Creative Tip: xScope is an Ideal Tool for Web Designers.

xScope ($27) is a great utility for Mac-based web and UX (user experience) designers. It provides a number of tools for measuring, aligning, and inspecting on-screen graphics — which floats above your files as you work.

You have to play with xScope to get a sense of how helpful it is. It has on-screen rulers, floating guides, and a nicely designed screen overlay that shows the usable space for any screen (including new templates for the iPhone). My favorite features is a new dimensions tool, which instantly identifies the pixel dimensions of anything on your screen. Watch the movie below to get a sense of how cool this feature is:

Movie: xScope Dimensions Tool

Source: This tip inspired by the repeated suggestion of fellow blogger Jordan Bojar. With added credence from a mention on Daring Fireball where John Gruber says "xScope is my favorite utility for zooming in on and measuring on-screen graphics."

Tech Tip: Leopard Disk Utility Can Now Resize Partitions.

In the past, changing the size of a Macintosh volume has been a significant undertaking, requiring third-party tools or offline reformatting. But, all that changes in Leopard. In the newest version of OS X, you can grow or shrink any HFS+ partition. The resizing is done live, and can even be performed on a mounted boot volume (though we wouldn't recommend it).

For more details, read the post on Make Mac Work, our sister blog written for IT professionals who support Mac users:

Make Mac Work: Resize Disk Partitions.

Warning: This is the sternly-worded paragraph that reminds you to never resize a partition without a complete current backup. Got it?

Source: This tip comes directly from Jordan Bojar's weekly Make Mac Work blog.

Seattle Training: Upcoming Morning Workshops.

Wed, Mar 5 - Acrobat: Interactive PDFs.
Thu, Mar 6 - Photoshop CS3: Retouching Digital Anomalies.
Wed, Mar 12 - Using Adobe Lightroom.
Thu, Mar 13 - Photoshop CS3: Smart Objects + Shape Layers.
Wed, Mar 19 - Acrobat: Prepress with PDFs.
Thu, Mar 20 - Photoshop CS3: Layer Effects.

Your referrals wanted! Referrals from our clients and readers are what keeps CreativeTechs healthy and in business. As a small thank-you, every week we send iTunes gift cards to new Seattle-area subscribers, plus the friend or colleague who referred them:

Vacation Alert!
Your friendly tips-writing staff is on vacation through March 10th. We've queued up some fun tips while we're gone, but we won't be around to thank new Seattle subscribers until we get back. Thanks for your continued referrals, and we look forward to a massive list of names when we return.

CreativeTechs QuickTips is a free weekly newsletter for creative professionals who use Macs. Each week we publish a fresh mix of left-brain and right-brain tips based on our real world experience supporting hundreds of creative teams in the greater Seattle area. For a complete archive of previous tips, visit www.creativetechs.com/tips

For IT Professionals supporting Mac users, visit Make Mac Work. This weekly technical blog focuses on IT issues facing Macs in Enterprise environments. It is written by CreativeTechs' lead enterprise engineer, Jordan Bojar. For an archive of previous topics, visit www.makemacwork.com

Your referrals wanted! CreativeTechs relies on word-of-mouth introductions. If you know a Seattle-area creative team who might benefit from our unique expertise providing computer support for creative professionals, please introduce us. We are never too busy for your referrals. Email help@creativetechs.com, or call us at 206-682-4315.

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