September 2009 Software Closet
Helpful Utilities
Adobe Shortcut App
The Adobe Shortcut App is a free rich Internet application that gives you easy access to keyboard shortcuts in twelve programs that are in Creative Suite 4. It includes "Essentials" shortcuts, and a more expansive "All Categories" list. You can search the shortcuts, and mark your favorites. There's also a cheat sheet in PDF format for each program.
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.2.1
Carbon Copy Cloner (donationware) is a fantastic utility that lets you copy your Mac OS X startup volume to a different hard drive, including all the invisible files and preferences necessary to allow it to start up your Mac. Just click a button and it copies. It can also synchronize disks or folders, make incremental backups, copy deleted files to an archive, schedule regular backups, perform a backup as soon as a drive is attached, and back up to disk images. It can copy only selected files or folders, rather than the entire drive, and copy across a network to another Mac or networked hard drive. It can also restore a backup to its original location with one click.
Illustrator plug-ins
Convert Point Text to Area Text
Point Text is a free plug-in for Illustrator CS–CS4 that converts point text and text on a path to area text. Area text automatically wraps your text to the next line and lets you control line breaks by resizing the text box. Point text, on the other hand, does not wrap and if you scale the box, you scale the type itself.
Photoshop plug-ins
Center Layer
As the name implies, this free script from www.morris-photographics.com centers the active layer within the document.
Distribute Layers Horizontally or Vertically
These free scripts from www.morris-photographics.com evenly distribute the spacing between selected layers horizontally or vertically.
Quark XTensions
Badia PageView 2.0
Badia PageView (formerly Vistas) is an extremely useful free XTension for QuarkXPress that provides a floating palette containing a thumbnail of your current page or spread. You can navigate around your page or spread by clicking on a that location in the thumbnail. You can also fill your window with any area by dragging over that area in the thumbnail. A slider lets you zoom in and out, and a button lets you toggle between your previous view or view percentage and the current one. A pop-up menu lets you select another page or spread in your document. Badia PageView is for QuarkXPress 7, while Badia Vistas is for QuarkXPress 4, 5 and 6 (Vistas is available at www.badiasoftware.com).
Free Fonts
It's a big month for Beatles fans (9/9/09!), so here are some fonts that may come in handy. Click here to download the following set:
- Bootle (The Beatles)
- Magical Mystery Tour
- Yellow Submarine
- Jamon Del Mar
- John Lennon
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