Resizing Photos for Emailing

Have you ever noticed how freaked out relatives get when you email them high-res photos from your six- or eight-meg digital camera? For example, your grandmother in Minnesota may not have Photoshop CS2, and so dealing with that 26MB, 41-inch-wide photo you shot with your eight-meg camera might put a strain on her system. That’s why you might want to reduce the size of those photos you’re about to email. You don’t even have to launch Photoshop — because you can do the resizing right within Mail.

After you attach a photo to your email message (you can just drag-and-drop the image into the New Message window), take a look in the bottom-right corner of your email message window, and you’ll see a pop-up menu where you can choose the Image Size you’d like to send. As soon as you choose a size (other than Actual Size), the image is immediately scaled down right within the email message window so you can see the exact size of the photo you’re sending.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org

Need the First Available Printer?

If you’ve got a print job on your hands and you need it as soon as possible, but all the printers on your network are often busy, you can pool these printers together so your document will automatically print to the first available printer. Just go to the Printer Setup Utility (in the Applications folder, within the Utilities folder), Command-click on all the printers you want to pool together, then go under the Printers menu and choose Pool Printers. A dialog will open where you can name your pool (the default name is “Printer Pool”), and it shows a list of printers that are in that pool.

You can click-and-drag the printers into the order that you want and then click Create, which adds a new printer in your Printer list called Printer Pool. Choose that as your printer, and then when you choose Print, Mac OS X will start looking for the first available printer.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org

The One-Click Trick to Moving the Dock

Okay, so you’re working in a program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie, which takes up every vertical inch of the screen, and when you go to adjust something near the bottom, the Dock keeps popping up. Oh sure, you could move the Dock to where it’s anchored on the left or right side of the screen, but that just feels weird. But what if you could move it temporarily to the left or right, and then get it back to the bottom when you close Final Cut Pro, in just one click?

Here’s how: Hold the shift key, click directly on the Dock’s divider line (on the far right side of the Dock), and drag the Dock to the left or right side of your screen. Bam! It moves over to the side. Then, once you quit Final Cut Pro, just shift-click on that divider line and slam it back to the bottom (okay, drag it back to the bottom). A draggable Dock — is that cool or what!

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Thought

"There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich."

- Marlene Dietrich


L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Where Did That Download Come From?

If you download a file from the web, you can usually find out exactly where that downloaded file came from (including the exact web address) by pressing Command-I when you have the file selected. Once the info dialog appears, click on the right-facing arrow beside More Info to expand that panel and it will display a Where from header, and to the right of that it will show the exact web address from which the file was originally downloaded.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Graphic Design & Everything Else!!

Jessica Dockter is the graphic designer for Write On! Creative Writing Services. She does all our logos, formats the layout of this newsletter and creates all the cute designs for each of its features. She works with our clients who need branding ideas and help with layout for many of our writing projects. Her column is called

Jessica is able to make anything—from creating magazine ads to designing Web sites. And, now she has an idea for a fun eBook and she wants help from the WITS community. The eBook will be a guide of seasonal drinks, appetizers, hors d’oeuvres, and snacks. What sort of fun drinks do you make at this time of the year? What is the traditional summer treat your family enjoys? Would you be willing to share your recipe and ideas with us? We will include your bio and a link to your Web site or blog in the eBook as a thank you for your contribution. Then, when the book is finished, all our newsletter subscribers may have the eBook (PDF) to use as a gift to your online visitors. Oh, and you will also be able to say you are a published author! J

Send your submissions to leedesign@leedesign.org.

Converting to TIFF, JPG, or Photoshop

Want to change most any graphic into a Photoshop file? Just open the file in Preview, go under the File menu, and choose Save As…, where you can export your graphic in Photoshop format. But you’re not limited to Photoshop format — Preview will also export your file as a JPEG, PICT, BMP (for sharing files with PC users), PICT, Targa (for video), and more. If the format you’re saving in has options (such as quality and compression settings for JPEG and TIFF images), they will appear near the bottom of the dialog.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Super-Fast Way to Email a URL

If you run across a cool website and want to email that site to a friend, probably the fastest way is to press Command-Shift-I. This opens Mail, and inserts the Web URL into the body of your email. Now all you have to do is type the recipient’s name, enter “Check this site out” in the Subject line, and click Send.

Then all you have to worry about is their spam blocker stopping your email from getting through with such a generic subject in the title. (Note: If you want a super-slow way, highlight the website’s name, go under the Safari menu, under Services, under Mail, and choose Send Selection — it basically does the same thing.)

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Changing the Order of the Results

Let’s say you realize that most of the time you find yourself searching for music, movies, and photos (you’re a creative type). Well, by default those result categories appear farther down the list (with stuff like documents and email and contacts appearing near the top of the list). And because of that, you’ve been spending a lot of time scrolling. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Go to the Spotlight Preferences (found at the bottom of the Spotlight menu), and when it appears, all the categories are listed in the order they will appear. To change their order, just click-and-drag them into the order you want (in this case, you’d drag Music, Movies, and Images to the top).

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Thought

"Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things."

- Benjamin Franklin



L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

How to Make the Sidebar Work Like the Dock

You can customize the sidebar of the Finder window by adding other icons that make it even more powerful. For example, if you use Photoshop a lot, just open the window where your Photoshop application resides, drag the Photoshop icon right over to the sidebar, and the other icons in the sidebar will slide out of the way.

Now you can use this window kind of like you would the dock — to launch Photoshop, just click on its icon in the sidebar, plus like the dock, you can even drag-and-drop images you want to open right onto the sidebar’s Photoshop icon.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Yvonne is reporting in on her vacation

Yvonne is reporting in on her vacation. She says:

Yesterday I was in the desert of Palm Springs, California hiking Tahquitz Canyon in 100 degree+ temperatures. Today I'm at La Jolla Beach, CA trying to find logding in time to enjoy the ocean. Tomorrow, I'll visit Burnham Institute (also in La Jolla) where I'll meet Dr. Evan Snyder, one of the foremost research scientists on stem cell research. He is writing the foreword for my book Right to Recover, Winning the Political and Religious Wars over Stem Cell Research in America. For more information about my book see www.right2recover.com. I will be back in my office on Monday, July 23 and I'll answer your emails then.

Jessica Dockter
Graphic Designer for Write On! Creative Writing Services

Unlock More of Your Mac’s Power!

Wouldn’t it be cool if there were extra built-in automation power already on your Mac, and all you had to do was turn it on. Yeah, that’d be cool. Anyway, here’s something completely different (just kidding). Actually, you can unlock this automation by just doing a little digging.

Start by opening your Applications folder, and then look inside your AppleScript folder (don’t worry, you’re not going to be doing any scripting — they’re already written for you). Now double-click on the AppleScript Utility icon, and in the resulting dialog, turn on the Show Script Menu in Menu Bar checkbox. Close the Utility dialog, and then go to the menu bar and click on the Script icon — a list of all sorts of cool automatic functions are now just a click away.

Next Tip: Copy and Delete at the Same Time

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Two Seconds to Sleep

Want the fastest way to put your Mac right into a deep, sleepy-bear hibernation-like sleep (no whirling fan, no dialogs, no sound — nuthin’ — just fast, glorious sleep). Just press Command-Option and then hold the Eject button for about 2 seconds and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It doesn’t get much faster than that.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Thoughts

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

- John Ruskin


L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Checking for Bad Fonts

If there’s one thing that can bring a document (or your system) to its knees, it’s using a corrupt font (meaning a font that accepts bribes — sorry, that was lame). Anyway, finding out which fonts on your system might be corrupt was no easy task, but in Tiger, it just got a whole lot easier. Here’s how to search for rampant font corruption: Go to your Applications folder and launch Font Book. You can either click directly on any font that you might think is suspect (look to see if the font is sweating), or Command-click on the fonts you want interrogated, then go under Font Book’s File menu and choose Validate Fonts. This brings up a Font Validation window and if your fonts are on the up and up, you’ll get a little round checkbox beside them. If there’s reason to believe something may be wrong, you’ll get a yellow warning icon beside a font. If it’s corrupt, you’ll get a round icon with an X in it, telling you not to use this font. Click the checkbox beside that font, then click the Remove Checked button to remove this font from your system.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

The Secret Screen Capture Shortcut

Okay, you probably already know the ol’ Command-Shift-3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen, and you may even know about Command-Shift-4, which gives you a crosshair cursor so you can choose which area of the screen you want to capture. But perhaps the coolest, most-secret hidden capture shortcut is Control-Command-Shift-3 (or 4), which, instead of creating a file on your desktop, copies the capture into your Clipboard memory, so you can paste it where you want. (I use this to paste screen captures right into Photoshop.)

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Sending Huge Attachments

Most email servers have a limit to how large an attachment they’ll accept. Most limit an attachment size to 5MB (some even less), and if you email somebody a 6MB file, it’s probably going to get “kicked back” to you as undeliverable. Want to get around that? Use iChat instead. Once you have an iChat session started with someone, you can go under the Buddies menu and choose Send File. Navigate your way to the file you want to send, click OK, and the file will be sent to the person you’re chatting with (and a link to download your file will appear in their iChat window). No matter how big the file size is, it’ll get there.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Is That Task Done Yet? The Dock Knows

Let’s say you’re working in a power-crunching app like Photoshop, and you go to apply a filter to a high-res image, and it’s going to take a minute or two to process your command. You’re going to get a progress bar so you can see how long the process is going to take, right?

Well, thanks to Mac OS X’s way-cool Dock, you can switch out of Photoshop to work on something else and the Dock will let you know when the filter is applied. How? Well, when a progress bar appears in Photoshop, the Dock automatically adds a tiny little progress bar to the bottom of the Photoshop icon in the Dock so you can keep an eye on the progress, even when you’re doing something else (like checking your mail, shopping online, or writing a letter).=

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Thought

"There is no other cloesness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby."

- Susan Cheever


L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Seeing a Photo’s EXIF Metadata

When you take a photo with a digital camera, a boatload of background information is embedded into the file (called EXIF metadata), including when the photo was taken, the make and model of the digital camera, the exposure, shutter speed, lens focal length, whether the flash fired, and a host of other related info. Believe it or not, Preview can display all this EXIF metadata — you just have to know where to look. To see the EXIF data for the current image, just press Command-I, then click on the Details tab, and if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see a header for EXIF Properties, along with the full scoop on your image.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~

Faster Than Slide Show for Finding a Photo

By now you’ve heard that if your search results contain photos, you can see a slide show of those photos (by pressing Enter or clicking on Show All in the Spotlight menu once you’ve entered a search term, and then in the Spotlight dialog that appears, you can click on the little Play button to the right of the Images category).

The slide show thing is handy, no doubt, but you can also use it to get to a particular photo you want quickly. Here’s how: Start the slide show (click the little Play button), and then immediately click the Index Sheet icon in the slide show controls that appear along the bottom of your screen. This tiles thumbnails of all the photos in your slide show onscreen (giving you an Index Sheet view), so you can jump right to the photo you need, saving you the frustration of slowly wading through a slide show when you just want to quickly find one particular photo.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

L.E.E. Design
www.leedesign.org
leedesign@leedesign.org
~ Graphic Design ~