Make-the-Cut makes unexpected debut

I was going to be excited to report that SCAL2 for Mac was out in a form I would now call stable. I’ve been cutting with it for a week or so with no issues and looking forward to doing a full review once the Christmas rush was over… and then, without even a whispered rumor in advance, a SCAL competitor emerges.

The first version of Make-the-Cut software (for Windows only) has been released by an independent developer. First reactions are positive, at least at the introductory price of $78. Andy has taken pains to address the most painful aspects of SCAL and it is obvious from just a couple of screen shots that the interface is more polished than its predecessors. Will be interesting to see where things head with this in the coming weeks as lots of people find Black Friday Cricuts under their trees.

Way Cool Tool for your Mac

 

I can not remember when I have been more excited about a new piece of software than I am about Skitch. Skitch is a free screen shot/image sharing and annotating tool that is just so well designed you will have to see it to believe it. When you do you will find yourself asking yourself, “Why isn’t all software like this?” It seems like plasq has not only created a whole new kind of application we didn’t know we needed, but thought of everything as they built it and created an interface sure to be envied (and hopefully emulated) across all computerdom. I’m (obviously) not ashamed to gush over this combination application/web service which might just be the exception to that “if it seems too good to be true” rule.

Sample uses for the crafter/blogger might include
-taking, annotating, sizing and organizing screen shots for use in blog or print/pdf tutorials
-ditto for webcam shots
-cropping, resizing and annotating digital camera photos or scans for posting on blogs or message boards
-facilitating multiple images in a single post on Cricut message board
-creation of dummy thumbnails for scut or svg files

Instant font slideshow in Mac OSX (Leopard)

Compared to the PC side, there is a dearth of font viewing software for Macs. In particular, none of the freebies and few of the for-pay font utilities I have found allow you to view uninstalled fonts. However, you can view the character sets for your fonts, whether installed or uninstalled with this Mac OSX Leopard  trick.

Open a finder window and select the fonts you want to view. Here I have filtered my downloaded fonts folder by searching for “ttf” to eliminate most of the folders and read me files. It doesn’t matter what view you are in. I am showing this in the cover flow view, because some of you may not know you can use it for fonts.

Next just tap the space bar (or the QuickView icon which looks like an eye) and your font slide show window will appear. Use the arrow keys to navigate or click on the triangle on the screen to play the slideshow automatically.

The contact sheet button works, too, though it acted a little quirky for me .

This is really a lot of fun to play with. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.