macOS New App Releaser – Health Sciences Solution for ConceptDraw

Product Announcements – CS Odessa of Odessa, Ukraine has released Health Sciences Solution for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12 with new entities. A new set of solutions provides a wide range of graphic content to support documentation and graphics that deal with biomedicine, health science, and medical illustrations. The Health Sciences Solution for ConceptDraw DIAGRAM offers professionally designed samples and a number of vector objects related to medicine and health. It includes 10 libraries containing 192 high-quality vector graphics stencils.

A large percentage of the medical profession is involved in explanation and education. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12 and the 6 new libraries containing 179 ready-to-use vector objects, provided by the Medical Illustrations Solution, make quick work of visualizing and communicating medical information to any audience.

ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12, supported by the ever-growing collection of business solutions is compatible with macOS and Windows. It is featured with an improved compatibility with MS Visio 2007-2016. ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12 can open and save documents that can be used by Visio 2003-2016 users.

ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12 retails separately for $199 (USD) per end user license. It is included in ConceptDraw OFFICE v5 which retails for $499. The new additions to ConceptDraw Solutions are paid items for current users of the recently released ConceptDraw DIAGRAM v12.

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macOS New App Release – SwiftCapture 1.1

Product Announcements – Ben Software of London, United Kingdom has released SwiftCapture 1.1, a major update to the high-performance video capture application for the Mac. SwiftCapture’s powerful features and intuitive user interface allow users to create high-quality video recordings, time-lapse captures and stop-motion movies from a variety of video input devices.

SwiftCapture supports any video input device that works on a Mac, including built-in FaceTime and iSight cameras, USB webcams and the popular Blackmagic range of devices for analog, HDMI and SDI input.

The main features of SwiftCapture are as follows:

• Supports any Mac-compatible video input, including Blackmagic devices
• Supports any Mac-compatible audio input
• Records standard MOV and MP4 movie files, which have wide compatibility
• Timelapse and stop-motion capture features
• Hardware-accelerated video encoding
• Easy image capture, including copy-and-paste and drag-and-drop
• Image adjustments: brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness
• Ability to add a text overlay for example date and time
• Applescript control for automation

New features in this version are as follows:

• 64-bit application for full compatibility with current and future macOS versions
• New transformation options to flip or rotate the video image
• New horizontal flip option for live video (mirror mode)
• New option to add an audio delay to fix sync issues
• New option to set video buffer size for latency vs. dropped frames tradeoff
• Expanded AppleScript dictionary, including settings
• New Apple ProRes video encoding options
• Improved performance and reliability of video capture

Pricing and Availability:
SwiftCapture 1.1 costs GBP 29 (approx. USD $42) for a single-user license and GBP 399 (approx. USD $570) for a site license through the website. A 30-day fully-functional trial version of SwiftCapture is available for download.

macOS New App Release – BiggerPicture

Product Announcements – Basil Salad Software of Singapore has released BiggerPicture for macOS. BiggerPicture uses machine-learning to increase the resolution of photos and line-art images without causing pixelation or blurs. The tool enables users to create retina-display images from normal-resolution versions, create printable logos sourced from web graphics, or preprocess vintage cameraphone photographs in preparation for photo-printing.

Unlike traditional graphic packages that uses bicubic interpolation or Lanzcos resampling, BiggerPicture’s neural network recognizes shapes and textures enabling it to hallucinate new pixels based on its training data. BiggerPicture takes advantage of Apple’s Core ML libraries fully utilize the user’s machine capabilities.

Features:

• Deep learning super-resolution – enlarge images by 2 through 8 yet retain its quality.
• Eliminate noise from JPEG compression artifacts.
• Process multiple files as a batch.
• High-quality printing as the app will pre-process images to match the printer’s resolution.
• Photos editing extension to enlarge images without leaving the Photos app.

Benefits:

• Create high-resolution life-size prints from web graphics.
• Upgrade older website images to look great in today’s retina displays.
• Make glossy framed prints from last century’s cameraphone snapshot collections.

Advantages:

• BiggerPicture uses super-resolution *machine learning* techniques that imagines pixels to fill gaps created during upscaling. This creates blur-free upscaled images.
• All processing is done within the user’s machine. There is no cloud-based processing, unlike the approach by some competitors. This makes BiggerPicture suitable for processing confidential or sensitive images.

System Requirements:

• macOS 10.13.2
• 39.5 MB

Pricing and Availability:
BiggerPicture 1.0 is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the Mac App Store in the Graphics & Design category.

Today is “National Read a Book Day”

Reading – I am glad to see that today is dedicated to reading and that the image for today features a youngster with a book. Too few, especially kids, take the time today to read.

Take some time today and pick up a book. More importantly, introduce a book to your kids or grandkids.

You don’t have a book at hand? If you are into eBooks there are plenty of sites where you can find free or low-cost books. Check out my list.

macOS New app Release – Output Factory 50% Off

Product Announcements – Zevrix Solutions of Toronto (ON), Canada announces that Output Factory for Adobe InDesign is available on sale at 50% off until September 2 only. The discount offer also applies to Output Factory Server which processes InDesign files automatically from watched hot folders. Output Factory lets printers, ad agencies and publishing houses worldwide eliminate repetitive tasks, streamline their output workflows, and easily repurpose InDesign files for the web and mobile devices. The offer lets users save $85 on each copy of Output Factory and $350 on Output Factory Server.

“Using Output Factory is straightforward. You determine your settings and sit back while Output Factory does all the heavy lifting. The time savings are huge,” writes Jamie McKee in a 5-star review in InDesign Magazine. “If you find yourself repeatedly exporting InDesign files in various formats, you owe it to yourself to install the free trial and see just how much time you’ll save using Output Factory.”

With Output Factory, users only need to queue the desired InDesign files and select pre-defined output options. The software will then print the files or save them to PDF or other formats with just a click of a button. Output Factory can automate the processing of hundreds of documents in the background while freeing users time for other important activities and eliminating repetitive tasks. Output Factory supports printing as well as exporting to PDF, PostScript, EPS, Flash, IDML, EPUB and several image formats. It offers the following key features:

• Batch printing and exporting of InDesign files
• Hot folder processing (Output Factory Server only)
• Export as single pages or spreads
• Output to several formats with one click
• Layer versioning: output layer combinations as single files
• Variable output file names
• Run custom scripts
• Preflight InDesign and PDF documents

Pricing and Availability:
Output Factory can be purchased from Zevrix online at 50% off for $85 USD (Output Factory Server – $350) until September 2 only. A trial is also available for download. Output Factory requires macOS 10.7-10.13 and InDesign CS3-CC 2018.

macOS New App Release – Open Map

Product Announcements – Tension Software of Milano, Italy has released Open Map for macOS. Open Map bring over 60 types of OpenStreet maps on Mac with 28 zoom levels and save on disk as PDF and other formats. More than 60 map types of the world with different style graphic and also data, always up to date, available with 1 click with a resolution level ranging from 0 to 28.

Open Map covers all the world exactly as other well know proprietary formats. The application can natively export at any time any visualized map as PDF, PNG, TIFF, JPEG using any scale and area. Some of the available maps:

• Wikimedia
• Humanitarian
• Black & White
• OpenTopo
• Hike & Bike
• Hydda
• Toner
• Terrain
• Watercolour
• Positron
• Dark Matter
• Flat Blue
• Roads
• Hybrid
• Contour
• Grayscale
• Street
• Topo
• Imagery
• Shaded Relief
• LightGray
• NatGeo
• Delorme
• Ocean
• OpenCycle
• transport
• Landscape
• Pioner
• Atlas
• Outdoor
• Satellite
• Lyzidiamond
• Street Satellite
• many others
• and more to be added in the next releases

Open Map can also visualize your position and precision range via geo wi-fi

Note:
Geographic data are served via the internet by various servers. To visualize maps and associated data, an internet connection always on is required.

System Requirements: macOS Version 10.10 and later

Pricing and Availability:
Open Map is $5.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the Mac App Store in the Lifestyle category.

macOS New app Release – Retoucher

Product Announcements – WidsMob Technology Ltd. (WidsMob) of Hongkong, China has added a new Vignetting feature to WidsMob Retoucher, which reduce image noise, touch-up portrait, adjust photo effects, apply opacity/vignetting/fish-eye, and add dozens of film pack with artistic photo effects. In the update, WidsMob Retoucher adds 15 language versions, including French, German, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Arabic, Danish, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and more.

Before further editing photographs, it reduces image noise to fix blurry photos, eliminates image noise while preserving image detail. WidsMob Retoucher also enables Mac users to minimize image grain, JPEG artifacts and other imperfections. The program deals with Luminance noise and Chrominance noise professionally. Just feel free to take photos in high ISO or low light environment.

As for the portrait images, it also removes some selfie imperfections, such as minimize freckles, whiten teeth and smooth skins. Even touch up photos for the family reunion, WidsMob Retouch has the advanced photo beautifier algorithms to make beautify portraits with ease.

Film pack provides dozens of revolutionary camera profiles to rediscover the magic of stunning film effects. Whether Mac users need to convert photo to different styles of black and white files, or apply the classic film analog effects, WidsMob Retouch apply the authenticity and natural look. It will preserve the high quality RAW files of digital photographs.

Just looking for some additional artistic photo effects, retouch photos with color opacity to make the photograph special. It also adds vignetting to the image file. What is more, fish eye view is another outstanding and artistic photo effects with WidsMob Retoucher.

Highlight features in the latest update:

• Discover magic photo effects with effect adjustments, filmpack, denoise, portrait touch-up and more.
• One click to apply multiple photo effects with instant preview.

Supported file format encryption: WidsMob Retoucher supports .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tiff, .png, .cr2, .nef, .bmp, .raw and other 50 RAW formats.

Retoucher is available through the website.

Episode #5 of “Sage Alexander: The Dark Realm”

If you have not seen the four prior episodes, you should begin viewing with Episode #1.

Short Films– The fifth short (12:59) episode, “Sacrifice”, of the Sage Alexander prequel “The Dark Realm” was uploaded to YouTube by TigerBeat TV on August 10. The synopsis:

In this final chapter, all those trapped inside the Dark Realm face more difficulties as they try to escape. While Malcolm and Gavin mourn the loss of their friend, Chelsea finally reveals to Adelaide why they must stick together. What could it be? And will Sage succeed in saving the imprisoned girls, or will he change the course of history forever?

 

CLI – chsh

CLI – Unix, Linus and macOS use a command line interpreter or shell to process commands entered through the command line. While there are different options available, the bash (Bourne-again shell) is the most common and is the default shell under macOS. Other available Unix shells included in macOS are sh, tcsh, csh, zsh, and ksh.

Depending upon personal preference and what you are wanting to do, the default command interpreter can be changed using the chsh command. Each shell has its own set of features and characteristics.

The description of chsh in the macOS man page is:

chsh — add or change user database information

The chsh utility allows editing of the user database information associated with user or, by default, the current user.

To learn a lot more about how to use chsh, take a look at “Linux chsh Command Tutorial for Beginners (5 Examples)“. Yes, this is a Linux article, but the chsh command as implemented on macOS is fundamentally the same.

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CLI – look

If you are one of those how have chosen to keep your notes and other information in simple text files, the look command may be something you can use. The look command has a simple purpose – to find all lines in the target file that begin with the specified word. The file to be processed must be sorted.

The macOS man page for look says:

The look utility displays any lines in file which contain string as a prefix.  As look performs a binary search, the lines in file must be sorted.

To learn a lot more about how to use look, take a look at “Linux look Command Tutorial for Beginners (with Examples)“. Yes, this is a Linux article, but the look command as implemented on macOS is fundamentally the same.

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