⌘ The power of the Yoink

I’ve seen Yoink mentioned as an efficiency tool with lots of praise, but never quite understood the usage. I use a two pane file manager, so the concept went over my head. I tried Dropzone, but it never quite stuck. I put what in here? Then Yoink appeared on the front page of the App Store and for $5, I figured I should have another look. Plus, the demo was different than expected. It wasn’t until I was in DevonThink Office Pro that its power became apparent. I wanted to organize my notes, and while dragging, the Yoink container appeared. I needed to move notes from several different folders in a different database. It then hit me. I could drop all the files into Yoink, move to where I wanted, then drag them out at the destination. I wouldn’t have to keep going back to the source to get more files. “How cool is that?!” Yoink isn’t just for files. […]

🖼 Some fun with Picture Collage Maker from PearlMountain

Since I wrote about CollageIt, it’s worthwhile mentioning it’s bigger brother, Picture Collage Maker. They both come from PearlMountain so the feature set is similar and familiar. Picture Collage Maker has more templates such as Social Media, Disc Cover, Calendar, Greeting Card and others. It also features more backgrounds, adding “pages”, and a bit more in the way of page layout. It does fall much more inline with scrapbooking. Picture Collage Maker can perform all the functions of CollageIt, but not the other way around. Not that CollageIt is scaled down, it feels more Web driven, whereas Picture Collage Maker feels more print centric with some nice Web additions. If you want more templates, stickers, shapes and masks, Picture Collage Maker is the way to go. Still, it’s easy to use and can just as easily make a Before/After web image when you need it. Picture Collage Maker

💻 Do you need the MacBook Pro M1 Max?

It’s quite a bit of irony. The iPad mini is said to be too slow. Now the M1 Max is said to be too fast. Naysayers, make up your mind. Pick a trite complaint and stick with it. For the rest of us, do you need the M1 Max? Need is a strong word, so it might be a justification. It’s easy to get carried with new toys. The new machine is faster. It’s the latest. It does more. The same will be true when new models come out next year and the year after. That’s chasing the dragon. Let me give a quick story. I paid a significant amount for my current Mac Pro, that was already 4 years old when I got it. As I’ve mentioned it has 2 physical processors for 12 cores, 128GB ram, a 1TB SSD, and originally came with a Titan X 12GB video card. It was a robust machine. That seems overkill for […]

🖼 Some fun with CollageIt Pro from PearlMountain

Before you furrow your brow and decry, “Scrapbooking??” let me explain. CollageIt is a very useful program for putting together panels of pictures. It can create a mosaic, a grid, or throw together images to create a scattered effect. It’s also very easy to create Before/After image sets. The panel images are very neat so you can see examples of multiple photos within a single image. CollageIt has a lot of presets, quite a few templates and configuration options. Images can have borders or masks. You can easily slip in a background. Add text. Adjust the spacing. Create margins. Add anywhere from a couple to several dozen images The past few JixiPix articles have used CollageIt to display examples of the effects. I find it very easy to use with just enough features to be powerful for the task at hand. At $9.99 it was well worth getting. I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t print some of these examples […]