October 2009 Software Closet
Helpful Utilities
GrandPerspective 1.1
GrandPerspective (free) is a utility that shows the space that files are taking up on your hard drive, in a graphically useful and interesting way. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file's size, with files grouped into their folders. It lets you mouse over any rectangle to display its name and location, click the Reveal button to see it in the Finder, color code files by type, and even delete files and folders. It can search a folder or an entire drive.
Mactracker 5.0.10
Ian Page's Mactracker is a free utility that shows almost every detail about every Macintosh and Apple product ever made. In addition, it lists the dates each product was introduced and discontinued, its code name, original price, related Apple KnowledgeBase article numbers, as well as its original operating system, drives, ports, video support, upgrade paths, and a zillion other details. It also provides the support status of Apple's latest "vintage" and "obsolete" products, a real-world speed comparison among recent models, and a Notes area to record your own data such as serial numbers, purchase date, warranty coverage, etc. This information can be useful when manually compiling an updated inventory of your studio's computers.
SilverKeeper 2.0.2
LaCie's SilverKeeper is a free, incredibly capable backup utility that backs up or synchronizes files to any mounted writeable volume, with support for scheduled backups. If you have extra space on your backup drive, you can even create a "SilverKeeper_noRemove" folder on it where you can store items to be ignored during the backup process. This release includes Snow Leopard compatibility, restoration of sleep if backup was started while computer was sleeping and other improvements.
GenerateDummyText
If you need placeholder text in your Photoshop layout, you can use this free script to generate dummy text (Lorem Ipsum). Simply enter a number, choose Words, Characters, or Paragraphs, and click Generate.
Illustrator plug-in
EZConstrain 1.0
Nineblock Software's EZConstrain is a free plug-in for Illustrator CS3/CS4 that lets you easily view, change, and reset the constrain angle, without having to go to the Preferences dialog. Its floating palette lets you store up to three of your most-used angles in buttons for instant access. Another button resets the angle to zero. The current constrain angle is displayed graphically as a small a red line in a small square.
Photoshop script
GenerateDummyText
If you need placeholder text in your Photoshop layout, you can use this free script to generate dummy text (Lorem Ipsum). Simply enter a number, choose Words, Characters, or Paragraphs, and click Generate.
InDesign script
Resample Project Images to 100% v1.6
Save print time and reduce project file sizes by using this free script. It uses Photoshop to open each image file that you’ve placed into your InDesign document, then applies the scaling percentage you’ve applied in InDesign to resize the image files. That way, they appear in InDesign at 100% scaling and don’t need to be resized when printed. It can process an entire folder of InDesign documents at once. This handy script also takes a peek at the rotation and skew angles at which the image was placed and transforms the new one accordingly. It works with InDesign CS3/CS4.
Documents Worth Reading
Best Practices for Managing Fonts in Mac OS X, 6th Edition
Updated in Oct. 2009, this PDF white paper from Extensis provides best practice recommendations for efficiently working with fonts in professional workflows, including Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), QuarkXPress and Adobe Creative Suite 4. Topics include: system configurations, managing system fonts, cleaning up your font library, and making sense of font locations, formats, and caches.
Free Fonts
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