quartz

How to create custom PDF compression filters in OS X

Apple's Preview program is the default PDF viewer in OS X, and has a number of options for annotating and otherwise managing PDF files. One of its features is support for Quartz filters, which can be applied to PDFs and image files to convert them, for example into sepia, black-and-white, or gray scale. A Quartz filter can be used to reduce the PDF's file size, but while it's effective at doing so, you may find images in the resulting PDF too grainy to use.

These compression routines are done by adjusting the embedded image quality of the … Read more

How to print in grayscale in OS X

If you need to print in black and white in OS X, you can, but it may not be obvious how to do it.

Apple used to include an obvious setting in its print dialog boxes for color or black and white, but in OS X this has disappeared since these options are now handled by the specific driver for your printer.

You can certainly still print in grayscale and there are various ways to do it, although some of these options might be a bit obscure, may only be available on some systems, or might require a few extra steps.… Read more

Two ways to master PDFs in Firefox

Firefox, for all its great functionality and superior performance, has long been a laggard when it comes to managing PDF content on the Web.

Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers both give users the option of reading Portable Document Format content within the browser, while Firefox forces users to navigate to PDFs through its Downloads window. Not very convenient.

Leave it to Firefox's online community, however, to remedy this failing. While there are a range of Firefox plug-ins to help manage PDFs documents, two stand out for me.

The first, Download Statusbar, doesn't actually enable … Read more

The kids and their Facebook API implementations these days

Mark at Doomlaser (hey, maybe "the Macalope" isn't that wacky after all) has created a nifty screen saver that downloads pictures of your Facebook friends and goes all Quartz Composer on them.

The Macalope himself has not "gotten into" the Facebook as it presents certain obvious challenges (his visage sometimes frightens small children and should not be displayed around pregnant women), but perhaps his charming and erudite readers are more into the social networking scene.