5 of My Favorite Mac Apps!

Dropbox

Software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

Platforms – Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and iPhone Price – FREE

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EVERNOTE

Remember everything. I use it to store online purchase receipts, online bill pay receipts and a LOT more. It’s great to be able to have all that info on whatever computer I’m on!

Platforms – Mac OS X, Windows, iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Android Price – FREE or $5/Month for premium which gives more space and a few other features.

The Best Video Screen Capture for Mac

ScreenFlow is the best most Mac like screen capture application I have used! If you do video screen captures you HAVE to try it. It beats all others in my opinion and I have used most of them.

With ScreenFlow you can capture your desktop and your iSight camera at the same time! It also offers many really good features when editing such as the ability to have mouse clicks heard, a red growing ring from mouse clicks that they call radar effect, background windows and desktop blur automatically (it focuses on the window you are working in and blurs the rest) this can be set for whatever duration, and many others. It ROCKS! Also ScreenFlow captures don’t look washed out like some others.

For Export options it has:

• Web-High
• Web-High (Best Quality)
• Web-Low
• Web-Low (Best Quality)
• PAL DV
• NTSC DV
• Lossless
• iPhone
• Apple TV
• iPod

You can also scale the final output by % or to a custom pixel size.

You can also EASILY add chapter markers when editing and choose to include them when Exporting, this allows viewers to choose the chapter in a drop down menu in Quicktime.

You can name the chapters whatever you want I just typed Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to test it.
(Not sure about chapter markers if converting to other formats because I haven’t done it?).

Check it out!

ScreenSteps Screen Capture/Tutorial Software for Mac and Windows

ScreenSteps from Blue Mango Learning Systems is one of the easiest screen capture tutorial applications I have found. It mostly automates the process of making a screen image capture tutorial. Not only does it make the process of capturing and putting together the tutorial easy but it makes outputting the tutorial to HTML, PDF and with ScreenSteps 2, now in beta (download ScreenSteps 2 Mac Beta here), uploading the tutorial to your own ScreenSteps Live account extremely easy! The Windows Beta for ScreenSteps 2 should be released soon according to their website.

This really is great software for teachers who teach computer skills. Particularly good for Graphic Design teachers I would think? It isn’t that expensive and one license covers both Mac and Windows.

Jing Screen Capture for Mac or Windows

You all should check out this application. It is free right now as it is in development. It is a screen capture (video or image) application from TechSmith, the makers of Camtasia Studio and SnagIt, that makes it very quick and easy to upload and share with others. You can use Screencast.com, Flickr or FTP. I took a screen shot of the Jing logo on the Jing website for this post and uploaded to Flickr and then used Flickr’s “Blog This” feature to post this very quickly.

Here’s the link for Jing.

Flickr Export Plugins for iPhoto and Aperture

I use the one for Aperture and it ROCK’s.
They are not free but if you use Flickr a lot they are well worth it.
They do offer a Demo.

They are from Connected Flow and if you use iPhoto or Aperture and have a Flickr account you should get one.

They offer super easy export with nice options while exporting.

— From their site —

iPhoto
“Features
FlickrExport for iPhoto provides a comprehensive set of features for getting your images from iPhoto to Flickr:
• Edit photo titles and descriptions, and add tags to them.
• Save time – FlickrExport can update iPhoto’s database with the titles and descriptions you give your photos.
• Save your Flickr bandwidth allowance – FlickrExport for iPhoto can resize your photos before uploading.
• Create a new photoset with your photos, or add them to an existing photoset.
• Automatically send your photos to a Group Pool on Flickr.
• Choose from a list of your Flickr tags and add them to your photos before uploading.”

Aperture
“Features
FlickrExport for Aperture provides all the features of the iPhoto version, plus:
• Automatically add an Aperture keyword to each photo uploaded.
• Add Flickr photo ID and URL to Aperture metadata.
• Replace existing photos on Flickr with updates versions from Aperture.
• Edit Geo data before uploading.”

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I really like the photo sizing feature. You can use their presets or easily add your own
presets to use. Below are screenshots from the Aperture version.

Below is the main dialog box with the add to pool feature shown.

Below is the main dialog box with the add photos to feature shown.

Below is the main dialog box with the photo sizing drop down shown.

Below is the photo size presets editor where you can add your own.

Below is the same as above with different options of W or H max px.

They make adding photos to Flickr as easy as adding them to iPhoto or Aperture.

Hello world!

This is my new graphic design blog. I will be adding content and organizing the site for the next few weeks and then it should stabilize. I first started this blog with a regular WordPress blog setup on a friends server but this looks promising? My original DesignsLink blog can be found here. Look for all previous post there.