Design Apps for Mac

I recently switched to Mac and already I've found great design apps. Here's some quick reviews:

Coda is an app made for designing websites. It's very simple in its user-interface, while still being very feature-filled(actually the UI won an Apple Design award). You can create "sites" and include the ftp information for that website, so that once you've finished creating it, uploading it to the server is just a few clicks away. 

When coding in (x)HTML, there's syntax coloring, auto-complete for tags and attributes, and a preview mode that uses WebKit to show you exactly how the page will look in Safari.

The CSS section also includes features that save time. You have the option of coding by hand, or using a GUI for generating the CSS properties and values.

Another great feature is the built-in designer references. There's information about HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP.

Pixelmator is a program for graphic design. It's a great Photoshop alternative, for only $59. It integrates with the Mac OS very well, giving you features such as using the iSight camera to take a picture of yourself or dragging photos straight from iPhoto into a new layer.

The user-interface isn't close to the UI for Photoshop. It's actually closer to Mac's UI. The dialog windows are a translucent black and they blur out what's behind it, giving a dark glassy look. There's an option to work in fullscreen, so the background turns black and only the Pixelmator windows are visible. This can easily be found by hitting the "f" key or selecting the fullscreen icon on the tools menu.

A great thing about Pixelmator is it's fast. A full start up takes literally around 1 second. Graphics processes are done on the GPU, so your CPU usage is low leaving space for other apps. 

You can download a 2-week trial for Coda here, and a 30-day trial for Pixelmator here.

New iMac

I just recently got a new 20" aluminum iMac. So far, working with a Mac is so much better than with my previous Vista desktop. Installing apps is very simple, multi-tasking is easy, and there are great, free apps built for designing on a Mac.

It's way more beautiful in person. And, it will stay that way because Apple included a micro-fiber cloth for cleaning the screen.

The Mac OS is great. I'm starting to think dual-booting Windows isn't worth it, even for gaming.

Halftone Circles in Gimp

I've always wondered how to make those halftone patterns (using Gimp), but never knew how. I finally figured it out, and its pretty simple.

Step 1
Create a new document in Gimp. Set the background color to white.

Step 2
Create a new layer above the background. Make sure it is transparent. We will be merging the layers later so no need to name it.

Step 3
Make a selection using the ellipse selection tool. Fill it with black.

Step 4
Now click Select -> All and apply a gaussian blur to the circle layer.

Step 5
Merge the layers and apply Filters -> Distorts -> Newsprint. Experiment with cell sizes, spot funtions (round, line, etc.), and oversampling.


And there, you have a halftone circle.

Super Fast Opacity Changes in Inkscape

In Inkscape, I found an easy and quick way to change the opacity of an object.

Simply right-click on the input box for opacity, and select your opacity.

And if you only need to toggle between 0% and opaque, right-click the up and down arrows on the opacity field.

Quick Gimp Tip: Refreshing Font List

Here is an easy way to add new fonts to the font list in Gimp without having to restart.
Go to the tool option for Fonts, then open the list of fonts, and open the font selection dialog. From there just hit the "Rescan font list button and you're done.