Keychain Secure Notes

If your looking for a safe place a store sensitive piece of information - your best bet may be Apple's Keychain Secure Notes. The data will be accessible via computer or any iOS device.

This is a good option since third party applications don't have access to this. In addition, it's a bit complex to view a secure note, so you know people won't accidentally find/delete the note if they are playing around with your computer.

Note: Name and Content will not appear in Spotlight Searches. It's a good hiding spot.

Adding a New Secure Note

The only way to add a new secure note is via the Keychain Access application. Using LaunchBar simply type KeyChain and return.

Open up the application. In the Window, select a Keychain to store your note. I recommend using iCloud. Then Shift Command N to create a new note.

I wasn't able to find any limit to how big the note can be, so this might be a good place to store the top secret book that your working on.

You can't store image files in the Keychain.

Viewing a Secure Note

To view any note, simply double click on the note and then type in your computer password.

Need More Power?

If you want more than just basic notes, you might want to check out 1Password. (I haven't used them, so I can't attest to how easy it is to use.) One nice thing is that they have 1 GB of encrypted storage for all your documents.

This is a good way to secure and backup all your work documents!

Export Photos Notification

When exporting a large number of image files from Apple’s Photo application, it’s pretty scary to see this:

142,311 (of 14,201) files have been exported to: 2015 Photos.

There is no indication of why more files got exported. It made me wonder where the additional files come from. Did I copy some hidden files? Do I have a virus?

It turns out that, in my case, the additional files were ‘burst’ mode files. Apple treat these as special files, as they are a special collection of images.

Create a Smart Album

Here's the Smart Album that I created, so that I know about Burst files in the future. This is good idea so that I can figure out which of the burst mode images are worth keeping:

Simple steps to creating a Smart Album for Burst Mode.

• Type in Option Command N to create a new Smart Album.
• Use Burst Mode Photos as the Name (Or anything you want)
• Then in the condition, use 'Photos' 'is' 'burst'

Pay Attention to the Export

What’s scary is that most people won’t notice this message, as it's a simple banner alert. You may not realized that there are some additional images copied over. I just happen to look at the notification and saw the number difference.

Key lesson here is to check the Notification area after doing an export to see if there were any issues with the export. This is essential if your exporting the photos into a online photo album and may not want the burst mode photos to be exported.

The Notification Center is located in the top left of the menu bar.

Anamorphic Pro

Anamorphic Pro is a photo touch up application that can help any image to look professional. There are lots of configurations to help make the photo stand out.

Screenshot of Anamorphic Pro interface.

Website Description

Anamorphic Pro is a professional lens blur tool. Now you can edit iPhone Portrait Mode photos on your Mac. Anamorphic Pro turns your ordinary photos into cinematic masterpieces.

Before/After

Simple touchup to a Portrait photo taken on the iPhone XS Max

Overall Evaluation

One of the downside of Affinity Photo is that you can't edit the Depth information with Portrait photos. That's where Anamorphic Pro comes in. It allows you to change the front most image and really make a cool photo a cinematic masterpiece.

In order to get the most out of this application, it's best to invest in some time. There isn't much documentation to what each functionality does. I found that playing around with various feature was a good way to learn various ways to enhance a photo.

There is no "push button" magic - like you find in Photolemur. You do have to play around with various settings to find the one that works for your photo - and your style.

If you don't have a Portrait photo, you can use the brush tool to create a blur mask - define the area that should be blurred out.

Anamorphic Pro cost $29.99 from the BrainFever website or from the App Store. There is a iOS version which cost $2.99 - it might be a good solution if your focus on just iPhone photos.

This is good solution for Affinity Photo users as it currently doesn't offer any depth editing.

Free Trial Available

You can download and play around with Anamorphic Pro for seven days. It's a good way to see how the application can transform any image.

Archey

Did you know that you can set up a cool terminal login with Archey? Simply add it to the .bash_profile, and every time you launch Terminal this is what you see:

Archey brightens up the Terminal Session.

Installing Archey

Archey is distributed via Homebrew - a Unix package manager for MacOS. There's a lot of cool utilities in Homebrew, but for now let's install Archey.

1. Open up a new Terminal Session.
2. If you haven't installed HomeBrew, follow the instructions on their website.
3. Once completed, run the following commands: brew install archey
4. Test the installation: simply type in archey

Adding to the Terminal Login

If you haven't changed the default terminal shell, then your using BASH shell - which is a pretty good terminal shell. There is a small config file that is run every time you launch terminal. In Bash it's call .bash_profile.

Here's how to add it so that it appears on login:

1. Open up a new Terminal Session. (This makes sure your in your Home directory.)
2. Edit the .bash_profile file, if your have BBEdit installed type in bbedit .bash_profile
3. On the last line simply add the following text: archey

Sample .bash_profile

This is my .bash_profile

alias du='du -kh' # Makes a more readable output. 
alias df='df -kTh'

export PS1=" 🏠  d $ "

# Quickly go up 'X' number of directory hierarchy. Example: use: up(3)  instead of cd ../../..
up() { cd $(eval printf '../'%.0s {1..$1}) && pwd; }

export EDITOR="/usr/local/bin/bbedit"   
alias ll='ls -FGlAhp'                   # Get a nice directory listing


archey

Check out the other commands in my .bash_profile which you may find helpful. You can find other helpful Terminal tips from various Bash Blog Posts that I did back in 2017.

Remove Background using PhotoScape X

Removing a background color from a graphic file doesn’t have to be complicated. Once you learn how to do it, you can do it quickly.

Why remove a background color?

You might have an image file and want to make the background transparent so you can use it as an icon in Slack or combine it with another image.

I used PhotoScape to clear out the iPod screen.

Using PhotoScape X

I was having a hard time finding the right tool in the edit mode of PhotoScape X to remove a background. Turns out it is a separate tool that you need to use.

Steps to Remove Background

• In the Viewer Mode select and image that have the background that you want to cut out.
• Drag that image to the ‘Cut Out' Menu
• Using the Magic Eraser, click on the areas that you wish to be removed. Increase the Tolerance to get more like colors.
• Keep clicking on the image until you get the desired results.
• Save the image, if you want to keep the transparancy using PNG or TIFF format.

Hopefully this helps anyone else that is trying to remove something from an image in PhotoScape.

Cable Marker

One of the downsides of an iMac is that there is never enough USB ports. I am constantly switching thumb drives or printer cables to the back of the computer.

Ports on the Back of an iMac 2011

One thing that annoyed me is that I never put the cable in right. I am always putting it in wrong and having to flip it over to get it in right.

A quick solution that I came up with is to mark the top of the cable with a white Sharpie China Marker.

Cables are marked.

So now when I need to put in a new cable, I just look for the white part and know that it will go right in.

White Sharpie

You can use any white marker to label the cables. I just happen to have the white China marker at my desk. It’s nice because it’s not a permanent solution and I can remove it when needed.

Dynamic Desktops

One of the cool features of the Mac OS Mojave (10.14.2) is the ability to have dynamic Desktops. These desktop change as the day changes.

Create Your Own Dynamic Desktop

Did you know that you can create your own Dynamic Desktop using Graphic Converter?

Basically a Dynamic Desktop is a collection of 16 images in a heic file.

Apple recommends that each image needs to be 5120 x 2880 which is a 5k resolution. Photos taken with the latest iPhone are 4042x3024 - slightly smaller than Apple's recommendation. You can still create a file, just won't look good on a 5k display.

Simple Steps

Simple steps to make a set of image your very own dynamic desktop:

Open up Graphic Converter

Browse a directory that has images that you would like to make a Dynamic Desktop

Select 16 images

Select the Action Cog menu then Export, and then Dynamic Desktops. ( You can find the Action on the Browser Window toolbar, or from the Cog icon in the menu bar.)

Create a unique filename and save it to the Desktop for now.

After the file is created, you'll need to move it to the Wallpaper Desktop folder. Use the Finder "Go" Menu and select "Go to Folder..." and type in "/Library/Desktop"

Then open up the "Desktop & Screen Saver" option. The easiest way to do that is to right click on the desktop and select "Check Desktop Background..."

You should see a new "generic" image in the Dynamic Desktop. If you click on it you should see the desktop change to one of your images.

Have Fun With Own Dynamic Desktop

Dynamic Desktop is one of many cool uses of Graphic Converter. Having a dynamic desktop with different photos is a cool way to add a little variation to your day.

iResize

iResize is a neat application that lets you quickly batch process a bunch of JPEG and PNG images. It's a basic application that lacks some powerful features that are available in other applications.

Description from the Developer

iResize vs PhotoScape X

As you may know, I am a big fan of PhotoScape X - which has a batch feature functionality. Here are some key differences between the two applications:

• PhotoScape X is a 64-bit application, whereas iResize has a 32-bit version for those still running old Macintosh Computers. (This makes a good application for legacy computers.)
• PhotoScape X is a commercial App, where as iResize is freeware.
• In iResize4, the only option you have it to resize the image by a specific height or width. Which makes sense since that's the name of the application. But the resize is very limited in scope - you don't have a lot of flexibility with how that image gets resized.
• In PhotoScape X, you can resize the image based on a certain percentage, max long edge or max short edge. You can define crop, Add Frame and various filters.
• You can only save iResize images in JPG, where was PhotoScape X supports JPG, PNG, Gif, BMP or Tiff. You can also perform filename replacements during the batch process - for example, remove imageName to imgName

Getting iResize

iResize is Freeware. You can download the application from the developer's website: http://www.daniele.ch/.

iResize is a very basic image resize application, if your looking for more powerful functionality, I would highly recommend using PhotoScape X.

Apple Contacts App

If you have an iPhone, chances are you have used the Contact iOS app. Apple makes it easy to add and edit contact information on your phone. Did you know that there is a Contact MacOS App? There are some unique feature in the Desktop version that makes it worth using.

Six Features Unique to the MacOS Contact App

You can create smart groups, which makes it easy to send emails to teams. Simply add a common "hashtag" in the notes field and the user will be added or removed from a certain smart group.

Removed Duplicate entries - Clean up your address book by removing all those duplicate entries.

Create vCards - Useful to share contact information via email, airdrop, Slack and more.

Manage your personal distribution list - Do your contacts have multiple emails? In Contact, you can designate which email to use. So, for example, you can have a Distribution Group for Work and another Distribution for personal emails to the same group of people. (This feature is located via Edit > Edit Distribution List)

You can print mailing labels, envelopes or a contact sheet from the Contacts App. Great for a way to send out Christmas Cards or to keep a hard copy of your most important contacts. To use, simply select File-> Print and then select the style that you want to use. You can select the Avery Template format or use DYMO to print the labels.

Easily add a face to your Contact. Simple click Edit under the Contact, and then drag/drop an image to the circle next to their name. Why add a photo to a contact? When the person calls you you'll see that picture instead of their name.

Print Dialog allows you to print your contacts address on envelopes or labels.

Manage Your Contacts Frequently

It's a good idea to manage your iOS Contacts frequently. Having a well-organized contact database will help to find contacts.

If you're looking for a practical task to do while waiting in line, manage your contact on the phone. If you have some downtime

Use PhotoScape to Fix GoPro Images

You can take fairly basic photos using GoPro Hero 7. The only problem with the photos is the FishEye effect. The photos should get touched up so it looks great.

One of the easiest ways to clean up the photos is to use PhotoScape X. There's a couple of tools that will help touch up the image.

Here's an example of before/after of the Boston Public Library from Copley Square:

FishEye Tool

Under the Transformation category is the Fisheye effect tool. While most people think that it's used to add Fisheye, it's also used to remove fisheye, simply by adding a negative amount:

In my testing '-25' seems to be the perfect amount to remove the fisheye effect, just make sure that the focus of the Fisheye is in the center.

Lens Correction

Also located in the Transformation category is the Lens Correction Tool. This is where you have a lot more power in fixing the fisheye effect. The only downside is that there's a lot of different possible changes that can be made.

The best settings is using -35 for the Distortion Correction.

GoPro Photos

GoPro Photos capability isn't a replacement for iPhone XS Max. You may get some good wide-area photos, but the iPhone XS Max handle low light and colors much better.

GoPro Photos is good for landscape shots or when you want a cover photo for a YouTube video.

Amadine

Amadine is a new graphical application by BeLight Software - the same company that creates Art Text Tool and Swift Publisher. It's their first vector design application.

Overall the application works pretty well. I did run into an issue with one of my EPS files where it didn't render very well.

Seven Things I Learned While Beta Testing Amadine

• Amadine is very basic vector application - there's isn't any special pen or vector tool that are not available in other vector applications.
• I was successfully able to drag and drop EPS and SVG documents and they opened correctly in Amadine. Each file that I dragged and drop had its own group layer.
• You can have multiple sheets or ArtBoards. Which allows you to have a single app to handle all different formats for images - for example, different icons designs for iOS and MacOS. Web Developers can have different sheets for different website layouts. You can create Sheet via the Sheet Window or the Sheets tool.
• Files can be exported to SVG, EPS, PDF, TIFF, PNG and JPG formats.
• You have the option to import PDF and EPS files as static images via the Import dialog and Drag and Drop.
• The Path Width tool is pretty neat, it gives you the ability to stretch out any vector pen line.
• It took a long time to import a 14.6 MB EPS file that I downloaded from DepositPhoto. It didn't really render correctly.

Amadine didn't render this EPS file correctly. The screenshot on the left is the Preview application.

Overall Thoughts

Amadine looks promising. I don't think I would buy it since I have Affinity Designer and ArtBoard. One of the cool features of ArtBoard is several instructional sheets to teach you how to use the pen tool. I think that really helps me grasp the whole pen tool concept.

I think Amadine is worth looking at if you're new to vector applications. It's certainly worth downloading and trying it out to see what you think. While Amadine is still in Beta, download the application and try it out.

I would be interested to see how BeLight Software integrates this into Swift Publisher. It would certainly make it Swift Publisher a powerful desktop publisher applications.

Biff 2.0

Back in November, the Escapers announced a new updated to their graphic application called Biff. Since I reviewed version one of Biff in March of 2017, I thought it would be good to check out the changes

New Features

Three big changes in Biff: Scenes, SVG Import and Code Generation. This is text from an email that announced the new features

Scenes allow you to add perspective to your work, ideal for publicity shots. SVG import allows Biff to take advantage of great resources like The Noun Project, quite simply, you can now use thousands of free SVG resources in Biff. Finally, we've got code generation for both Mac and iOS. This means you can draw out anything you like in Biff, then export the Swift code to draw the elements in your Mac or iPhone app.

Scenes

This is a pretty cool feature. One of the neat things is the ability to easily create isometric images. Simply create a design, a couple of clicks later you can have an isometric layout.

There are six different perspectives: Reset, Left Tilt, Right Tilt, Left Angled, Flying and lie Flat.

Anything can be made a Scenes, including text. (Think logo design?)

SVG Import

This didn't work at all. Epic failure is one way to describe it.

I dragged and drop several SVG files and they didn't render correctly. One file, a "happy face," rendered upside down and other SVG files didn't render correctly at all.

Looks like there's some work needed with the import. (In fairness, they do say that Biff doesn't rasterize SVGs, it imports and converts them into regular Biff shapes.)

Files I tested were downloaded from the internet, no special compression or features.

Not sure what happened to the image when I dragged/dropped into the workspace.

Code Generation

This is pretty cool, there's support for UIKit and Cocoa. I don't do any coding that requires this functionality but it's neat to see an application that has this feature.

Worth the Upgrade?

Biff 2 cost $24.99 and I still don't think it's worth getting - especially since SVG Import didn't work for me. Many of the features can be found in other products, such as Affinity Designer, for a bit more money but they do offer additional functionality.

Having said that, the repeater/tile functionality is pretty cool. It's really easy to use and I have seen it available any place else.

Getting Biff 2

Try Biff 2 and see if it meets your needs. You can download a 30-day trial from The Escaper's Website.

Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal App

If you take pictures with the GoPro camera you'll notice that the pictures may look distorted because of the fisheye effect. The photo can easily be fixed so they look good - a process that some people call defishing.

Affinity Photo and PhotoScape

Affinity Photo, PhotoScape, and Photoshop Elements have various tools to fix the images. Here's are some quick tips on ways to fix the fisheye effect in these applications.

• In Affinity Photo, you would use the Len Distortion Live Filter Layer tool. Simply select the Distortion amount that works best for you image.
• In PhotoScape X, the Lens Profile Correction tool does the work. It's located in the Transformation section. The GoPro x2192 Hero5 Black is the one that worked for me.
• In Photoshop Elements, the Correct Camera Distortion is the tool to fix FishEye. Simply use the

But the fastest and easiest way I found is to use an App that is specifically designed for that task. Save time from looking for different filters in various applications, and use a dedicated resource to make things easier.

Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal

Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal by Razvan Chisu is a quick and easy way to fix the photos. Simply drag and drop the photo to the app and presto it's fixed.

The application checks the photo meta-data for the camera type and automatically applied the best fix for the camera type. Yes, there is an option for GoPro 7.

Seven Things I learned about Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal

I have been playing around with the application for a few days, and here are some of the things that I have learned.

1. Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal is free - you can download it from the app store. There is a similar tool for video, but that cost $7. Full details of all their apps are available on their website. (Check out the liquivid Video to HTML5 LITE app)
2. There isn't any configuration needed, there is a settings option but it just opens to an empty dialog box.
3. You have the ability to change the distortion strength. You get a live preview of the image as you adjust the slider.
4. There is an "eye" icon underneath the picture, that's where you can see the before version of the image.
5. There are 68 Distortion Camera settings - including Other/Unknown camera.
6. There's a slider to adjust the JPG quality but you don't get a live preview of how reducing the quality impacts the image.
7. The is no "batch mode" simple drag and drop one image at a time onto the window.

Example Photo Transformation

I would recommend trying out Liquivid Photo Fisheye Removal if you have any photos taken with the GoPro. Its simple design makes it easy to use.

Fix GoPro FishEye in Filmora

GoPro is a really cool camera. It's great because you can set it up and record videos over a long period - such as time-lapse or recording going down the slopes.

The camera lens on the GoPro is a “Fish Eye” type of lens that can make some shots look a bit weird. This can easily be fixed in post-production without impacting the overall shot.

Unfortunately it is not possible to fix in iMovie. You'll need to use a different Movie Editor or use something like liquivid Video Fisheye Removal ($7.99) to fix the clip.

I recommend getting Wondershare's Filmora since it offers a lot of very cool functionality.

Fixing FishEye Effect in WonderShare Filmora 9

It's really easy to fix GoPro Video clips in Filmora. First, Upload your video to your computer, the easy way is to connect the GoPro cable to the computer and open up Photos. Then drag/drop the clips to the dashboard.

1. Open up Filmora 9 and create a new Project
2. Drag/Drop the video clip to the timeline.
3. Double click on the video, and you should see the top left has change to some new editing options.
4. Scroll down the video section until you see Lens correction.
5. Select the checkbox to the left of Lens Correction
6. For the GoPro 7 Silver, I found that selecting GoPro Hero 5 Black with 1080p Wide was the best selection to “defish.”

The good thing about this is that you get a “live feed” of the changes, so you can see what works best for your particular shot.

Example Fix

This is a Timelapse video clip using the GoPro 7 Silver on the Framingham/Worcester MBTA Commuter Rail.

TabLauncher Lite

Apple's Dock is a great way to quickly launch all your everyday applications. Simply click on the icon.

But what if you want to access other applications? Usually, it involves Spotlight or opening up the Application folder.

TabLauncher lite is a better way to launch applications that are used often. With TabLauncher there are category tabs on the side of the screen where you can access applications quickly and easily. Now you can combine work-related apps, or graphics apps into simple categories that's easy to find and launch.

Website Description

TabLauncher will help you find and launch your favorite programs, web pages, folders, or any type
of files in a fast and easy way.

Taking up fewer resources as possible, and allowing you to personalize the appearance in many
ways, by changing colors, images, transparency, animations, and many other options to make it
blend in with your desktop.

Six Things I learned about TabLauncher

1. The free version has a limit of three tabs, the paid version has unlimited tabs and is only $3.99
2. You can have the tabs on any edge of the screen - the paid version allows you to have tabs on either side of the screen at the same time.
3. You can put any application in the Tabs, in addition you can add scripts to perform any type of function.
4. You can hide TabLaunch that way it's out of the way until you need it.
5. There is no share functionality- so you can't share tab settings/configurations between computers.
6. There are special tabs with built in functionality - such as Running Applications, Music

Memory Usage

TabLauncher Lite uses a lot less memory than LaunchBar. This might be a good solution for computers that don't have a lot of memory.

LaunchBar: 584.4 MB

Tab Launcher Lite: 85.1 MB

LaunchBar does offer a lot more features than launching applications, but if that's all you need to do then TabLauncher might be a good solution.

Getting TabLauncher Lite

You can download TabLauncher lite from the Apple Store. The full version is $3.99. You can learn more about the application on their website.