Posts Tagged ‘Mac OS X’

1. Make Ringtones for your iPhone – That’s right!  You don’t necessarily have to go to the iTunes store and pay the extra money to have awesome, personalized ringtones on your iPhone, you can use any DRM-Free music you have and make it yourself.  When you open GarageBand 09 there are a few choices for what kind of project you want to start; in the left sidebar, select iPhone Ringtone and click Choose.  GarageBand will set up the whole project for you, all you need to do is pull a song from your iTunes library using the media browser, trim it up and send it back to iTunes as a ringtone using Share>Send Ringtone to iTunes!  EASY!

2. Sync up the soundtrack for your iPhoto slideshow – There are a lot of times where it would be nice if the music in an iPhoto slideshow would sync up with the picture to help evoke mood or to help establish different chapters, but when adding music in iPhoto you can’t trim or edit the music at all; not true in GarageBand!  To make awesome soundtracks for your Slideshow, skip the music in iPhoto and use File>Export>Slideshow to send it to the Media Browser.  Jump to Garageband, use Track>Show Movie Track to make a track for the video and then use the Media Browser to pull the movie in.  Now you can use additional tracks to carefully craft your soundtrack and clip, fade and overlap songs as you like.  You can see the video in the Movie Track, so you’ll know how to get the pieces lined up.  Awesome!

3. Create a soundtrack for your short film.  You can use the same technique coming out of iMovie to make a really polished soundtrack for your short film as well.  Add sound effects using the Sound Effect Library in the Podcast section of the Loop Browser and put theme music on the beginning and end and you’ve got a short that’s ready for Sundance.

4. Print sheet music – Yes, you can actually print the sheet music for the super-cool song you just wrote, even if you only used Loops to write it!  Once your song is complete, just go to the Menu Bar and select File>Print, its that easy!

5. Add Chapter Markers to a DVD – Once you’ve finished up in iMovie, take a moment to share the project to GarageBand.  Using Edit>Add Marker, you can add chapters to your movie.  Use the Movie Markers section of the Track Editor to name them properly and then send the project to iDVD.  iDVD sees the chapter markers and will set up a menu for them with thumbnails and everything using the titles you gave them in GarageBand.  FANCY!

Cover Flow is such a cool tool that missing album artwork in my library becomes a big drag.  Fortunately, it is really simple to find and add missing artwork in iTunes so your library can be complete and beautiful.

The easiest way to get missing artwork is to go up to the menu bar at the top of the screen and select Advanced>Get Album Artwork, then click the ‘Get Album Artwork’ button on the window that pops up.  Now, at the top of the iTunes screen, you’ll see a status of iTunes inventorying all the artwork and, hopefully, filling in the blanks.  This process is going to run for a few minutes and when it is done, you may get a screen that tells you that iTunes was unable to get some artwork.  If so, then you’ll need to find the appropriate art yourself and add it to iTunes.  Fortunately that’s a pretty easy process as well.

The first step to manually adding album artwork is to get the artwork you want for the album.  Amazon.com is a great resource for this.  Go to the site and search for your album in the Music section, when the search list comes back, select your album from the list by clicking on the album’s title.  When the album’s page comes up, you’ll notice an image of the album cover on the left side of the screen, sometimes this is accompanied by two or more smaller images below it.  These images are all different versions of the album cover/art; Amazon loaded the big one, and other Amazon customers have added the smaller ones.  Move your mouse over each of the smaller ones to determine which one you like best and select it by clicking it.

Once the larger size image has loaded, either in its own pop-window or in the same window you selected it from, control+click (right click) the image and select ‘Save Image As’ and save the image to your computer. 

A few notes on saving those images:  Firstly, I’d make a folder for them somewhere and put them all in one place instead of having artwork files strewn about the desktop or downloads folder.  I have a folder called Album Artwork inside my Music folder and I save them all there.  Secondly, RENAME THE FILE when you’re saving it!  The file name is going to be something lengthy and meaningless and, if you’re doing more than one album at a time, it will be difficult to know which file is which.

Once you’ve downloaded the artwork, go back to iTunes and select the song, or songs, you’re adding art to.  (Don’t forget about the Shift and Command keys for makng multiple selections.)  Once selected, choose File>Get Info (or Command+I) to bring up the info screen about the track(s).  (If you’ve selected multiple songs, you’re going to get a warning asking if you really want to change multiple tracks at the same time, sure we do!)  Now, look for the Artwork section, if you’ve only chosen one song, Artwork is the last tab across the top; go there, click the ADD button and add the file we just downloaded.  If you selected multiple tracks to add this art too, you’ll see the artwork well right there on the right side of the screen; double click in the well to add a new image.

Either way, the artwork is added to the file and will now show up in Cover Flow and on our iPod or iPhone!

‘Green Screening’ (also called ‘Chroma Keying’) is a technique used in the film industry to use a certain shade of green as a key for removing unwanted portions of an image in the compositing process.  One of the new features of iMovie 09 is the ability to Green Screen effect on your own home video.  This is really great news if you’re making short films and need to have a scene at the Eiffel Tower or on the moon.  The other great news is, its really easy!

If I want a shot of my main character standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, I’ll need two pieces of media:  the video of my main character (standing in front of a solid green wall) and a shot of the Eiffel Tower, either video or still will work although video will result in a more convincing result.  The green wall can be an actual wall you’ve painted green a paper sweep or, in a pinch, a green sheet or other fabric that’s been ironed really well.  Your local filmmaker’s rental house will probably sell ‘chroma key’ paint you can buy if you want to paint a wall, but if you don’t want to spend that much money, just get a good quality paint in bright green and apply it really evenly. 

When shooting the video of the main character, keep in mind that the subject (actor) and the background (green wall) must be lit separately to make sure there are no shadows being cast on the wall and that the green is as evenly lit as humanly possible.  It is also essential that the character NOT be wearing anything green, otherwise, parts of his/her body will disappear in the compositing process.

Shoot the video of your actor and acquire the footage of the Eiffel Tower, if you don’t happen to have the media of the Eiffel Tower, you can check out places like iStockphoto for royalty-free images and video at a really reasonable price.  If you’re making a short film or music video that’s going to play at film festivals or other pubic screening, it is absolutely essential that you know you have legal rights to use the images in your film so DO NOT just copy images out of Google or other websites as those are NOT public domain images or free to use as you want.

Ok, now the hard part is over!  We’ve got our character, we’ve got the Eiffel Tower and we’ve got both pieces imported into a project in iMovie 09.  The first step is click on ‘iMovie’ in the menu bar and select Preferences.  Make sure there’s a checkbox next to ‘Show Advanced Tools’.  Close the Preferences window.

Next, in the Library, select the clip or still image of the Eiffel Tower and drag it into the Project.  Then, select the clip of your main character and drop in directly on top of the Eiffel Tower, select ‘Green Screen’ from the resulting pop up menu.

iMovie automatically goes through and removes all the green from the foreground image, resulting in a picture that looks like your main character standing in front of the Eiffel Tower!  AWESOME!

Making a copy of a CD with your Mac is simple and easy using Disk Utility which is built right in to Mac OS X.  First, insert the disk you’d like to copy and open Disk Utility.  Disk Utility is located in the Utilities folder which is inside the Applications folder.

Once its opened, you’ll see that there’s a sidebar on the left, very similar to other applications in OS X.  In that sidebar, you’ll see all your hard drives, external drives, and disk drives.  If you’ve already inserted the CD, you should see the disk listed there as well.  Click once on it.

What we’re going to now is to make a ‘Disk Image’ of the CD.  That basically means we’re going to take a picture of exactly what’s on the disc and save it so we can use it in the future, sort of like lifting comic strips up with Silly Putty.  To do this, we just click the New Image button at the top of the screen.  Its going to open a dialog box asking us where we want to save this image.  If you’re only copying this once and will never need it again, you can just put it on the desktop and delete it later, but if it’s a disk that you’ll probably want to copy over and over again down the road, save it in Documents (or other meaningful location) so you can access it later.  Click Save and here we go.

This part might take some time, so feel free to grab a coffee or something.  Let’s say you’ve got 10-15 minutes.

Once that step is complete (and we’ve had our morning Latte) we can eject the original disk and put in the new, blank disk that we’re going to copy to.  Your blank media should be a CD-R or DVD-R and (in my opinion) not made by Memorex.

Once the new disk is in, it will show up in the sidebar, but what we really want to look for is the image we made a moment ago.  It should also be listed in the sidebar now with the name we gave it ending with ‘.dmg’.  Click once on the name and click the Burn button at the top of the screen.

Go get another coffee and you’ll be finished when your return!  Don’t forget to delete the Disk Image if you’re not going to need it again and, for the love of bananas, label your new disk!

Graduation is coming up and hopeful grads need to send a gazillion invites to obscure relatives in hopes of reaping graduation cash and prizes.  One solution is the painstaking process of handwriting every single one in long hand, but with all those grad party, post-party and post-post party plans to be made, who’s got the time?  A great solution is to print the mailing labels using Address Book.  Its built right into the computer and will format and print the labels in no time.  Here’s how to do it:

1.  Enter all your friend’s names and addresses into Address Book.  If you’re on the ball, this step is already done; if not, you’ve got an evening’s worth of data entry to take care of. 

2.  Create a New Group by clicking the + button on the bottom, left side of the Groups column in Address Book and then name it “Graduation”.

3.  Click on All in the Groups column to see all your people, select all the people that should receive the graduation announcement and drag them over to that group.  (Remember, you can select multiple, noncontiguous selections by holding the COMMAND button after you make the first selection.)

4.  When everyone has been added, select the Graduation group and then select File>Print from the Menu Bar across the top of the screen.  When the print dialog opens, its probably going to be fairly small, with not a lot of information, if so, click the little blue button with the downward facing triangle.

Now we have a lot more options available to us.

5.  You’ll notice the preview on the left side of the screen shows us an envelope, we need to change the setting so we’re printing Mailing Labels instead of Envelopes.  Towards the center of the screen, look for the ‘Style’ drop down box, click it and select Envelopes.

Things are looking better now, right?

6. Next we need to make sure Address Book knows what kind of mailing labels we have, click on the ‘Layout’ tab to show the make and style number of the labels.

Avery is pretty much the standard numbering system for labels of all kinds.  Don’t worry, though, if you don’t have Avery-brand labels, even the Office Max store brand has an Avery number on it somewhere, just check the box.

7.  Once we’ve got that selected, we could click and print and go.  The only other things we may want to do are cosmetic, like changing the font or adding a tiny image to the labels.  Both of those tasks are accomplished back on the Label tab and are pretty self-explanatory.  When you’re done formatting, just click Print and you’re done!

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me “How do I make a new <insert the words: playlist, album, mailbox, bookmark, etc…> in <insert the words: iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, Safari, etc…>?”   Well, I’d have a lot of nickels, I can tell you that much.  The funny thing is, the answer is always the same:  the + button!

Apple is super-great at consistency in the user interface, meaning things always mean the same thing.  The + button appears in almost every application Apple makes and its almost always in the bottom left corner of the column you’re trying to add to (the exception is Safari, which is on top).

A simple way to remember this tip is to rethink the question.  Instead of “How do I MAKE a new _____,” let’s think, “How do I ADD a new ____”.  The word add leads us to the idea of addition which leads us to the + sign sitting right there.

As you move through the Apple software, take a moment to click the + button and see what it does for you in each application, you’ll be glad you did.

Nowadays every site you visit wants you to have an ID and a Password to access their services.  If you’re an avid Apple user, you probably have a password for your computer, one for your Apple ID and one for email; that’s three already and we haven’t even started using the internet!

I’ve seen many people who keep a page of ID’s and passwords either posted on their desk or even taped to their laptop.  Convenient?  Yes!  Secure?  NO!  You’re never supposed to write these things down because anyone who found the list would then have access to all your info. 

Fortunately, there’s a solution for this dilemma built right in to OS X through Keychain Access.

First, go into your Applications folder and find the Utilities Folder, double click it to open.  Next, we’re looking for Keychain Access, double click that and let’s get started.

When you first open it, there will likely be a ton of stuff listed there, but want we want to focus on for now is in the sidebar on the left.  We’re looking for a Category called “Secure Notes.”  Once we click that item, we should see things clean up in the main window.

Secure notes are similar to Stickies, but you have to have the login password to access them.  By using the + button at the bottom of the screen, we can add a new note.

Let’s say I wanted to save my ID and password for Google; I’d just type ‘Google’ in the Keychain Item Name and then my login and password in the note field and click the Add button.  This creates an item on the list which I can access later using my login password.

I’ll repeat this process making a new note for each of the logins and/or passwords I have so that I have them all consolidated in one secure location.

When I want to access them, I just go to Keychain Access and double click the note I want to view; enter my login password and voila there is my info.

I love shortcuts and use them when ever possible.  I tell people that its because I’m a highly efficient, but I know that’s really because I’m lazy.  Why use three clicks to get to my folder of resumes when I could do it in 1?  I can place shortcuts for commonly used folders on the Sidebar in my Finder window so I can quickly get to them in a single click. 

First, let’s open a Finder window (click on the smiley guy in the dock) and let’s check out the sidebar.  It’s a collection of drives, devices and places associated with your computer.  For now, I want to look at the section called “Places”.

Out of the box, you’ve probably got short cuts there for: Desktop, Home, Applications, Documents, Downloads and Pictures.  These are quick ways to get to those places, but what if I have another folder that I access frequently and I want to add it as well?  Not a problem!

I have a folder called Resumes which is inside my Documents folder and I’d like to access it more quickly.  In the Finder window, navigate to the folder you want to add, in my case, Resumes.  Click on the folder’s icon and drag it to the Places section of the sidebar.  You’ll notice a little blue line appears telling you where its going to be added, but positioning your cursor up or down, you can control where its going to drop in.  (We can also reposition it later just by dragging it.)

Release the mouse and, voila, you’ve added a short cut for that folder to the sidebar!

If you’re not comfortable with the ‘click and drag’ method for any reason, you can also just highlight the item you want and use COMMAND+T as a keyboard short cut.  Holy cow, a keyboard short cut for making a shortcut in Finder!?!?!  It doesn’t get any better than this!

You’ve probably noticed that the dock, however convenient, has a bunch of stuff on it that you don’t use and is missing some stuff you’d like to be there.  There’s a quick and easy way to manage what’s on the dock and even arrange the order the icons appear.

To add an item to the dock, find its icon in the Applications folder and drag it all the way down to the dock.  When you get there, the other icons will politely move aside to make room for it, drag it where you want it to stick and release the mouse button, its that easy.

To rearrange items on the dock, just click and drag them to their new location.  Again, the other icons will move aside to make room for each other.

To remove an unwanted or unused item from the dock, just click it and swiftly pluck it off the dock.  You’ll see that the icon gets a little puff of smoke next to it, indicating that its going to disappear, just release your mouse and, POOF, its gone.  (Keep in mind that the application itself is still safe inside the Applications folder and that we’ve merely deleted a short cut to it, not the program itself.)

If you’re a little slower on the mouse/trackpad, instead of plucking off the icon, you may get a pop up menu with some options.  Don’t panic, just select “Remove from Dock” from that menu and you’ll achieve the same results, just without all the smoke.

Don’t forget, it’s also possible to customize your icons.  Check out my post about Candybar.