InformIT: Mac OS X Unleashed > Graphic Utilities

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Graphic Utilities

The Mac OS X operating system comes with a few utilities for working with and creating graphics files, but, unfortunately, nothing that can enable you to create a work of art from scratch. If that's the type of application you're looking for, check out Chapter 8. The four included applications (DigitalColor Meter, Grab, Image Capture, and Preview) can help you identify onscreen colors, take screenshots, download digital photos, and view and manipulate graphics.

DigitalColor Meter

The DigitalColor Meter (Path: /Applications/Utilities/DigitalColor M e ter) is a small application that measures and reports the color of an onscreen pixel, or the average color of a group of pixels. Graphic artists will find this useful for color matching, and Web designers can use it to quickly sample an onscreen color for use in a Web page.

When launched, the DigitalColor Meter application opens the display shown in Figure 6.33.

Figure 6.33 Use the DigitalColor meter to match onscreen colors to color palettes.

The panel at the right of the window displays an enlarged view of whatever is currently under the Mac OS X cursor. Moving the cursor across the screen results in real-time feedback. Immediately to the right of the enlarged view is a color well that contains the sampled color. By default, the displayed color is the average of several pixels (the aperture) of the enlarged image. Adjusting the Aperture Size slider controls the number of pixels sampled from one (for a true 1:1 color sample) at the minimum to a 16x16 block at the maximum.

To the right of the color well is a numeric representation of the currently selected color. The pop-up menu at the top of the window determines the color model being used:

RGB As Percentage— Displays red, green, and blue as a percentage. 100% RGB = white; 0% RGB = black.
RGB As Actual Value— Displays RGB values as a range from 0–65535.
RGB As Hex— Represents the RGB values in the range of 0x00 to 0xFF. It's useful for Web designers to sample for HTML colors.
CIE 1931— A tristimulus color system adopted by the CIE (Commission International de l'E'clairage) in 1931.
CIE 1976— A tristimulus color system adopted by the CIE in 1976.
CIE L*a*b*— A color space usually used for working with subtractive color mixtures (paint and print) as opposed to additive mixtures (light), adopted by the CIE in 1976.
Tristimulus— Three primary color values required to match a given shade.

Depending on the color profile of your monitor, the DigitalColor Meter application might not be able to map a given color into the chosen color space. If this is the case, you'll be warned in a message at the bottom of the window, and the tristimulus values will not change.

Menus

The Color menu has two options to help make it easier to grab a color for use elsewhere. Hold Color (Shift+Command+H) freezes on the current color. Obviously, this is best used as a keyboard shortcut; otherwise, the color will change as you select the menu item! Copy Color (Command+C) copies the color values into a pasteable string. An RGB hex value is copied as a quoted hex string (such as "#FFAABB"), and is ready for pasting into an HTML document.

That's it for DigitalColor Meter. It has its place, but it isn't very useful in everyday system operations.

Grab

Mac OS X 10.1 reintroduces the ability to capture a screenshot at any time by pressing Shift+Command+3 for a full-screen shot, or Shift+Command+4 for partial screens. Even with this capability, there is still room for improvement. The Grab application (Path: /Applications/Utilities/Grab), can do things that are not possible using the built-in screenshot function. Grab can capture screen information in three different ways:

Selection (Shift+Command+A)— Captures a portion of the screen, determined by a user-drawn rectangle.
Screen (Shift+Command+Z)— Captures the entire screen.
Timed Screen (Shift+Command+Z)— Captures the screen with a ten-second delay. This gives you time to position your windows, pull down (or pop up) a menu, and so on. You can take screenshots with menus in the down position in Mac OS X!

To start a screen capture, choose the appropriate method to take the shot from the Capture menu, or press the Command key equivalent.

Grab will display a window with short instructions on how to proceed. This window is not included in the final screenshot, despite always being onscreen.

If you choose Selection, you must click and drag over the portion of the screen that you want to capture. A screen capture requires you to click outside of the instruction window. Finally, to use a Timed Screen capture, click the Start Timer button. The system will wait ten seconds before taking the picture and will sound a warning beep three seconds before the capture. You can position windows and prepare the screen as necessary during this time frame. Figure 6.34 shows the Timed Screen message window as the system counts down.

Figure 6.34 The Timed Screenshot gives you ten seconds to prepare your screen.

After it is taken, the screenshot will appear in a new window within the Capture application. To get information on its size and bit depth, choose the Inspector (Command+1) from the Edit menu. You can save or print the screenshot from the File menu. The default format for Mac OS X screenshots is the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).

Preferences

When taking a screenshot, you can choose to superimpose a cursor of your choice over the screen. The default is no cursor at all. Use the Grab Preferences, under the Application menu, to change the cursor that will be used. The preferences are shown in Figure 6.35.

Figure 6.35 Grab can superimpose a cursor of your choice over the screen capture.

Within the Pointer Type section, click the button of the mouse pointer that you want to use.

The preferences can also toggle the camera shutter noise that is played when an image is captured. Check or uncheck the Enable Sound button as you see fit.

Image Capture

Have a digital camera? What about a digital media reader? The need for extra software for viewing and manipulating images might be over. The Mac OS X Image Capture application (Path: /Applications/Image Capture) enables you to connect a digital camera or media reader (USB/FireWire) to your computer and instantly import pictures—even turn them into a Web page.

Apple has posted a list of the Image Capture compatible applications at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106523. Because the supported devices are updated frequently, the easiest way to see if yours will work is to plug it into the system and see what happens! Check with your camera or media reader's support page to see if additional software is available.

To use the Image Capture application, plug your camera or media reader into the computer; then place the device in Connect mode. Mac OS X will automatically launch Image Capture in a few seconds if it is recognized. Figure 6.36 shows the Image Capture application after launching.

Figure 6.36 The Image Capture application will automatically launch when it senses a camera or digital media reader.

All functions of the Image Capture application are carried out through this window—even closing the application is just a matter of closing the window.

Camera

The type of camera or media reader and number of available pictures are shown at the top of the window. If multiple devices are connected, choose the one you want to work with from the Camera pop-up menu.

Download To

The default location for picture downloads is the Pictures folder in the current user's home directory. To change the directory, use the Download To popup menu to choose Other, and then select the directory to hold the files.

Automatic Task

After a Hot-Plug action is executed, Mac OS X can automatically use one of eight different AppleScripts to format and arrange your photos. The AppleScripts are located in the /Library/Image Capture/Scripts folder and can be modified (or added to). You can learn more about AppleScript in Chapter 21, "AppleScript."

The five available scripts, by default, are

Build Web page— Builds a complete Web page, with thumbnails, for the downloaded images. The Web page is stored in a folder named Index in the same location as the images used.
Format 3x5— Builds multiple Web pages (3x5index##.html) that contain scaled versions of the images, along with a 3x5.tips.html page with printing instructions.
Format 4x6— Builds multiple Web pages (4x6index##.html) that contain scaled versions of the images, along with a 4x6.tips.html page with printing instructions.
Format 5x7— Builds multiple Web pages (5x7index##.html) that contain scaled versions of the images, along with a 5x7.tips.html page with printing instructions.
Format 8x10— Builds multiple Web pages (8x10index##.html) that contain scaled versions of the images, along with an 8x10.tips.html page with printing instructions.

To choose another script or application, use the Other selection to browse the file system and select an alternative.

Tip

The original image capture application, which shipped with 10.0, included three other AppleScripts to help scale downloaded images. These scripts relied on a buried faceless application called Image Capture Extension (path: /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ImageCapture.framework/Versions/A/Image Capture E x tension).

Although these scripts are no longer included with Mac OS X 10.1, the Image Capture Extension is.

This application is accessible only through AppleScript, and can be used to scale and rotate images on your system. This tool could easily be employed to manipulate images for Web sites in real-time.

Hot-Plug Action

When the OS X system detects that media is available for downloading, you can instruct it to do one of three things:

Image Capture Application— Automatically starts the Image Capture software (default).
None— Does nothing. If this is selected, you'll have to open Image Capture manually to access your photographs.
Other— Allows the user to choose his own application or script to run.

Downloading

When you're ready to download images, you can choose all the pictures, or select from thumbnails of the images stored on the camera. If you choose Download All, Image Capture will download the files from your camera. This process is illustrated in Figure 6.37.

Figure 6.37 The process of downloading images can take quite awhile.

After the download is complete, Image Capture will launch your selected Automatic Task AppleScript, if any.

To download only certain images from your device, click the Download Some button. After a brief delay, the List View of thumbnails will appear, along with the image names and file sizes. Click to select or deselect an image for download. Use the list and icon buttons in the upper-left corner of the window to control your viewing style. The Icon view operates in the same fashion, but does not display image numbers or sizes. The Icon view can be seen in Figure 6.38.

Figure 6.38 Choose the images that you want to download from the device.

Click Download to start the download process. When completed, the Automatic Task script, if any, will be started.

Preferences

The Image Capture application preferences control what happens when images are downloaded from a camera or media reader, and how they appear within the image file browser. There are two panels within the preferences: Download Options and View Options.

The Download Options panel, shown in Figure 6.39, customizes the image download process.

Figure 6.39 Download options are used to fine-tune image transfers.

Choose from these available settings:

Delete items from camera after downloading— Removes all image files from the camera or media reader upon download.
Create custom icons— Automatically generates custom thumbnail icons for each of the downloaded images.
Add item info to Finder file comments— Uses the Finder's comment field (accessible from Show Info) to store information (size, name, and so on) about each camera file.
Embed ColorSync profile— Add a ColorSync profile to each image file to ensure consistency across output devices. Do not check this box unless you are absolutely positive of the outcome; it can drastically reduce perceived image quality in some cases.
Automatically down load all items— Automatically start the download process as soon as a camera or media reader is connected.
Set camera's date and time— Synchronize the camera's time to the time of the Mac OS X host computer.

The second panel, View Options, is shown in Figure 6.40. In this panel, a user can configure how the image listing will appear within the Image Capture application.

Figure 6.40 Customize the image listing within Image Capture.

These settings are similar to those of the Finder views:

Icon Size— Use the slider to control the size of the preview icons when viewing images in Icon View mode.
Columns— Pick and choose the columns to display within the image List View. Not all the available options are supported by all cameras, so don't be surprised if some fields are left blank.
Icon Size— There are two sizes for the icons shown within the List View. Pick your size here.

Menus

The Image Capture menus offer no options beyond what you've already seen in the Image Capture window.

Preview

Preview (Path: /Applications/Preview) is Apple's modern replacement for the Image Preview QuickTime component. Offering the capability to view a wide range of image formats, it also has native support for PDF. Although not as full-featured as Adobe's Acrobat Reader software (also included with the system), it is capable of reading PDFs without any additions to the operating system. Considering that many application distributions currently arrive with electronic documentation in PDF format, this can only be seen as a good (or possibly great) thing.

Launching

Preview can be launched in a number of ways. First, by double-clicking the application file. This will load Preview, but will not open any windows. You must then use Open from the file menu to choose a file to view.

Second, you can open Preview by dragging the image or PDF files onto its icon in the Finder or Dock. The files will each be opened in separate windows.

Third, Preview is integrated into the Mac OS X printing system and can be started by clicking Preview from any Print dialog box. You can learn more about the print system in Chapter 10.

There is a small difference in the window display between basic images and PDFs. A PDF window is shown in Figure 6.41.

Figure 6.41 PDF Windows include page navigation controls at the bottom.

Images are displayed in a borderless window (unless resized such that scrollbars are necessary). PDFs, however, have a small arrow controller in the lower-left corner. Clicking the left arrow moves the previous page, whereas clicking the right arrow moves to the next. Click and hold on an arrow to quickly page through the document.

Menus

The Preview menus enable you to perform some simple image conversions and transformations. Depending on whether you are working with a PDF or a simple image, some of the options might change.

The File menu can be used to open images or to convert open files into different formats.

Open (Command+O)— Opens a file.
Open Recent— Opens a recently accessed file.
Close (Command+W)— Closes the frontmost window.
Save As (Shift+Command+W)— Saves the current file under a new name.
Save As PDF (PDFs/Print Previews only)— Saves the current document as a PDF.
Export(Images only)— Exports the current image to a new file format, specified in the Format pop-up menu of the Save dialog. You can set image options (compression and so on) by clicking the Options button in the Save dialog.
Page Setup (Shift+Command+P)— Sets up the page layout of the current printer.
Print (Command+P)— Prints the frontmost window.

To zoom in or out on your image, rotate it, or otherwise affect its appearance, use the Display menu. Similar to the File menu, some options are restricted to PDFs or images.

Page Forward (Command+Right-Arrow)—(PDF Only)— Moves to the next page in a PDF.
Page Backward (Command+Left-Arrow)—(PDF Only)— Moves to the previous page in a PDF.
Actual Size (Command+A)— Resizes the frontmost document so it is displayed in its actual (printed) size.
Zoom In (Command+Up-Arrow)— Zooms in on the current window.
Zoom Out (Command+Down-Arrow)— Zooms out of the current window.
Zoom To Fit (Command+=)— Resizes the current document to fit within the window without scrollbars.
Rotate Left (Command+L) (Image Only)— Rotates an image 90 degrees to the left.
Rotate Right (Command+R) (Image Only)— Rotates an image 90 degrees to the right.
Flip Horizontal (Image only)— Flips an image along an imaginary vertical axis running through its center.
Flip Vertical (Image only)— Flips an image along an imaginary horizontal axis running through its center.
AntiAliasing (PDF only)— If checked, the PDF text and graphics will be automatically smoothed (antialiased).
Continuous Scrolling (PDF only)— If checked, the vertical scrollbar on PDF windows will smoothly move from page to page, like a word processor. If not selected (the default), each page will snap into view.

Preview's simple image handling capabilities do not provide any editing functionality. To edit or create original graphics, you'll need an application such as Graphic Converter—described in Chapter 8.

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