Online Magazine of Inspirations, Information, & Distractions for Digital Artists
If you hurry and check out www.macfriendly.org, you can get two truly great deals. First, you can treat yourself to twelve Mac applications that are worthy of your icon bar. Second, you will be pleased to know that the funds you paid support the care and feeding of homeless animals. First, the applications. For photo buffs, there are three applications that you’ll enjoy. Calico Panorama helps stitch rows, even multi-rows, of images together with ease. Bracketeer takes your … [Read more...]
The other day I was sitting at my desk when I started to hear a faint clicking sound. I pushed the noise out of my mind for a while and continued to work on the task at hand. Before long the clicking started to get louder and louder; it was clearly a consistent mechanical noise and was coming from under my desk, right where my Mac Pro is parked. I popped my head down there and sure enough, it sounded like one of my 4 hard drives was starting to go. Usually if you hear a clicking sound coming … [Read more...]
It's now the two year mark for my switch from Windows to Mac. Over the last two years I've gone from a Windows developer exploring the Mac as a compliment to my Windows and Linux machines to a full time Mac user that spends the vast majority of my time in OS X. I didn't wake up one day and say "Wow, I hate Windows. I'm going to switch to Mac". I bought a little white MacBook, put it on the desk next to my primary Windows machine and started playing with it. Though technically underpowered … [Read more...]
LiteIcon by FreeMacSoftaware.net, is an easy-to-use app to change the system folders. Did I mention its free? I wouldn't normally go for pimping my desktop but I happen to be reading DesignSponge's Blog and found a desktop wallpaper I couldn't live without. The problem is that my desktop folders blend into the background now and, even after changing the label colors on the folders, its still all a little too much. Trying to find anything in any app using the Open> window would just make … [Read more...]
I have a brand spanking new MacPro- -2.66 Quad Core with 600 GB Hd & 6 GB 1066 RAM and a 24 in. Cinema Display with an Wacom Intous3 4 x 6 in. Pen Tablet. I was weak in the knees, and silly-giddy as I liberated this monster from its cardboard confines. It is truly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Made more beautiful because its mine. In the last couple of years, I have cooled to Apple's hip reputation for quality and innovation. My Intel iMac's motherboard needed replacement … [Read more...]
In the beginning, there was light, and we captured it with film. Next came digital cameras, and then came the Lensbaby. Created by professional photographer Craig Strong, the Lensbaby has had an impact on photographers, and their ideas and images. Craig is a photographer turned inventor... his love for photography started at an early age, and after college he went pro, working as a photojournalist. He also had a steady business shooting weddings and portraits. I recently had a chance to … [Read more...]
One of my favorite–yet least mentioned–free utilities is Growl, a universal notification service for Mac that lets applications notify you of events. Now instead of each application deciding on how they want to present notifications for things like new mail, incoming tweets, etc. you can control it in a single place, assuming the application supports Growl or an extension has been written for it. Such is the case with Mail.app. Though Mail.app is not written to support Growl the … [Read more...]
UPDATE: Dr. Roach reviews the latest release of DeNoise here A few weeks back I wrote about TopazLabs application TopazAdjust3, and I liked it so well that it obviously influenced me to take a look at its sister (brother?) application DeNoise. Topaz Labs makes applications for both still and video imaging, and it is the digital still imaging area that have my interest because Photoshop from Adobe is the center of my workflow and I like things that plug-in to Photoshop. … [Read more...]
When I blog about applications that I've found I generally wrap up my posts with an open invitation to readers: Got any you like? Many folks have been generous and shared links and applications that I've used to expand my virtual toolbox and make my Mac experience more fun and productive. This time I turned that process around a bit and used Twitter up front. I put out this question: Looking for cool little Mac utilities that nobody knows about... I promptly received replies from a number of … [Read more...]
I don't know how many hours I have put in writing actions to allow me to produce some of the currently popular photoshop effects; really more than I want to admit. By the time I've worked my way through reading tutorials, performing the action(s), refining the effect(s), redoing the action(s) and getting client feedback, I have quite a bit of time committed to some projects. Not that I don't think some of the techniques aren't pretty cool and I admire the developers of the concepts; some are … [Read more...]
