Tabla de contenidos para No. 241 en iCreate

Well, the Ventura update has finally forced me to upgrade my Mac. It seems a late-2015 iMac is no longer sufficient to stage the latest version of macOS. But then again it was running Monterey (and Big Sur before it) from an external drive because booting up would have taken a day otherwise. And I’m glad of the change, because Ventura thrives in a power-rich environment, bringing more subtle enhancements and epic additions than recent updates. Stage Manager is a great way of maintaining a tidy, focused desktop, it’s now easier than ever to share and collaborate, and the way in which you can wirelessly harness the power of your iPhone to enhance your photographic possibilities is genius. You can take a guided tour through Ventura, and its many new…

Final Cut Pro Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 15 Your own back garden can be a rich source of subject matter for a wildlife documentary. Thanks to the iPhone Camera app’s Slo-mo mode you can capture short clips of bees flying past the lens and then re-time the footage to give it a longer duration. At night, a trail camera with motion sensors and an infrared light source can capture footage of other garden visitors such as foxes and hedgehogs. By placing the trail camera at different locations each night you can capture the same subjects from different angles and edit the clips to tell a story (such as a fox exploring your garden). Go wild Use post-production tools to enhance wildlife footage Step-by-step Shooting day and night 1…

Ventura is the name given to the latest version of macOS and it has some brilliant new features. However, upgrading to this new operating system is likely to cause some people problems. There are two main issues with the upgrade. First is the hardware requirements. Macs older than 2017 are not compatible and neither are some 2017 models. Check at apple. com/macos/macos-ventura-preview. The second problem is disk space – you will need up to 45 GB free. Even as recently as 2019, some Macs only had 128 GB of storage, but space can be an issue even with bigger drives. Here’s how to make room for Ventura. Prepare for Ventura Get your Mac ready for upgrading Step-by-step Tune up, clean up for Ventura 1 Check the storage Click the Apple…

We all have great photos in our Photos library on the Mac. Even if you are not a great photographer, you can shoot a dozen photos of a scene on your iPhone and at least one is bound to come out great, even if only accidentally. Why not show off your best photos on the web? You do not need to know how to build websites or prepare photos for the web. The Photos app on the Mac does everything for you. Select some photos, click a few menu options and publish your photos for the world to see, or keep them just for your friends and relatives. It’s up to you. Web publishing is built into the Photos app and is very easy to use. Knowledge base Web publishing…

Not too long ago, we needed to print a PDF document here at iCreate. Thing is, it made us break into a cold sweat because the text was white and the background was entirely black – if Future Publishing’s accountants spotted it, they’d surely tut with disappointment given that the cost of ink is pretty much on a par with fuel! Luckily, we had a little trick up our sleeve. We inverted the PDF in Preview so the text turned black and the background white. This is a really easy trick to do and you can use it to invert colours in any PDF or image, setting all of the colour values to their opposites on a colour wheel. Step-by-step Use Preview to invert an image 1 Open an image…

WatchTube Developer Hugo Mason Difficulty Time needed 05 An Apple Watch screen may be tiny but, as a new app is proving, it’s certainly large enough to view a video. Whether or not you will want to do so on a regular basis is another matter but, with the free WatchTube app, you can discover curated YouTube content, search for videos, subscribe to channels and store your history. And the surprising thing about the app? It’s all entirely unofficial (and well-supported). Developer Hugo Mason has created a near-perfect offering, one that is easy to navigate thanks to a well-considered user interface. Sure, there are some shortcomings (you can’t login to your YouTube account, for example). But connect a pair of headphones, double-tap the screen to make the display bigger (on…

Price Arcade Subscription Requirements iOS 13.0 or later • 1.3 GB Learn more amanita-design.net Available from iOS App Store IF FAR-OUT COSMIC ADVENTURES APPEAL TO YOU, then Samorost 3+ is as whacked out and trippy as they get. You play a curious space gnome who uses the powers of a magic flute to travel across the cosmos in search of its mysterious origins – ajourney that will take you through nine alien worlds teeming with challenges. The game doesn’t spoon-feed you solutions to the challenges that you encounter; you have to pan around your surroundings for clues, interact with any strange objects, creatures, and terrain that sticks out, and figure it all out for yourself. Best played through headphones, a gorgeous soundtrack heightens the dreamlike feel and offbeat action perfectly.…

Photos Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 10 Your iPhone has all the hardware and software you need to shoot, process and share a perfect portrait (such as using different lenses and Camera app shooting modes). In this spread we’ll give you shooting tips to make your shots look like they were captured by a pro photographer on a DSLR. We’ll show you ways to edit your people pictures in Photos to remove distracting backgrounds and draw attention to your subject. We’ll also suggest a couple of lighting accessories to help bring out the contours of the subject’s face (as well as changing the lighting in the Photos app). Enhance your portraits Adjust image properties for a pro look Step-by-step How to get perfect portraits 1 Portrait mode In the…

Garage Band Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 12-30 Many people don’t know that GarageBand also supports movie soundtracking. While features are fairly limited, it can be a very useful way to simply edit short clips quite quickly. The nice thing here is that the video and its many frames can be previewed along the timeline with the existing audio track. You can then make edits and add effects to that waveform or attach a whole new track. Everything works in the same way as normal, with original audio and video synced together automatically. When it’s all ready to go, GarageBand makes it easy to export the edited movie. This guide explains the process. Soundtrack selections Highlighting key parts of the workspace to watch when working on movie audio edits…

Mail Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 10 Forwarding emails in your Mail inbox to someone else is straightforward and you have probably done it many times. However, there are two problems. One is that the recipient can tell it is a forwarded email from the quoted content. Another is that replies will come back to you and not the original sender. Sometimes you might want to pass on an email to someone else, like when you get an email at work that is intended for a co-worker. You can forward it or redirect it in such a way that it looks like the original email and replies go to the original sender. It depends how your Mail app is set up, but you may be able to forward and…

Although the ability to store your Mac’s desktop and documents in iCloud has been around for some time, it is now better than ever. Apple has improved the way it works and added features since opening up online storage to all apps for any use. Where once we had to use a third-party utility to choose whether a document is online or offline, now the feature is built in. If you have not yet got around to enabling iCloud storage for your Mac’s Desktop and Documents folders, here’s how to do it. If your files are already online, here’s how to add local documents to online documents stored in iCloud using folder aliases. Step-by-step Store documents online or offline 1 Store in iCloud Click the Apple logo>About This Mac> Storage>Manage>Store…

When you want to contact a lot of people, email is quick and easy. However, there are still occasions where printed material is used, such as, invitations to weddings and parties. Pages has recently gained the ability to use mail merge. Create one document, give it a group of contacts and it will generate personalised documents for each person. You can include a wide range of items in the mail merge, including any of the fields in your contacts. It is a great feature that is straightforward to use. Make sure Pages is up to date before starting this project. Knowledge base Mail merge fields Mail merge fields are taken from the information in contacts. The fields are first and last names, home and work addresses, phone numbers and email,…

TikTok isn’t solely about watching short video clips. You can also tune into live streams, which are growing in popularity as a way of providing content and growing audiences. Trouble is, you don’t always want to be glued to the TikTok app while these streams are playing. With the new Background Player, however, you don’t have to. The feature lets you continue watching footage in a floating window while you get on with other things on your iPhone. It also allows you to keep playing the audio on its own which is ideal if you’re travelling or exercising, for example. Update your app is it isn’t there. Step-by-step Activate TikTok’s Background Player 1 Find a livestream As it stands, only live TikTok videos can play in the background after closing…

Google Arts & Culture Developer Google LLC Difficulty Time needed 10 There are two aspects to this fun experiment by Google Arts & Culture. On the one hand, you’re effectively playing a game of Pictionary in which a machine learning robot seeks to guess what you are sketching. On the other, you’re able to use this as a jumping point to explore Arts & Culture’s rich pot of paintings. It’s a great way to unlock culture. You can try this out via the Google Arts & Culture app or via the website at artsandculture.google.com. Either download the app on to your iPad or enter the URL into your browser, then tap ‘Play’ in the menu and look for Guess The Line (there are other games there too!). You’re now ready…

TV Launcher Developer Adam Foot Difficulty Time needed 05 To find out what’s on television each week in the UK, you can pick up an excellent listings magazine such as TV & Satellite Week, What’s On TVor TV Times. With the TV Launcher app for Apple TV, you can also see what’s showing via an Electronic Program Guide – the likes of which you may be familiar with on Freeview, Sky and Virgin boxes. Created by developer Adam Foot, the app costs £2.49 and it covers the major UK channels, from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to Sky (via Now TV), Discovery+ and STV Player. You’ll still need the relevant streaming apps installed (and sign-ins or subscriptions in some cases) but TV Launcher gives an overview of…

Key features 34mm large diaphragm gold-plated capsule • Cardioid Learn more 512audio.com Available from amazon.co.uk CREATING A PODCAST IS A GREAT WAY TO EXPRESS YOUR PASSIONS, sharing what obsesses you with a likeminded audience – sounding clear and precise is an essential component of that. Designed very much with content creators in mind, 512 Audio’s Tempest microphone ticks that box and will make your audience feel as though you’re there chatting to them face to face in the room. Mic Yarwood This large-diaphragm studio microphone captures rich, high-fidelity audio with the convenience of modern USB-C connectivity. Drawing on the design and sound profile of the professional Warm Audio WA-47jr studio condenser mics, the Tempest features a vintage-inspired 34mm gold-plated condenser capsule and 24-bit, 48kHz resolution that brings pristine studio sound…

Price Free Requirements macOS 10.12 or later Learn more mactracker.ca Available from Mac App Store MACTRACKER IS TO APPLE FANATICS WHAT DISCOGS IS TO VINYL LOVERS, a super-geeky reference database that you can use to catalogue all of your Apple devices, old and new. It provides detailed information, including processor speeds and supported OS versions, of every Mac ever released, as well as spec rundowns for all of your old iPhones, iPads, and iPods too. A sidebar makes it easy to pinpoint a particular model quickly, and then you can double-click on that to bring up a tabbed info page of essential info. Once you have found a model that you own, you can also ctrl+click on it and choose ‘Add to My Models’, whereby it’ll be logged as part…

iMovie Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 15 Rather than filming one long boring scene, many professional movie makers break the action up into a series of shorter clips that feature different camera moves, angles and shot sizes. By using pans, tilts, tracking and even POV (point of view) shots they can add visual variety to a sequence and tell a story in a more interesting way. We’ve filmed a simple sequence of a person walking down a city street. By following our walkthrough you’ll learn how to shoot a variety of classic camera moves and then use iMovie to edit them together into a smooth flowing and visually interesting sequence. Pro camera techniques Use different moves and angles Step-by-step Gimbal assisted camera moves 1 Import clips Create a new…

Logic Pro Developer Apple Inc Difficulty Time needed 20 It hasn’t escaped Apple’s notice that in recent years, Dolby Atmos immersive sound technology has spilled over from cinemas and post-production suites into homes and headphones, becoming one of the most impactful new technologies in the world of consumer audio. Released in October 2021, Logic Pro 10.7 allows you to mix in Dolby Atmos using just a pair of headphones and export your mix as a ‘spatial audio’ file for playback on supported music streaming services like Apple Music. In this tutorial, we’ll explore the basics of the exciting world of Spatial Audio. Spatial delivery Set up a project for mixing in Spatial Audio Step-by-step Setting up Spatial Audio 1 Advanced Features Begin by navigating to Preferences> General>Advanced and ticking the…

Some websites are so bloated with popups, adverts and sponsored content, they are almost unusable. They also contain trackers that invade your privacy. Safari has features to hide your IP address, like Private Relay, but it does not clean up web page clutter. DuckDuckGo Privacy for Safari goes further and not only does it block most trackers, it also blocks most adverts and sponsored content too. The end result is cleaner, lightweight web pages with less of the bloat from ads and sponsors. It makes web pages smaller and faster to download and display. Here we look at the latest M1 Mac version of this extension. Knowledge base DuckDuckGo for Intel Macs This Safari extension performed differently on M1 Macs and Intel Macs. It worked brilliantly on an M1, but…

Apple includes zip archive handling in macOS, however, it doesn’t go far enough for some people. Zip handling has been simplified to an extreme level on the Mac. You can create zip archives and extract files from them, but there are almost no features. This is not because zip archiving has no features; it does, in fact, support a lot of features, but Apple doesn’t include them. For example, zips can be protected with a password, which is useful if you want to email them or share them on the web. Here we look at PeaZip, which is free open-source software, and there is a special Apple Silicon version too. Get it from https://peazip.github.io. Step-by-step Create compressed archives with PeaZip 1 Browse the disk PeaZip is a type of file…

iCab Mobile (Web Browser) Developer Alexander Clauss Difficulty Time needed 05 We know what you are thinking. Why would anyone want to browse the web on an Apple Watch? Well, that is a perfectly logical question, but there is a reason why having iCab Mobile on your Apple Watch makes a lot of sense. It isn’t about browsing the web for fun or for long sessions searching for products because that would be too timeconsuming. It’s about having the ability to browse the web during those times when you do not want to carry your iPhone with you and it goes some way to completing the already comprehensive watchOS feature set. A cellular Apple Watch will of course help a lot here and if you want to try it you…