Photography can often be a troubling trade when little things don’t go according to plan. After all, if you only have one chance to take a photo, you had better get a good one. Post processing has become a big part of modern photography, from amateur tools like Snapseed to more professional apps Photoshop, Aperture, or the increasingly popular Lightroom.
But simply owning Photoshop or Aperture isn’t enough. You must keep it up to date and use the best plugins for your trade. I’ve been doing a lot of concert photography lately, so I decided it was time I got a better way of reducing noise (a high ISO is required with my fairly slow lens). Imagenomic’s solution, Noiseware, seemed most appropriate, so I began with the 30-day trial. During that time, it was useful enough to sell me on getting a full license. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this plugin better than Photoshop’s built-in noise moderation.
The Mac App Store is rife with price cuts this week, so come take your bounty from Mac.AppStorm’s deals. (more…)
This Week in Mac News is a new column we’re now publishing each Saturday, rounding up the latest Mac and Apple news. Just the fact here; no rumors. See, rumors are expensive, so we’ll stick to the facts.
Welcome to the first edition of This Week in Mac News. There’s so much going on in in the world of Apple, beyond just regular app updates, we wanted to be able to help our readers stay a bit more informed about what’s going on without having to trace down every rumor and Apple press release. That’s why we’ve started this new column, and we hope you enjoy reading. Let us know your thoughts about it and if there’s anything we’ve missed in the comments below.
With that out of the way, let’s get started with this week’s news. Briefly, Apple released a OS X 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 supplemental update with bug fixes, the company’s fourth quarter earnings will be announced on October 25, and Ping closed at 11:59 p.m. September 30. Keep reading for full coverage of these topics. (more…)
The Mac App Store is rife with price cuts this week, so come take your bounty from Mac.AppStorm’s deals.
In the past few months, I’ve found myself looking for a better way to take note of things. Right now, I’m using Simplenote, but just the Web app and not a native one. So that means there’s no Launchpad icon unless I use something like Fluid, which I really don’t want to do at this juncture since I already have too many little Web apps in my collection. To that end, I turned to the Mac App Store.
Welcoming me was Notefile. It was sitting happily in the New and Noteworthy with no user ratings, so I thought I’d give it a try. As always, you’re going to be wondering whether it’s worth the $4.99 and your time. Carry on reading to find out. (more…)
Photographers and digital artists alike always try to keep their images organized neatly. If you’re a designer, this is typically vital to doing your job as well. There are a bunch of different ways to organize these files on your Mac, from Adobe’s Bridge (included with Photoshop and other software) to iPhoto, Apple’s default solution for OS X. I’ve never been a keen user of either of these because the former is too complex in areas and the latter can often dawdle here and there.
To find an app that would suffice for my needs, I took to Google and have been looking around for a few months in vain. A few weeks back, however, a friend recommended Shiny Frog’s Pixa, a new beta app that’s in constant development. The promise is to help you organize images “the easy way”, but does Pixa live up to it? Let’s find out. (more…)
On a fine summer day this year, I stood in front of my MacBook Air — yes, sitting had become tiresome — thinking of a way to make my process of reviewing apps better. Sure, there are lots of ways my workflow could be improved, but I had one element in particular that kept me from being a pedant: the unobtainable icons for iOS apps. I could review whatever I wanted, but how was I to get a quality 200 x 200 pixel image? I thought about it a bit and to no avail, then pushed on to another task that needed attention.
A few weeks following the transpiration of said events, I happened upon Retina Mac Apps, my new favorite place to discover quality Mac apps. Among the collection of beautiful icons was Pragmatic Code’s Crunch, an app that stood out by having an icon closely resembling the well-known home button found on iOS devices. I wondered, why would a Mac app have such an icon? After a bit of reading, I realized that this was the very app I had been searching for weeks before. So I downloaded it and have been using it regularly. If the idea of this app sounds like something you see yourself using, keep reading for a assiduous appraisal of the app and its worth. (more…)
Cooking at home has become a lost art due to the omnipresence of diners, fast-food restaurants, and the surplus of other ways to eat out. I’m not bashing great food that others can prepare, but why don’t you fire up that oven sometime to make some cobbler? If that seems too complicated, there’s always the stovetop which can cook caramel for popcorn this evening — it’s a great accompaniment to the film you’re planning to watch with your significant other.
Okay, enough of my urging you to prepare the delectable. If you happen to cook things even on occasion, I’m sure you keep a folder with recipes in it, if not a tactile book in your cupboard. What if I told you that there’s an easier way to organize things using Michael Göbel’s Recipes app on your Mac? Yes yes, you want to know more. Well then let’s get started. (more…)
I love writing articles on my Mac. It’s easy, fullscreen mode is convenient, and there are a lot of great apps available for the platform. Overall, the experience is a quality one. But when it comes to choosing what app to write with, I have some trouble. Every month there seems to be a “new” writing app on the Mac App Store that’s really just a reiteration of the existing apps available. I like to remain loyal to a single app, but sometimes it’s fun to explore.
The other day, I was browsing the Mac App Store in search of anything new and significant. I came across Free, a distraction-free writing app by Michael Göbel that, comically enough considering its name, is not free. Its purpose is the same as that of WriteRoom, iA Writer, and the many others in this genre: to create an environment that is the most straightforward it can possibly be so that you can focus on writing and not the app’s functionality itself. My purpose, however, is to take a look at how well an app performs its job, so instead of assuming this app is great, let’s submerge ourselves in all the little appealing ounces of Free. (more…)
There have been many takes on Mac antivirus software over the years. Some people still refuse to believe that Apple’s prized computers can get infected, but the reality is that the Apple world is less secure than you might wish. ClamXav is a great app if you’re looking for some extra protections from the dangers out there, and it really works its hardest to keep your Mac safe. Our own Jorge Rodriguez reviewed this fine app at the beginning of this year, saying that “it feels trustworthy”.
But aren’t there some other worthy competitors to Mark Allan’s minimal virus protection approach? Why yes, and I think the most notable one comes from Symantec. It’s called iAntivirus. That’s right, the developer of Norton also made a Mac antivirus app that’s nothing you should overlook. It’s an extremely minimal approach with only four menu options, but there’s still a lot of protection offered. Let’s take a deeper look, shall we? (more…)
