clutter and can even hide the menu bar and dock.

mu Getting a Clearer PicturePictu

With Pictu, your favorite picture is a menu item away. Pictu pops up a picture of your choice on click, and lives in the menu bar. And that’s all it does. Don’t you love programmer restraint?

mu Getting a Clearer PicturefreePhotoConverter

Rather than firing up Photoshop for simple image conversions, try this app. It converts between many formats and can resize and compress (jpgs).

mu Getting a Clearer PictureVNCDimensions

Is the picture you’re looking for on another system? Get VNC. If you haven’t used VNC already, this is a good time to try it. Share your Mac over a network, and view and control another Mac/PC.

mu Getting a Clearer PictureWinSwitch

Don’t misinterpret the name on this one. WinSwitch makes fast user switching faster. WinSwitch gives you quick access to other users’ accounts through a menu bar item. You can even tweak settings with the accompanying preference pane.

Get the picture? Have fun.

Brian

mu Getting a Clearer PictureDownloads provided by MacUpdate

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Apr 27 2009

Optimize Your DeliciousExport

Brought to you by: James

Clearly, the problem with DeliciousExporter is that it exports your images as their original size and uses CSS to resize them in your browser. Why not resize these images before uploading? Why not indeed…. The following are the exact steps that I took to shrink my library from 13.8mb to 2.6mb.

1. Download and purchase EasyBatchPhoto ($18). Why purchase? Because you get a very ugly watermark thrown on every image if you don’t. Why EasyBatchPhoto? Because I’ve tried the rest and they just don’t work. Skip to step 1a, right after step 5, for special instructions on using Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto.

2. Backup Delicious Library. You can do this by copying ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ to an external hard disk or burn a CD with that directory.

3. Now, open ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/ on your hard disk and delete every folder but “Plain Covers”.

4. Open your newly purchased EasyBatchPhoto. Choose whatever destination you want, set the scaling to “Stretch to fit” at 113×155 pixels, choose your desired scaling quality, set the format to “JPEG”, the quality to “80″, and make sure that “Preserve EXIF” is checked. At this point, you may want to add all of this as a preset. Why 113×155 pixels? Because that’s the size of the small, plastic-like image that will be displayed over your images in your newly exported library. Consequently, that is the size that the original images would have been resized to. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.

ebp Optimize Your DeliciousExport

5. Find your “Plain Covers” folder at ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ and drag it into the small box on the top-left corner of EasyBatchPhoto. Continue through the dialogue box and your photos will begin to convert. Move onward to step 6.

Use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto

1a. If you have Mac OS X v10.4.x, you can use Automator instead of EasyBatchPhoto for steps 1-5.

2a. Duplicate the “Plain Covers” folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ and drag this duplicate folder to your desktop.

3a. Launch Automator, select the contents of the Plain Covers duplicate, and drag them into the Workflow area.

4a. From the action area, select Preview/Scale Images and make sure that it occurs after the retrieval of the image files. Set this action to “To Size (pixels): 155″. Your settings should similar to the screenshot below.

asp Optimize Your DeliciousExport

5a. Execute the workflow and save it for later use.

6. Replace ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Images/Plain Covers/ with your newly created “Plain Covers” folder.

7. Launch Delicious Library. You will be shocked by how pixelated your cover images are, but that’s why you made a backup of your library in step 2. Now, quit Delicious Library.

8. Launch DeliciousExporter. Make sure that “Export images” is checked, enter your desired email address, and export your library.

9. Once your library is exported, open one of the .html files in your browser. Your cover images are no longer pixelated. That’s because they are exactly the size that they would have been resized to via the CSS.

10. Congratulations, your exported library is now as optimized as it could get (unless you lower the image quality any further). You may now upload your library and restore Delicious Library by replacing ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/ with your backup copy.

Just for fun, here’s what mine looks like:
library Optimize Your DeliciousExport

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Apr 27 2009

Use Your Screen Corners

Brought to you by: James

Your Screen Corners can be used for a multitude of tasks. In the old days, we used to call these “Hot Corners”. They’re like Hot Keys, but a lot easier to get to. Unfortunately, you only have four.

Sure, you only have four corners, but there’s a lot you can do with four. To see what the Apple would like you to do with your Screen Corners, go to System Preferences/Dashboard & Exposé. Apple has been pretty stingy on the amount of available options, but they are all very useful.

Personally, I prefer to set my lower-left screen corner to “Start Screen Saver”. This is both in homage to the old After Dark days, and to quickly lock my screen if need be. My lower-right corner is set to “Dashboard”. This allows me to quickly access my most commonly used widgets such as Weather, Dictionary, Calculator, and Calendar. My upper-right corner is set to “All Windows”. This triggers Exposé to resize all windows, making all of them visible and easy to choose from, which is a great help when I’m working on more than five Photoshop documents at once. I haven’t set anything for the upper-left corner, and probably never will. I use the Apple Menu too often, and I don’t want to accidentally trigger anything each time I go near it.

If you think that your Screen Corners are limited to Apple’s suggestions, then you’re wrong. Take a look at CornerClick and Spanner. From opening applications to running AppleScripts, there’s a lot more for your Screen Corners to do. Enjoy!

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