Google Earth now lets you explore the fourth dimension—time. Peek under the Layers panel, open the Featured Content folder, and select Rumsey Historical Maps. You’ll find a number of historical maps that can be laid over the globe, including World Globe 1890, Middle East 1861, and San Francisco 1853.

MAKE: Blog also has a list of nifty Google Earth projects and hacks, including how to make Google Earth movies without buying the Pro version, how to GPS tag photos with Flickr, and how to virtually recreate trips using Google Earth and a GPS.

Via MAKE: Blog

http://handpickedsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=308 My article for the Create column in the February issue of Macworld, “Take command of color,” is available online. You’ll find several simple, useful tips for working with OS X’s Colors panel, along with some recommendations for color resources on the Web.

Just came across this tip for speeding up Safari. This simple tip really does seem to work.

Here’s how to give Safari a quick speed boost:

1. Quit Safari if open.
2. Open the Terminal application.
3. Enter this line (or copy and paste it; be sure it is entered on one line): defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.2.
4. Hit Return, quit Terminal, and relaunch Safari

That’s it. You should see a noticeable speed bump.

Via Newsvine

Here’s my solution: I cleaned it with an antistatic cleaning wipe from Staples (but any antistatic cleaning wipe will do). These babies are barely moistened and they’re flammable, i.e., they evaporate quickly. Now my Mighty Mouse is clicking and scrolling as good as new.

Dougal writes:

Banding is a common problem when going to print when an image has had a few changes, particularly from adjustment layers. (I use Photoshop, I don’t know about Photoshop Elements).

The resulting image can have severe “banding”. This can be seen in the histogram…

The solution is the addition of a tiny bit of noise, (Filter/Noise) I usually try about 2% to start with a 250dpi image, the amount of noise needed will vary with image resolution. This is invisible on the image but will cure banding (this should be the last thing you do to an image).

Here’s an example:

The above picture is probably not salvageable; it’s out of focus, the colors are washed out and the highlights are blown. You can see this in the histogram below. Notice the spike at the far right, which shows how many pixels are blown to white.

I won’t try to save the image, but let’s see what happens to the histogram when I adjust the levels.

There’s no bringing back the highlights, so I just tried to boost the colors. You can see the difference in the image below.

The colors are richer, but the new histogram after applying the changes shows banding (notice the gaps in the histogram below). The banding would almost certainly be visible in the printed image.

After applying Filter > Noise > Add Noise (Amount: 2%; Distribution: Gaussian; Monochromatic: Checked), you’ll notice there are no gaps in the new histogram:

You might see a bit of noise onscreen (I haven’t included the noisy image here because the noise wouldn’t be visible at this small size), but it won’t be visible in your print.

Thanks Dougal!

You’ll find it all here.

At first, I used the side buttons to display the Desktop with Exposé. But it wasn’t that useful. If I wanted to show the Desktop to move a file, I still had to press F11 after clicking on the file I wanted to move in order to show the Finder again.

I changed the settings so the side buttons would show the Application Switcher. That seemed like a pretty good idea. I tend to have several applications running at the same time and, while I haven’t really made much use of the Application Switcher before, I thought this might be a timesaver. You can scroll through the open applications with the mouse (though you’ll still need to mouse over to click the application you want to switch to, or hit the Return key).

You can also assign any application to a mouse button. I thought about using it to open Mail. Currently, I have the side buttons assigned to a simple Applescript that opens the Color Picker, but you could create any script or Automator workflow (be sure to save them as applications) and assign it to a button.

To open a freestanding Apple Color Picker, type choose color in Script Editor and save the file as an application. Now, assign the mouse button to run this application. You can also download the Choose Color application here.

But I’m curious: how are you using the side buttons of the Mighty Mouse? Do you have a good script idea, something that the average person would use often enough to assign to a mouse button? Any ideas?

First, if you aren’t already aware of the keyboard shortcuts for taking a picture of the screen in OS X, here they are:

1. Command-Shift-3 takes a picture of the entire screen and saves it to the desktop.
2. Press Command-Shift-4 to capture a selection of the screen. The cursor will change to a cross-hair. Hold the mouse button down and drag to create your selection. When you release the mouse, the selection is captured to the desktop.
3. To select an area of the screen (a window, the menu bar, the dock, etc.), press Command-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. The cursor changes to a camera; as you move the camera over different areas, they will be highlighted. Note that the area to capture doesn’t need to be on the top layer, that is, you can capture a window that is covered by other windows as long as you can move the camera over some part of it to highlight it. To cancel the camera and drag to make a selection, press the Spacebar again. To cancel, press the Space bar (so the cross-hair is showing, not the camera), then press the Escape key.

Finally, to capture a screenshot to the Clipboard, hold down the Control key when you press the other shortcut keys. You can then paste the image directly into another application. For example, if you open Photoshop and create a new file after capturing a screenshot to the Clipboard, the new document will default to the size of the captured image. Create the new document, paste the image from the Clipboard, and you’re good to go.

1. Open your scan in Preview.
2. My Epson scans to a PDF file. If you’re starting with a PDF file, you’ll first need to convert the file to another format. Select Save As… from the File menu, or press Shift-Command-S. Select another format from the pop-up menu (Photoshop is a good choice, especially if you think you might want to do more advanced editing later) and click Save. The original window is replaced with the converted file. Note that this is also a great way to enhance faxes, which are usually TIFF files; these won’t need to be converted before you can correct them.
3. Now that you have a workable image, select Image Correction from the Tools menu, or press Option-Command-C. The Image Correction palette appears.
4. To adjust a faded text file, try moving the Contrast slider to the right and the Brightness slider slightly to the left. You can also experiment with the Exposure and Gamma controls.
5. To clean up a fax, try sliding the Contrast slider to the right.
6. Your changes aren’t saved until you close and save the file. If you close the Image Correction palette and decide you don’t like your changes, just open it again and click the Reset All button.

Image Correction inside Preview makes it handy for correcting faded scans and noisy faxes. Save yourself some time and use it instead of rescanning or launching Photoshop the next time you need to correct an image.

Spotlight is awesome for finding files, but as an application launcher it falls a little short. Enter a search term in Spotlight and press return; Spotlight opens a Spotlight window showing all results for your query, not the application. Of course, if you’re looking for an application, it’s probably listed as the Top Hit, or just below the Top Hit in a list of Application results. Here’s how to launch the Top Hit without hitting the Down Arrow key.

After searching in Spotlight, press and hold the Command key. The Top Hit will be highlighted. Now you can hit the Return key to launch the program. If what you’re looking for is further down on the list of results, you can skip from section to section by continuing to hold the Command key and pressing the Down Arrow. For example, if you’re looking for a mail message, you can skip from Applications to Documents to Mail Messages, then release the Command key and press the Down Arrow until you highlight the result you’re looking for. Then hit Return.

It’s only been a couple of days since I posted a blurb about COLOURlovers, but I’m hooked. I see COLOURlovers colours when I lie awake in bed at night. I’ve even started spelling “color” with a “u.” I’ve already added about 25 colours, and I can’t stop clicking though new colours, voting and looking for new favorites.

Even if you don’t share my love for colours, you may need to select a colour for a web page or design. The web is a wealth of inspiration and COLOURlovers should be your first stop. But just in case you can’t find what you’re looking for, here’s a tip for using DigitalColor Meter, an easily overlooked utility that makes selecting colors a snap.

You’ll find DigitalColor Meter in the Applications/Utilities folder. Launch the application and select RGB As Hex Value, 8-bit from the pop-up menu. Move the cursor around the screen until you find a color you like (you can adjust the Aperture Size slider; I prefer sliding it all the way to the left and sweeping the screen slowly, like scanning a beach for buried treasure with a metal detector). You’ll see the RGB values and colour swatch update as you move your mouse.

To copy a color, make sure DigitalColor Meter is the foremost application, then click Shift-Command-C. You can then paste the color values (the Hex code numbers) into your COLOURlovers colour number field, or into your HTML document. DigitalColor Meter will add quotes and a pound sign (e.g., “#CCCCCC”), which you’ll want to delete after you paste the number into COLOURlovers.

Open Preferences and slide the Magnification Factor all the way to the right, then sweep your screen. You’ll be amazed at how many interesting colours you’ll be able to find, regardless of what’s displayed on your monitor. There’s hidden treasure buried in all those pixels. With 8-bits of colour, you’ve got 16 million potential colours lurking in there, and they’re all waiting to be mined and named by you.

Be sure to visit COLOURlovers and vote for my colours. Post a comment under my profile on COLOURlovers when you join so I can find you and vote for your colours.

There are still a few days left on the calendar for July and I’m already reading my September issue of Macworld, which is brimming with reviews, overflowing with 50 Mac Gems handpicked by Dan Frakes, and chock full of secrets, including two pieces by Yours Truly (”Solve Printer Problems” and “Tiger’s Secret Tools”). No, I’m not privy to forthcoming issues because I’m a contributor to Macworld. I get to glimpse the future because I have a digital subscription to Macworld through Zinio.com.

Okay, this is an ad. I’ll make some parking meter change if you click through these links and subscribe, but why wouldn’t you? With Zinio, I get my Macworld well before the issues hit the stands, which is always well before my copies arrive in the mail. Best of all, I can keep them archived on my hard drive where they’re searchable, instead of piled up on the floor of my office where they gather dust. And searching through a stack of old magazines is like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Just in case you’re not a Mac user, here are a few other magazines that might interest you that are available through Zinio:

The Zinio Reader makes reading onscreen tolerable (I prefer it to Adobe Acrobat Reader), and you can add notes and highlighting to your magazines, print spreads, even share an issue with a friend for free. And Zinio can be a good deal, too. Digital Camera World, one of my favorite photography rags, is $15.99 at the newsstand and about $140 for a subscription. But it’s only $30 bucks for a digital subscription through Zinio!

I’m not ready to give up my printed copies completely (sometimes I like to read in the… bathtub), but why wait to line up at the post office or Borders for the latest issue of your favorite magazines. Get ’em while their fresh, like I do, at Zinio.com.

I don’t know why I never noticed this before (is it new in Safari 2.0?), but here’s a little timesaving tip, just in case you’ve overlooked it, too. This Safari tip can save you some work when you want to copy a link from a Web page into your code.

Control-click on a link in Safari and select Copy Link HTML Tag from the contextual menu. I’ve always selected Copy Link and pasted it into a tag, but Copy Link HTML Tag copies the link and the tag.

Note: My original post included some settings for Unsharp Mask that are less than ideal for prepping photos for printing. I inadvertently included settings that I use to “burn the haze” from digital images, a tip I picked up from Dan Simon’s Digital Photography Bible. Simon recommends applying Unsharp Mask with settings of 16 for the Amount (I prefer a bit more; I use 20), 40 for the Radius, and 0 for the Threshold. No harm; these settings will enhance your pictures, but you’ll probably want different settings to prepare them for an iPhoto book. You’ll find more desirable sharpening settings (and a corrected Photoshop Action), at the end of this post.

The Problem

You’ve assembled your book in iPhoto and everything looks great. The images are sharp and colorful, with good shadow detail and highlights. But when you open your freshly printed iPhoto book, the images look a bit soft, the colors look flat, and the images are a bit dark. What happened?

The problem lies with the paper and ink. Different papers absorb ink differently. If a paper absorbs too much ink, the image will lose some of its sharpness. Shadow detail is lost as the ink “spreads” in the darker areas of the image, so that everything beyond a certain level (usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 94 to 96 percent gray) prints as 100 percent black.

There are three adjustments that can improve your images and improve the quality of your finished iPhoto books.

1. Adjust the color to keep your images from appearing flat.
2. Carefully lighten the image or—ideally—increase the output level to preserve your shadows (this can also help with softness).
3. Apply a minimal amount of sharpening.

Correcting in iPhoto

You’ll need to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for best results, but if you’re stuck with iPhoto, here’s how to improve your images using the tools you’ve got.

Most digital images can benefit from a bit of color adjustment and if you shoot in RAW format, color correction is essential. You can always try clicking on the Enhance button to give your image a boost. Sometimes this works just fine, but the results aren’t very consistent. To get more control over your image, click on the Edit button, then click the Adjust button to bring up the Adjust palette.

Let’s take a look at this palette. At the bottom, you’ll see a histogram, a bar chart showing the distribution of light values for each channel (red, green, and blue) in your image. Keep an eye on this histogram when you adjust your image by moving the various sliders; it will show you the effect of your changes.

Tip: You can see what your original image looked like at any time during your adjustments by pressing and holding the Control key.

The top two sliders are for adjusting Brightness and Contrast. My recommendation: if you can, stay away from these, or use them sparingly.

Try adjusting the Brightness slider to right and notice what happens to the histogram. You’ll see the entire graph shift to the right. That means all of the image is being brightened, including the shadows, midtones, and highlights. Keep your eye on the brightest part of your image and notice what happens. You’re shifting the dark values to gray and the light areas to white, and the result is an image that looks washed out.

Move the Contrast slider and notice what happens to the histogram. If you move the slider to the left, decreasing the contrast, you squish the values at either end toward the middle. You’re moving the shadows and the highlights toward the midtones, decreasing the tonal range. Move the slider to the right, increasing contrast, and you’re moving the midtones out toward either end, increasing the shadows and highlights at the same time, and loosing the midtones.

Instead of using Brightness and Contrast, try setting the black point and white point. If your histogram doesn’t extend to both ends of the graph, your image is lacking shadows and highlights. Drag the black point (the left slider under the histogram) to the right until it is just at the point where the leftmost bars in the histogram begin. Drag the white point (the right slider) to the left until it is just at the point where the rightmost bars end.

The next group of three sliders are for color correction. As I’ve already written elsewhere (read the post here), you can easily adjust the temperature and tint in one click by holding down the Command key and clicking in an area of your image that should be a neutral gray.

You may want to boost the saturation in your image, making the colors more vibrant. If you drag the Saturation slider all the way to the left you’ll notice that the three graphs in the histogram merge into one blue graph as your image loses all color and turns to gray. To boost the saturation, nudge the Saturation slider to the right, or click on the tiny color bars to the right of the slider to bump up the colors, being careful not to overdo it.

Once you’re satisfied with the color, jump to the Exposure control. This control is a little tricky to explain. If you look at the histogram as you move the exposure slider to the left, you’ll see that it compresses the tonal range toward the shadows. But moving it to the right flattens the range and shifts all the values toward the highlights.

I’m not sure exactly what it does, but it’s not the same as adjusting the midpoint with Photoshop’s Levels dialog. Just look at the three images below. The image on the left is the original, the exposure in the middle image has been maxed out in iPhoto, and the image on the right shows the effect of moving the midpoint all the way to the left in Photoshop. It may be difficult to see in these thumbnails, but iPhoto has blown out the highlights to white, while Photoshop has washed out the image, but maintained the highlights.

If you don’t have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you’ll have to adjust the Brightness or Exposure to keep from losing detail in your darkest shadows. Adjust the Exposure a few clicks, or bump the Brightness up a bit. I wouldn’t give it more than about 5 or 10 clicks to the right, depending on your image. Be careful not to lose important highlights.

Finally, sharpen the image. iPhoto doesn’t do a very good job of sharpening, so it’s hard to overdo it. But zoom in on your image and look for any halos around the edges. If you see halos, you’ve gone too far.

For more tips, read this Macworld article, “iPhoto 5’s secret weapon” by Ben Long.

Correcting in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements

You’ll get much better results by adjusting your images in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

First, correct the color. You can use the Levels dialog. Try clicking on the Auto button. Like the Auto Enhance button in iPhoto, this sometimes works just fine. But if you want to fine-tune your levels, adjust the black point and white point (as described above). You can also use the eye droppers in the Levels dialog to set the black point (select the left eye dropper and click on an area of your image that should be black) and white point (select the right eye dropper and click on an area of your image that should be white). You can remove a color cast by clicking the middle eye dropper and clicking a neutral gray in your image to set the gray point.

Second, correct the output. The only way to properly do this is by using the Levels command in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The Output levels slider is at the bottom of the Levels dialog. Slide the left Output level to the right, or type a number in the left field above. I’ve found that a value of 12 works well for iPhoto books.

Finally, add a bit of sharpening using Unshap Mask. Select Unsharp Mask from the Filter>Sharpen menu. I use these settings as a starting point: Amount: 125%; Radius: 1 pixel; Theshold: 4. These settings will be just fine for most images, but keep in mind that this is only a starting point. The correct settings will depend on a number of factors, including subject matter (for example, you may want less sharpening for portraits), your camera (if you’re not shooting in RAW, your camera’s in-camera sharpening may be too little or too much), and personal preference. Experiment to find the right settings for you.

Get a Little Action

When I’m putting together a book, I’ll adjust each image individually. But if you want to get a quick idea of how an image might look, especially if you shoot RAW, you can try my iPhoto Book Prep Action. This action does everything I recommend for preparing your images before printing an iPhoto book: It applies Auto Levels, adjusts the Output level to preserve shadows when your iPhoto book is printed, and applies my sharpening settings using Unsharp Mask.

You can download the action here. NOTE: Use the Action at your own risk. Your mileage may vary, and I can’t responsible if you’re not happy with the results.

Forget about Monochromatic, Tetradic, Triadic, or any -ic schemes. Just find a picture containing colors you like—the subject and quality of the picture is irrelevant—and open the picture in Photoshop. Select Filters > Pixelate > Mosaic. You can adjust the Cell Size to select more or fewer colors.

If you don’t have Photoshop, just open the image in Core Image Fun House. Add a Stylize > Pixellate filter. Adjust the Scale slider to select more or fewer colors. You can drag the Pixellate Center to change the colors.

Here’s an example. The image is a reject, but that doesn’t matter. I’m just after the colors.

Turn off automatic entry of information

The first preventative measure is to turn off the option to automatically enter photo information when you add pictures to your iPhoto book. This option is turned on by default, but it’s easy to disable. After clicking on the Create a new book icon at the bottom of the iPhoto window (or selecting New Book from the File menu) and selecting your theme, click on the Settings icon below your new book cover. Uncheck the Automatically enter photo information checkbox and click OK.

Now, when you drag photos into your iPhoto book, iPhoto won’t automatically add the file name. Unfortunately, if you’re using the Folio theme, you’ll still see other information that iPhoto has added without any intervention on your part: invitations to insert captions and descriptions of your photos, along with a copyright notice for each image. If you choose the Contemporary theme, you’ll see an invitation to enter a description for most of the images in your iPhoto book.

Review in Preview

I know of no way to prevent iPhoto from automatically entering these prompts, so if you prefer not to have them (as I almost always do), you’ll need to delete them manually. When you’ve gone through your entire book and confirmed that you see only the information you want to see, quit iPhoto (there’s no other way to save your changes). Then open iPhoto again and select Print from the File menu. Select Preview from the Print dialog. Now you can proof the file as it will be sent to Apple for printing.

It seems like a lot of extra work, but it beats paying about $40 (with shipping) for an iPhoto book, only to read “Insert a caption,” or “DSC_0046.NEF” under your favorite picture.

The anonymous author of the tip calls it “at a glance” mode. To open Dashboard, you press the F12 key. But if you hold it down, Dashboard will appear as long as you press the key. Take in a quick glance at your Apple stock or check the weather, then just let go of the key as soon as you’re finished. But there’s more…

This same tip also works with the Exposé keys: F9, F10, and F11.

1. First, select your Inbox in Mail. Go down to the bottom left corner of your Mail window and click on the Action menu (the little “gear” icon; see above) and select Get Info. Or, just hit Command-I.
2. In the Account Info window that appears, select the account you want to manage from the Account pop-up list. Click on the Messages on Server tab (if you have a .Mac or IMAP account, click on the Quota Limits tab).
3. After your messages load from the server, click on the Size column to sort the messages by size. You can highlight and delete only the biggest email hogs from the server, or hit Command-A to select all of your messages. Then click the Remove From Server button in the bottom right of the Account Info window.

If you have a chronic problem with your mail server filling up, change your account preferences to remove messages from the server more frequently.

1. Open Mail preferences, click on Accounts, select the account you want to manage, then click on the Advanced tab.
2. Make sure the Remove copy from server after retreiving a message option is checked.
3. Select an option from the pop-up menu. Depending on your volume of mail, you might want to remove messages After one week or After one day. It’s a good idea to leave messages on the server for some period of time, just in case you accidently delete an important message or your mailbox becomes corrupted.

If you still have a problem receiving large files (sometimes AOL users have a hard time sending me files), or you need to send a file that’s too large for your mail server, try using YouSendIt or Dropload, which let you send and retrieve files without using email attachments or FTP software.

If you have preferences set to open the image in an external editor, just hold down the Option key when you double-click. The image will open in an edit window in iPhoto.

If you have preferences set to open the image in an edit window in iPhoto, holding down the Option key and double-clicking opens the image in the edit view.

Finally, if you have preferences set to open the image in edit view, holding down the Option key and double-clicking opens the image in an edit window.

To open the RAW image, drag the thumbnail preview from iPhoto and drop it on the Photoshop or Photoshop Elements application icon in your Dock. The RAW image will open, but only if you haven’t previously opened the image by double-clicking. If you’ve opened the JPG by double-clicking the file, then dragging and dropping the file will open the JPG again.

The trick is to hold down the Shift key. This also works for Exposé (hold the Shift key and press F9, F10, or F11) and for Dashboard (hold Shift while pressing F12).

Submitted by John Paul.

Here’s a shortcut to view the information for multiple items: Press and hold the Option key as you click. All of the items in the group (documents, folders, etc.) will expand. Clicking again while holding the Option key collapses all of the items in the group. You can also hold the Option key and use the Right Arrow key to expand items and the Left Arrow to collapse items.

Via: macosxhints

Open a QuickTime movie and hit Command-F to play the movie full screen. Use Expose to show all windows (F9, unless you’ve changed your Expose preferences), then select any other open window or application. The movie will continue playing full screen in the background, behind your applications, dock, and menu bar.

Submitted by Luis Fausto.