Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Review

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This week I’m back to photography. A good friend and reader recently turned me on to Nik Software that has a series of excellent photography software products. In particular, their Color Efex Pro plug-in for Aperture and Photoshop.
I know I’m supposed to be objective as a reviewer but I just have to say this plug in rocks. Have you ever seen those photoshop svants that can take a picture and then work their black magic on it. I’ve always admired it but at a certain level accepted that I’m about as likely to learn how to do that as I am to build a fission reactor in my attic.
This is where Color Efex Pro steps it up. It installs as a plug in for Aperture or Photoshop and it has a pile of digital filters that enhance your photos with the touch of a button. I’m not just talking black and white here. This is 52 filters with over 250 effects that make your photos look professional.

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Pro Contrast Filter
These filters include several traditional filter effects such as polarization and color gradients. Since I don’t shoot with anything but a UV filter, this allows me to experiment on my shots.

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Sunshine Filter
That is just the beginning though. There are also a host of filters that just make your photos look better or more interesting. There is one that softens your skin. Solarizer gives you an incredible contrast for portraits. One darkens the edges and lightens the center. Another takes your modern fancy image and magically turns it into an antiqued old photograph. Are you taking glamour shots? One click sets you up. Need extra light, the sunshine filter allows you to add it in with a large degree of granularity. You can turn day to night with the midnight filter or get that hazy James Dean look with the Monday Morning filter. I’ve spent hours playing with these filters and could ramble on. In the plug-in it even organizes the filters in convenient tabs such as portrait, landscape and traditional.

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Bleach Bypass
Applying these filters in Aperture is easy as selecting the image, activating the plug-in and clicking on your filter of choice.
Nik Software explains the benefit is that you can do your edits faster. I think they are missing the point. Color Efex Pro allows you to do edits that are completely unreachable to us mere mortals. It is like having your own little photoshop genius in your pocket.

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Glamour Glow
The Color Efex Pro filters do come at a price. There are three versions that range from $100 (with 15 filters) to $300 (with 52 filters). I know for the “point and shoot” crowd that is probably more than their camera cost but if you are an SLR owner and serious about dramatically increasing your digital enhancement skills, this one is worth a serious look. You can see samples of all the filters and download a trial at Nik’s website found at NikSoftware.com. Check it out.
You can listen to this review on Surfbits Episode 176.

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OmniOutliner on the iPhone

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Unable to drop my infatuation with the Omni Group, I started a thread months ago in the Omni Forums pleading my case for OmniOutliner on my iPhone. While the Omni gang has been mum on this point, the thread has slowly grown with additional apostles. The most recent advocate, random1destiny, gave an excellent tip for viewing current OmniOutliner files on your iPhone.
For everyone else, until the OO iPhone app comes out, a good view-only solution I found is to buy the Files iphone app which lets you upload any type of file. Then export your OO file as HTML(Unordered List) and transfer and view it using Files. This results in a fairly readable copy that you can keep on your iPhone.
Why didn’t I think of that?

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Google Reader v. NetNewsWire, Round 2

I’ve had several mac-savvy friends extol the virtues of NetNewsWire to me lately. About a year ago I tied my wagons to Google Reader because of its ubiquity and very good iPhone interface. As you can probably tell from the low post count, I’ve been under water with the day job lately. So this is exactly the sort of diversion I needed to get a break from the salt mines. I’ve downloaded NetNewsWire (again), installed it on the iPhone, and reactivated my NewsGator account. I’m going to live with it a few weeks and report back. Where do you fall in the RSS debate?

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SugarSync Hits the iPhone

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My favorite syncing utility remains to be SugarSync. It certainly isn’t perfect. Among its sins:
1. It still doesn’t sync sparse images properly (DropBox handles this with no difficulty);
2. Customer service is spotty. I’ve heard from readers about this and experienced it myself. In my case I have a few machines on SugarSync that need to be removed. I know they are trying to help me with this and part of the hold up was my fault (I wrote them from the wrong email) However, it has been several weeks and it is still not resolved.
This all being said, Sugarsync still does a very reliable job of keeping my files in sync. I’ve never lost a file through SugarSync. With it I keep files on 2 Macs, 1 PC, and an iPhone and I’ve had no problems. The service is now expanding with versioning and they’ve recently released a free iPhone application. I’ve only been using the native iPhone application a few days, but so far it is working seamlessly.

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RapidWeaver 4 Review

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There really are two kinds of web designers: the ninja coders and the unwashed masses like myself who actually loose IQ points just from looking at css code.  Strangely, I’m okay with that.  While I like tinkering with Applescript and Cocoa, I’ve got no interest in learning to code websites.  So, as I thought, I was left with one option, iWeb.  Don’t get me wrong.  I really like iWeb.  It can take you from zero to fifty very quickly.  But what if I want to go faster than 50?  Enter RapidWeaver.
Booting up RapidWeaver I did my usual bit of zero preparation.  I didn’t read any manuals or watch any tutorials.  I just went for it.  Once opened I quickly was able to open pages of various design types and templates at will.  You can make a blog or add static pages. You can quickly fill your site with pages and sub-menus to your heart’s content.  Additionally I was able to drop in html snippets that I dowloaded from RapidWeaver’s site.  This runs deeper though.  You can also add custom javascript, CSS and PHP to your RapidWeaver pages.
 
Once you are ready to publish, RapidWeaver 4 again rescues us neophytes.   You can publish directly from RapidWeaver to .Mac, FTP, SFTP or even your local drive.  You simply fill in your details and click the publish button.  It even does this cool bit of coverflow animation where it shows you each element being published.
A lot of people don’t realize that different browsers have different standards.  Internet Explorer, for instance, does not read all the wizbang features in the most current versions of Safari or Firefox.  This fact drives web developers crazy in that they must code their sites so they may be read by all browsers.  RapidWeaver takes care of this problem for you, publishing your site to work exactly the same in every browser, even Internet Explorer.
RapidWeaver 4 ships with 40 templates and there are a great many more available for download and purchase.  The RapidWeaver web site is nicely organized with available themes, css, code snippets and other addons that allow you to improve your site.  Some of these require purchase.  Others are free.
Version 4 is uses several of the most recent OS X technologies and requires that you run Leopard.  The interface is pleasant and intuitive.  I spent very little time looking for options.  Everything I needed was where I would expect it to be.  I think the ideal customer for this product is anyone who feels constrained by iWeb but doesn’t want to consume a 1,000 page CSS treatise to do it.  RapidWeaver is a chocolate coated iWeb, with sprinkles. 
A license for RapidWeaver 4 will cost $79.  You can learn more and purchase RapidWeaver at realmacsoftware.com.

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Can You Really Buy “Hip”?

Microsoft is getting lots of press about its $300M campaign to fix the Vista public image. My first thought is, “Why not spend $300M to fix Vista?” I have to admit I haven’t used it much but there are no shortage of web reports by Windows enthusiasts panning it. I do know a few of the guys in the Microsoft Mac business unit and they seem to me like stand up guys trying to make a good product. Then again, they work on Macs.
Regardless, part of this campaign involves paying $10M to Jerry Seinfeld to pitch Windows along side that famous straight man, Bill Gates. This just seems wrong to me on so many levels. First, let me say as someone who has never met either man, I generally like and respect both Jerry and Bill. However, I don’t see them making much of a difference for Visata’s problem. From my very casual sideline seat, it seems to me that Microsoft is really losing this battle on the college campuses and 20-somethings. If they really wanted to stop the avalanche of switchers, they should use somebody younger than a 90’s sitcom star (where his character always used Macs) and a retired CEO. Also, even if you could buy “hip”, are these guys really selling it? Maybe I will be proven wrong but I’m already thinking these commercials are going to do more harm than good to Microsoft.

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Mail Notification Liberation

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A friend asked me how I can work without any mail notifications. Are you kidding me? How could I possibly work WITH mail notifications?
Apple has done a great job of building in several mail notifications into OS X. Mail.app can stick a badge in your dock and make a very cute little “dingy” sort of sound every time a new message arrives. That is not all though. Using third party software you can make your system growl and even shoot off fancy graphics every time you get a note from Amazon about something “you may want to buy” or even a message about “cheap prescription medication.” I asked my friend, “How on earth do you get anything done with all those pyrotechnics?”
I just don’t believe it is possible to keep your focus if your eyes and ears are trained to jump like a Pavlovian dog everytime someone (or somebot) decides to send you a note. Think about it. If you get an email every 5 minutes, that is 12 interruptions an hour and 96 interruptions in an 8 hour work-day. Just think how much faster you could work with 480 less interruptions a week.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t want my system to check email for me. I just want to be in control of the situation .. not the other way around.
The way I accomplish this is a few simple checkboxes in Apple Mail.

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New Mail Sound: None = No ding.
Dock Unread Count: None = No tempting badge.
That is all there is to it. Note I did not turn off auto mail checking. When I do decide that I want to process mail, I want it already loaded. This gives me the benefit of current email without the devastating interruptions.
If you are carrying a smart phone, you also need to turn off the notifications there as well. On my iPhone it is done as follows:

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This is all found under the “Sound” menu of the “Settings” button. Before everyone starts firing up your email to me, I *know* sms notifications are still turned on. There are only a few people who text me and when they do, it (usually) is a legitimate interruption.

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Inbox Mayhem

The Tools for Thought blog had a very good post today explaining you should never check your email.
“Never check email. Ever.”
Instead, Andre recommends you “process” your email. This is very similar to my email workflow in that I deal with each item either immediately or dump it into OmniFocus for later process. I explained it in detail during the email sorcery screencast.
This stuff isn’t rocket science, but it may help you build a rocket. How are you processing email?

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