Use Time Machine to Backup your Apple Mac

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Time Machine Backup Your Apple Mac Free Space

System Preferences > Time Machine > Pick you External Hard drive

Why Use Time Machine?

it keeps hourly backups for the past 24hours
daily backups for the past month
weekly backups for all previous months

the oldest backups are deleted when disk becomes full

Great way to make sure everything is saved externally incase anything every happens and the best part is, its automatic once you hard drive is plugged in so you don't have to worry about it. If anything happens, everything is stored to then restore your computer. You can see below all the backups that you can scroll back into to find something (photo, document, music, file, etc)

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Automate Watermarking/Resizing & Other Edits using Actions

Monday, September 3, 2012

Today's tutorial is how to use actions in Photoshop (& alternative programs) to automatically add a watermark/text and batch save photos, it saves so much time when editing multiple images if it is set up right. If you are using Corel Paint Shop Pro, it is the same technique but instead of actions, it is called scripts. I'm sure most programs have something similar so have a look around.

Preparing the Program

Open an image. Click Window > Actions(1). The Actions window will open, click the folder(2) and give it a name. Then click the new action layer(3). Name your action "watermark" or "resize". Click Record(4) when you're ready to start. From this point on, only do what you want to be recorded!!!! So resize the image, create an edit, add text...whatever it is you want to automate. I'm going to go through resizing & watermarking the image, but you can pretty much do anything.

Resize Image Action

This may look complicated but trust me, it isn't. Open an Image. Click Record in the Actions Window > Image > Image Size... > Change the Width & Height to whatever you want > Ok > File > Save > Stop the Recording in the Actions Window.

Create a Watermark Action

Open Image. Click Record in the Actions Window. You may see the image has a lock beside it in the layers panel, if it does double click on it to unlock it and it will become a layer instead of a background.

Add new layer. Click the text button and add your text/watermark.

Selecting both layers, we are now going to align it. I want mine in the bottom right hand corner so click Layer > Align > Bottom Edges. Layer > Align > Right Edges. You can use the align option or just move it to where you want.

File > Save > Stop the Recording in the Actions Window. You will see all the actions you have performed in the actions window.

Using Actions to Batch Edit

Click File > Automate > Batch > Choose the settings below.

Set = The folder name where your action is.

Action = The recorded action you want to use - choose watermark (or whatever you named your recording).

Source = Where your pictures that you want to edit are.

Destination = Where you wish to save the images.

File Naming = Choose the way you want it saved.

FREE ACTION DOWNLOAD

Download my Resize Action from above. Automatically resize your images to 800px width for blogger. You can download it by clicking here. I'll have more actions available soon.

Do you watermark your images? How do you do it? Have you used Actions before?

Easily Follow Blogs with iReader

iReader is a great way to read RSS updates on your Mac. What I love about this is that you can sync it with Google Reader, therefore you can get all your blogger/GFC subscriptions as well as other websites! There's a management system so you can organise your subscriptions into folders, you can sync with iCloud, favourite articles, customise keyboard shortcuts for faster reading. Another fab thing is it supports offline reading and it's very easily laid out. If you follow blogs via RSS Feed, this App may be your new best friend.

The left had column shows what you are subscribed to, when you click on one, the posts update in the middle column, you can flick through or use the search bar and when you select one the post appears in the last column so you can read it. You can pin certain posts/articles and then select to only show those pinned. View all unread posts makes it easy to see what you missed and you can easily share posts you enjoyed from the services menu. Available to download from the App Store.