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MacPac – Seattle/Portland Apple Reseller.

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In December I published a tip on Frugal Ways to Spend Before Year End. Around that time, I asked a friend and colleague, Jason Knopp at Apple specialist The MacPac, to pull together a list of their used and refurbished Mac inventory as a resource we could point readers toward as part of saving money on computer purchases.

Well, he put in a fair bit of work, and under the pressure of deadlines, I never included it in my story. To make up for that, I’d like to correct the record now. If you are looking for good deal on new, previous generation, or used Apple products, check out the MacPac Clearance page:

Link – MacPac Clearance Page

Note: That link isn’t available for the general public. Jason pulled it together in December just for our readers. Sorry for letting it languish Jason!

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March 20, 2009
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Free InDesign vs QuarkXPress eBooks.

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You thought the old InDesign vs. QuarkXPress rivalry was dead? In the past three months both Adobe and Quark have published free downloadable guides showing how their competitor’s customers can best work with their software.

Adobe: Quark to InDesign CS4 Conversion Guide (PDF)

Quark: QuarkXPress 8 Integration Guide for Adobe Creative Suite (PDF).

These are both well designed and useful guides. Interestingly they are both geared to QuarkXpress users. Adobe’s ebook helps you plan a migration and smooth your transition from QuarkXPress to InDesign CS4. While Quark’s ebook helps you stay with QuarkXpress, while integrating with the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite applications.

Source: I ran across these books at different times on two of the best online resources for QuarkXPress and InDesign knowledge: PlanetQuark maintained by Jay Nelson of Design Tools Monthly. And InDesignSecrets founded by David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion.

March 16, 2009
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Preview iPhone Websites in Safari

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Last year we published a tip showing how web designers could test their website designs on Apple’s iPhone Simulator. Here is another, simpler, tip along those lines.

Many companies today are creating special versions of their website that automatically display for iPhone visitors. Some examples include Amazon, Google, Bank of America, and even our Creativetechs Tips blog.

Turn on Safari’s Developer Menu option and you can easily tell Safari to impersonate an iPhone (or other browser types) when visiting different webpages. It isn’t the same as a full iPhone simulator, but this can be pretty useful for web designers testing custom site designs.

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March 16, 2009
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Shortcuts for Photoshop’s Layers Palette.

It’s a sign you really know your way around Photoshop when you’ve mastered the keyboard shortcuts for moving around the Layers palette. Here are a couple reminders: Select Layers: Bracket keys [ or ] while holding Option (PC: ALT). Move Layers: Bracket keys [ or ] while holding Command (PC: CTRL). Adobe has a full […]
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March 9, 2009
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Mactracker keeps info on every Mac made.

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MacTracker-Icon.pngMactracker is a free utility that maintains detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made. Including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. The collection also includes information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, Wi-Fi Cards/Base Stations, Newton, and Mac OS versions.

For long-time Mac users, browsing through the history of Mac models can be a fun trip down memory lane. On a practical level, this information can be useful when manually compiling an updated inventory of your studio’s computers.

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March 9, 2009
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Creativetechs Brings Home the Bacon!

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Wow. We had a fantastic Photoshop class today!

Today we experimented with adding a live Twitter chatroom for webinar participants to interact with each other during the workshop. That was a lot of fun, and in the process #creativetechs ended up becoming a trending topic on Twitter’s search page.

That’s largely thanks to an extended Twitter conversation about bacon. Which ended up spilling out into the live classroom. (Don’t worry, that will become clear once we get some video clips posted.)

Today was a LOT of fun. Thanks to everyone in person and online who joined us.

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March 5, 2009
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Photoshop Enrollment Still Open!

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We’ve been getting a lot of email from people who missed the first week of our 10-Week Photoshop Course. They want to know if they can still participate in the remaining 9 weeks. Well, enrollment is still open! Sign up for the weekly email webinar notification email list here:

Sign-up here: Photoshop CS4 Course Enrollment.

Our webinar system support 1,000 people at a time, so once you’ve signed up, arrive a bit early. It is first-come, first-served for those weekly webinar slots.

This Thurday, Jason Hoppe digs into Week 2: Photoshop Layers. A solid understanding of layers is a crucial foundation for mastering most other advanced Photoshop techniques. This is a fast-paced, fun, and important topic.

We hope to see you in Seattle tomorrow.

March 4, 2009
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Easy Way to Center Guides in Photoshop.

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Here is a quick, easy way to add a centered guide to any Photoshop document:

Choose View > New Guide, and enter a position of 50%.

That’s it. Want to mark the center of your document? Repeat the process twice with both horizontal and vertical guides. This technique works for all percentages, so if you want a guide at 1/3 the width of your image, just enter a percentage of 33%.

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March 2, 2009
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Feedback Wanted: Make Mac Work.

MacMakeWork.pngThis is a bit off-topic from our tips format. I’d like to put out a request to the more technical readers in our audience. Our lead enterprise engineer, Jordan Bojar, has been asked to pull together a book proposal based on his Make Mac Work blog.

If you have never visited, Make Mac Work is our sister blog covering IT issues facing Macs in Enterprise environments. If that sounds interesting, you can browse some of the essential articles in the blog archives:

» Portable Home Directories
» Master Open Directory
» Configure And Deploy NetInstall
» Manage Account Preferences
» Control Software Update
» Bind to Active Directory

If you are an IT professional who is responsible for supporting Macs in larger corporate networks, I’d recommend you bookmark this blog. And we’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions you might be willing share to help Jordan flesh out his book proposal.

Thanks.

February 25, 2009
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Copy Music from your iPod to your Computer.

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“How do I copy music from my iPod back to my computer?”

This is one of those common questions we get all the time. Typically a drive fails and the iTunes music library wasn’t properly backed up. Or maybe someone wants an easy way to copy music from a friend’s iPod. This week we’ll take a quick look at a number of tools you can use to move music and videos from your iPod back onto your computer:

» iPodRip ($20)
» TuneAid ($15)
» Backstage ($10)
» YamiPod (Free)

In researching this tip, I found dozens of utilities that do basically the same thing. This is by no means a comprehensive list. But if you need to get your music back onto your Mac or PC, read the full tip for mini-reviews of several utilities that do the trick.

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February 23, 2009
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