Adding Text to a Photo
November 3, 2008Apparently it is going to be difficult for me to make three entries per week, as I hoped to do.
There are many applications for editing photos. Most of the better ones are fairly expensive and most of the others are limited in their abilities. Sometimes the software that came with your camera is quite good, but not very Mac-like. LiveQuartz is an interesting photo editor. It was built for OS X and it is freeware. Download it here. Let's do something simple with it.
Drag a jpg file into the LiveQuartz window. You will see in the left column a tiny preview of your photo. LiveQuartz allows you to edit your images in layers. That is, each time you make an addition to the image, the addition will be added as a layer over the previous layer. This is significant because, should you change your mind, it allows you to delete a layer without undoing all the work in between.
Across the top of the window is a tool bar. Hover your mouse pointer over the tool icon for a description of each tool. The first tool on the left is called the Drag tool. With it you can move elements in the image by clicking and draging. The other tool we will be using for this project is the Text tool, which is identified by the A icon.
Click the Text tool and then click anywhere in the photograph. Now start typing. You will see your text appear in the image and you will notice a new layer has been created in the left column. The layer that you are working on will be highlighted. It is likely that the text has not appeared in the location you desire. Simply click and drag it to the proper location.
It is also likely that the text is not the color you desire, nor in the font you desire. Look at the bottom of the left column. You will see a button labeled Fonts. Click it to open the Fonts panel - remember the Fonts panel?
From the fonts panel select your prefered font. To change the text color, click the color button on the Fonts panel tool bar to open the color picker and select the color.
To add more text, click the Text tool icon, click in the image and start typing. To edit text, click on the text in the layer column. To delete a layer, click the minus button at the bottom of the left column. Alternatively, you can turn a layer off by unchecking the layer.
When you are finished, save your file. A word of caution: saving your work with the same file name will permanently change your original photo. For safety, LiveQuartz will always ask you if you want overwrite the old file with the new version.
LiveQuartz has many features. Play with it and see what you can do.
Some of my favorite applications
October 26, 2008Another long lapse between posts. So many websites - so little time.
Everybody who runs a Mac blog has a list of favorite Mac applications. These are things I couldn't do without, but they are admittedly things not everyone will need.
At the top of my list is iClip. iClip is a clipboard extension, but it is so versatile that it goes far beyond copy and paste. There are many clipboard applications on the market, but I have never found one that I liked better than iClip.
Caboodle and myNotes are both note storage, note organizer applications. They are very similar and I use them both. Caboodle has an encryption feature that myNotes does not have, but I like the interface of myNotes better than Caboodle.
Photoshop Elements is the amateur version of Adobe Photoshop, yet it is still very capable. Photoshop is a complicated application and so is Photoshop Elements. You have to work with them to learn all of their features. Having worked with both, I decided I liked PSE better for my needs and at one sixth the price of Photoshop, PSE is definitely my choice.
Resize! is a batch photo resizing application. It is free and easy to use.
SnapNDrag and EasyCrop are both from YellowMug software. I am constantly using these two applications. SnapNDrag is for taking screen shots and EasyCrop, well, crops photos easily. Again, there are lots of other applications that do what these two do, but I haven't found any that I liked better than these two.
Bean is a free, simple and quick to launch word processor. To bang out a quick note, this is better than anything else.
Nvu is for creating web pages. This website was created using Nvu. It is free and works very much like a word processor.
MenuMinder is an application you use to create pop-up reminders. It duplicates some of the function of iCal, but it is easier to use and launches more quickly.
I have more than 170 apps in my Applications folder, many of which are very cool, and many of which are very specialized. Those above are the ones I use most often, along with the Apple applications that come with OS X.
The Mac Fonts Panel
October 17, 2008
Almost every Mac application has access to the Fonts panel. You use it to style text. It has some features that are not obvious at first glance. The Fonts panel is accessed from the menu bar, but sometimes you will find a button on the tool bar. We will use Mail in this example.
To make changes in the styling of the text, you must first highlight the portion of the text you wish to change. Do that by clicking and dragging. Here I have highlighted the word great.
Clicking the first button on the left of the Fonts panel will add an underline to the highlighted text. The next button will create a strikethrough when it is clicked.
The next button is for color. Click it to open the color picker. When the color picker opens, point to any color on the wheel and click to change the text to that color.
At the far right there is a slider. Click and drag it to change the font size.
At the top of the panel is a little dot - just below the word Fonts. This conceals a hidden compartment. Click anywhere near this dot and drag your pointer downward.
What opens is a sample of the currently selected font. Here we have selcted Herculanum from the list in the center of the panel.
The five controls on the right adjust drop shadow. Click the T button in the center to activate the shadow. The next button is a tiny slider to control the opacity. Next to that is another slider for blur.
The third slider will control the distance the shadow appears from the text. The final control is a dial. Click and spin it to adjust the position of the shadow - up, down, right, left.
The Fonts panel is a basic Mac tool that is used in many Mac applications. Understanding how to use it will expand the possiblities of what you can create with your Mac.
See the Archive for previous entries.
Got a question about your Mac? I don't know everything, but I'll help if I can.
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There may not be something new here everyday, but I am going to try to have something new at least three times per week. As always, you are welcome to make submissions.