September 2002

I n f o C e n t r a l
Desktop Connections

MacWaves MUG
a SIG of Brookdale Computer Users Group

QuicKeys X, CE Software, Inc. (Includes printed manual)

The most popular Macintosh utility is now built from the ground up and specifically designed for Mac OS X. Hot Keys and powerful toolbars still enable you to customize your Mac to work the way you do, but with a cleaner and much more intuitive and easier to use interface.Keeping QuicKeys open and available in the Dock (without displaying the QuicKeys Editor) lets you play your shortcuts. Once you (easily) create a shortcut in the Shortcut tab, assign a trigger from the Trigger tab in the Editor and a Hot Key. Now you can, for example, tell QuicKeys to open an application, perform a function, and close the application. This version of QuicKeys is both powerful and flexible as well as a robust incarnation of an indispensable utility.

iMovie 2 for Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) by Jeff Carlson, Peachpit Press, $19.99

Although iMovie 2 is intuitive and easy to use, for those not familiar with video terminology and functions, this little book can make life so much easier for you. It shows you how to easily capture video footage and transfer it to your computer for editing. Designed for the novice video user and for those new to video editing on a computer, it follows the Visual QuickStart formula of lots of visuals to help you turn your home movies into family blockbusters. The first part of the book is an intelligle overview of the audio/visual process. Then it takes you through the process of capturing, editing, and exporting your movie for CD, videotape, and Web production. Yes. You can do this!

Real World PDF with Adobe Acrobat 5, Mac and Windows, by Anita Dennis, Peachpit Press, $44.99

Learn real world solutions for creating files anyone can open, how to embed fonts and use collaboration tools. The book also covers creating clean PDF files from popular applications including QuarkXPress and Microsoft Office. The marvelous chapter on the scary Job Options dialog box in Distiller is itself worth the price of the book. You'll also find important information on using PDF files in prepress environments and in Internet production. This comprehensive reference goes beyond the simple how tos and delves under the hood of today's most versatile and widely used ancillary application.

With the release of the award-winning Snapz Pro for Mac OS X, Ambrosia Software, Inc. brings relief to the huddled masses who have suffered through using the built-in screen capture features Mac OS X offers. Once Snapz Pro X is installed, a single keystroke can immediately save anything visible on screen in a wide variety of image file formats.

SnapzProX, Ambrosia Software, $49 or $29 without the ability to capture QuickTime movies.

Snapz Pro X supports saving screen images as .bmp, .pict, .gif, .jpg, .png, .tiff, .pdf, or Photoshop files, and can even record the action as a QuickTime movie! Screen shots can be scaled, cropped, color depth-changed, and dithered. Snapz Pro X can also add borders, generate automatic thumbnails, overlay watermarks/ copyright notices... you name it, we got it!

Using Snapz Pro X, you don't have to tell people about how cool a game is or how to use a particular program -- you can just take a picture or movie of it and show them! The images Snapz Pro X generates are all web-ready, as are the QuickTime movies it makes -- just upload 'em and go! Snapz Pro X can even capture images and movies that are playing on your DVD Player if you have an nVidia graphics card!

To capture an image that is on screen, either use Snapz Pro X's powerful selection tool, or you can give the innovative new Objects tool a whirl. The Objects tool lets you simply click the windows/menus you'd like to capture, and Snapz Pro X will take care of saving them! Snapz Pro X also works when most other capture utilities won't, making it the screen shot utility of choice for manual writers, web publishers, and other media professionals.