Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

You can use the handy Image Capture app on your Mac to import and manage the photos on your camera, SD cards or iPhone. By using Image Capture you can skip library apps like iPhoto and Aperture and bring photos and videos directly from the device or card to the Finder. You can also delete photos and videos from the device or card without importing them.

You can create complex motion animations in keynote using a variety of functions. An object can follow the path of a shape. You can also add scaling, rotation and other special effects. You can also build an animation step-by-step and combine changes into a single movement.

MacMost.com is looking for students to produce short tutorial videos. You can check out MacMost.com to see examples of these videos. We publish 3 videos per week, each about 3-6 minutes long on a variety of beginner and intermediate Mac computer topics. We would like students that could produce many videos over a continuing period of time. Payment would be on a per-video basis.

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Requirements
To produce video tutorials for MacMost, you would need:

A fairly new Mac running Mavericks.

All major apps installed: iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, Keynote. Plus others like Pixelmator would be useful.

Expertise. You don’t have to be an expert at everything, but you should be able to figure out how to do anything with them in a few minutes through experimentation and research.

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Production
Before creating a video, a topic and title needs to be approved by MacMost. Topics must be useful to a wide variety of Mac users. A topic must be something not recently covered by another video at MacMost or something already scheduled to be published. Tutorial creators would be expected to submit lists of ideas for feedback and approval.

To prep for the video, you need to sign out of your user account and sign into a user named “MacMost” (or use fast user switching). This MacMost account on your Mac should be a standard admin account with default for pretty much everything — desktop background, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Each video tutorial is done using screen recording in QuickTime Player, or another screen capture tool. The desktop must be clean and all other windows should be out of the way except for the app you are showing.

Each video starts with a short 5-15 second introduction that includes:

Your first name

MacMost.com

What the tutorial is about

Which version of either OS X or the app you are using (should always be the latest).
Example: “Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to edit audio in iMovie version 10.”

The screen captures can be done in one long shot, or a series of short ones. I prefer to record segments of about 30 seconds in length and then string them together. This way, if I trip over my words or something goes wrong on the screen, I only have to redo that one segment and then move on to the next. You can use iMovie to string the clips together using basic crossfade transitions and then export as 720p. I will provide a short intro and exit to put on either end of the video. Add those in before your first segment and after your last.

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Delivery
When a tutorial is complete, it can be send to MacMost via a shared DropBox folder. A typical 5 minute video tutorial exported from iMovie at 720p can be as much as 100MB, so access to decent bandwidth is required.

Videos would then need to be approved and accepted. It is our hope that after getting started most videos will be accepted with the first submission. But if a video isn’t accepted for some reason it would have to be redone or scrapped.

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How to Apply
Use the contact link (choose ‘other’) at the left side of this page to apply. Tell us about yourself and why you would be good at making video tutorials. You can also find out the price per tutorial. You may then be asked to create one sample tutorial, which you will be paid for if it is used on the site. This sample will show us the quality of your work, and also give you an idea of how much effort is needed to make these tutorials.

If you want to take several video files and quickly combine them into one, you don’t need to use iMovie or any other video editing tool. Just open the first video in QuickTime Player and then drag and drop the other videos onto it. The new videos will be appended on to the end. Then export as a new video file.

You can import an image and use it as a background for a page or your entire document. Learn how to get the image to appear behind text, and to adjust it so your text stands out.

The Ken Burns effect in iMovie allows you to change the cropping of a video clip or photo over time. You can use this simple device to add movement to your visuals. You can also use this to effectively show detail in large photos of wide or long objects. With a little creativity, you can use a sequence of Ken Burns effects to highlight objects in a photo.

Your iPhoto library is organized into events. But you can also create as many albums as you want to arrange your photos in a variety of ways. You can create collections that contain cross-sections of your photos and use them in sharing, slideshows, syncing and printing. You can also create Smart Albums that use search criteria to update themselves with photos that have something in common.

We’ve put our tutorial app on sale through this weekend! 40% off to celebrate the new year. This Mac app includes 25 videos with more than 2 hours of instruction. It is a great way for beginners to get to know Mac OS X Mavericks, and for casual users to dig deeper into the features. The videos are unique, not something that can be found anywhere else. The app lets you jump easily from video to video and you can resize the window for better viewing, even going full screen.

Even if you are proficient in using OS X, you may want to consider recommending this to friends as a good way to jump in and learn more.
Here’s a complete table of contents:

• Introduction
• What’s New In Mavericks
• Getting Around
• Working With Files
• Using Finder Windows
• Where Files Are Stored
• Storing Documents In iCloud
• Using the Dock
• Installing and Running Apps
• Using Mission Control
• Sharing Files Between Computers
• Working With Text
• Versions, Autosave and Resume
• Browsing the Web
• Reading and Composing Email
• Playing Media With iTunes
• Working With Contacts
• Creating Calendar Events
• Reminders and Notes
• Messages and FaceTime
• Using Preview
• Customizing Your Mac
• Notifications
• Creating Multiple Users
• Using Gestures
• Maintaining Your Mac
• Advanced Tips

Many people report that you can charge your iPhone faster if it is in Airplane mode. This makes sense since you won’t be using as much power. A good idea in situations where you don’t care about missing phone calls and aren’t using your phone, but have a limited amount of time to charge, like when waiting for a connection at an airport, or stopping home between work and dinner.

You can use data in your spreadsheet tables to create colorful charts of many different types. Learn how to quickly create a chart and modify its look. You can also put charts on separate sheets to make them easier to share and print.

You can use Preview's editing tools to cut out a piece of an image. You can then paste that image in another picture. You can also copy a portion of an image, adjust the color in the rest of the image, and then paste the original segment back to make a part of your image stand out.

Learn how to find handy keyboard shortcuts by simply looking in the menu at the top of the screen. Also look in System Preferences for more shortcuts. You can change the shortcut used by many system functions. You can also create your own custom keyboard shortcuts. Download and print out MacMost's handy keyboard shortcut guide at http://macmost.com/j-keyshort.

The Compass app on the iPhone in iOS 7 includes a level that you can use for hanging pictures or straightening a surface. Just launch the Compass app and swipe left right to left. The level works in two dimensions if you lay your iPhone down on its back, and one dimension if you put it on its side.

CleverMedia (MacMost parent) has just re-launched its popular Free Games app. Originally published in 2009 based on the 2007 iPhone games found at MacMost, this new version is a complete reboot of the app written from the ground up. Included are 15 complete games all in one app including many of CleverMedia’s hit games from GameScene.com. They can be played on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad all at native screen resolutions and in both vertical and horizontal orientations. Check out the list of games and give it a try. After all, it’s free!

You can use iMovie to create a slideshow video from a series of photos. All of the iMovie tools, like effects, transitions and titles, can be used in a slideshow to make it more interesting than slideshows created in some other tools. You can also easily share your slideshow video from iMovie.

When giving a presentation with Keynote you can use the display on your MacBook to show you more than what the rest of the room sees on the main display. You can see the next slide, the time, and use tools to jump to slides and pause the presentation. You can also view your slide notes.

Learn how to use Pages to create simple page layout documents. You can remove the word processing aspect of a Pages document and place text boxes, images and other elements to create flyers, newsletters, brochures and other types of documents.

We’ll be taking a break from posting new tutorials while everyone enjoys their winter holiday vacation time. Feel free to browse the more than 900 MacMost video tutorials by clicking on videos, or using the search box at the top of the site. We will return with new tutorials on January 3rd, 2014. The next newsletter will be sent on January 9th. Thank you and happy new year!

Run Activity Monitor, usually found in Applications/Utilities. Now hide it. The icon will remain in the Dock. Control+click on the icon and select one of the options under Dock Icon. The dock icon can be used to show processor, disk or network usage, or a small graph with recent usage. The app must remain running for this information to appear in the icon.

There are many advantages to using multiple tables in a single spreadsheet in Numbers. Take a look at how you can use two tables with the LOOKUP function to make computations easier. The LOOKUP function will grab data from another table by looking up a value in one column and returning the value of another.