Tips You Can Use

Welcome to this installment of selected tips from our friends at Design Tools Monthly, the “Executive Summary of Graphic Design News”.

It’s the one publication that keeps abreast of the wide ranging changes in tools available to designers. This is a read that will save you time and money. When visiting their site don’t forget to check out the Software Closet which collects the best free and share­ware utilities for graphic designers, along with the best plug-ins, fonts, etc (Mac only).

Current tips:

(Posted: May 13, 2009)

MacTuneUp Improves System Performance

If your Mac seems sluggish, MacTuneUp 3.5 ($35) may be able to help. This system utility for Mac OS X 10.4 and newer can recover empty hard disk space, improve memory usage, clear old cache files, fix problems with the main Volumes directory, and even adjust network settings for better download performance. www.macxware.com

Easier Uploads with FTP Maker

Softhing’s FTP Maker 1.4.1 ($30) is a clever application that lets you build and distribute “mini applications” that automate uploading files to your FTP server. You provide the server settings, FTP Maker builds an uploader app you can give away, and then users drag-and-drop to send their files to your server. This is a great tool for making it easier for your clients and coworkers to send you project files, and it improves network security because you don’t have to give out passwords. www.softhing.com

Previous tips:

Test Windows Browsers on Your Mac

Alkaline from Litmus ($24 for a day, $49 per month) is a service for Mac OS X users that want to test how their websites will look and function on Windows PCs. It simulates 17 different Windows browsers, and doesn’t require users to install Windows or any extra Web browsers.

Alkaline is free if you only need to test your sites for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 compatibility.

Scrubby Sliders

Don’t you just hate filling in text fields and using the slider in Adobe applications to set things like layer opacity, text size, leading, etc.? Instead, just hover over the field’s label and your cursor will turn into a double-sided “scrubber” arrow. Slide the scrubber to the left or right to decrease or increase the default setting. Sweet!
Lesa Snider King’s Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual

Pause Animated GIFs

You can temporarily pause the movement of an animated GIF on a website by simply clicking and holding on the page window’s scroll bar thumb (the part that moves). As long as you hold the mouse button down, the GIF will stop its animation. To examine the separate frames that make up the animated GIF, drag it to your desktop and then open it in Preview. Each frame will display as a separate page.

Free PDF-to-Word Converter

You can upload any PDF file to www.PDFtoWord.com, and it will convert it to Microsoft Word or RTF format and email the result to you. DTM gave it their four-column newsletter to convert, and the text became quite easy to select, even if the layout was compromised. Through creative use of Style Sheets in Word, the text could be brought under control and much of the appearance maintained.

Tips Archive:

We have an archive of all the tips we’ve passed along to you.