tutorial

Build a Window Management App with Apptivate and AppleScript

l 398 253 E2B8C194 978C 403B 8429 245F36234004 300x190 Build a Window Management App with Apptivate and AppleScriptOnce I get going again, you may notice a slightly new direction in the content here at MacMerc. I’d like to get away from reporting and repeating the news and focus more on tutorials and reviews of the awesomeness that can be done and had with our little technological gems from Cupertino.

To that end, I bring you a link to a tutorial I found from AppStorm. With this ingenious little system, you will quickly and easily build your very own window management app using nothing but a cigarette butt, a Starbucks splash stick, AppleScript and an app called Apptivate.1

What’s a window management app? Good question. Sounds like a big bag of boring, but if you often need to work in several different windows on a single screen and you spend any time at all sizing and positioning windows so you can see them all, you’ll dig this simple method to solve that dilemma.

What productivity hacks and and systems do you use to rock the Mac to save time? I want to know. Please leave a comment.

If you’ve written a tutorial or posted a video about it, I want to post it here. Please leave a link in the comments.

  1. I totally lied about the cigarette butt and the splash stick []

Adobe Photoshop Tip– The Lord of the Rings Tutorial– The Extended Director’s Cut

Will you look into the mirror?
What will I see?
Not even the wisest can say, for the mirror shows many things.
Things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to
pass.

Once you have completed the main tutorial, come here again and then I’ll show you how to add a reflection effect to the Ring.

Find an image

All I did was go to the Lord of the
Rings web site
and download a picture of Gollum but you can be more creative.
Use a picture or your boss, Bill Gates or your little brother.

gollum4 Adobe Photoshop Tip   The Lord of the Rings Tutorial   The Extended Directors Cut

Just open up the downloaded image in Photoshop, select the whole image (Command-A)
and copy it (Command-C). Then go to your Ring file you’re building, select the
Outer Ring layer and paste your downloaded image (Command-V). You will probably
need to scale the image because we want it to cover the whole ring. Go Command-T
and hold down the Shift key to scale the image proportionately over the Ring
and hit Enter when you’re done.

Change the reflections blending mode to Overlay and adjust the Opacity to 60%.

Now duplicate the reflected image layer and drag the duplicate between the
Inner and Outer Ring layers. Group this layer to the Inner Ring as you did before.
Go to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. Choose the Polar to Rectangular
setting, click OK and then use the Move to to drag the inner reflection around
until it is to your liking.

finalring Adobe Photoshop Tip   The Lord of the Rings Tutorial   The Extended Directors Cut

Adobe Photoshop Tip– Comic Art Effect — Photoshop Action

12097996 c3fc0f4a9e 300x126 Adobe Photoshop Tip   Comic Art Effect    Photoshop ActionIf you enjoyed our Comic Art Effect tutorial, you’ll love The MacMerc.com Comic Art Effect Photoshop Action — all the fun of the original, with much less work for you.

The effect is slightly different than the one detailed in the written tutorial and had to be dumbed down for automation’s sake. But, I think you will agree, it still looks pretty slick. Download it and give it a shot. It should work with Adobe Photoshop 7 and above for Mac (or even PC). If you have any trouble post a comment below.

Download it here!

No Flash? No problem—click here!»