Claudia McCue

Little on the outside, big on the inside: the Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB (that’s 671,088,640MB) drive is currently on sale for about $110 at Best Buy (regularly priced from $129-$145 at other sources). Available in Ruby Red and Tuxedo Black. Other capacities are also available, from 250GB-1TB. The drives are petite — only 5.125″x3.125″x.4375″.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB USB 2.0 drive

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I wanted to test Snow Leopard on the MacBook Pro I use for public demos and classes, and didn’t want to munge the drive irreversibly. So I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive onto the Seagate drive, then ran the Snow Leopard install on the Seagate — it’s a bootable drive. So far, all the necessities (applications, printer drivers, scanner driver) seem to work fine.

Consider this my public confession that I am not a bleeding-edge adopter of a new operating system: I used to be more intrepid, but I didn’t want to take chances with my demo machine. Carbon Copy Cloner is great for this, and it also provides an incremental backup feature. CCC is donation-ware: if you like it, you can donate to the developer. I guarantee that you’ll like it, and I encourage you to generously support Mike Bombich and other developers who contribute so much to the software ecosystem.

Note: while the Seagate drive can be used on Mac or PC, Carbon Copy Cloner is Mac-only.

True confession: I don’t have an iPhone (what?! What’s wrong with you?!).

That’s right — I’m a cellphone infidel. I’d like to have a sleek, hip iPhone, but I’m not willing to abandon Sprint for the more expensive AT&T service that’s spotty out here in the sticks where I live. Yet, I lust after the thousands of apps.

However, I do have an iPod Touch, so I can watch videos and listen to music while stuck on a plane, so I can run most of the apps I want, including the spiffy Color Expert app from Code Line Communicators. While it’s true that you’d get the most out of Color Expert with an iPhone (because of the camera), it’s still quite useful (and fun) on an iPod.

Some of the app screens in Color Expert. Note the photo at upper right, being sampled to pick a starter color for the palette-generation process.

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Choose from Color Wheel or Swatch mode, and then choose a color. Better than that? If you have an iPhone, use the camera to take a photo, and pick colors from that (on the iPod, you can pick colors from a stored photo). Then, choose the method for generating additional colors (e.g., Split Complementary, Triadic, etc.) If you’ve started with a color in the Pantone swatch book, all secondary colors are Pantone colors as well — very slick. A plus: Color Expert will display the CMYK, RGB, HSB, and Lab values for Pantone swatches. Is it a replacement for your Pantone fanbook? No, of course not — but it’s a great portable quick reference. Besides, you can’t play music on your Pantone Color Bridge swatchbook.

Once you have these palettes, what do you do besides admire your little screen? Well, you can save color palettes and email them. Unfortunately, they aren’t in a standard Adobe Swatch Exchange format, but at least you have a record of the swatch numbers or recipes. More than anything, I think, it’s a great way to brainstorm.

And it helps me justify having the iPod Touch

If you’ve ever had to silhouette a girl with windblown hair, you know what a challenge it can be to create the perfect mask. I’ve always used channels, duplicating the best one and using Levels, Curves and judicious handwork to create a mask. As long as the subject has some contrast with the background, there’s hope, but, even then, it can be time-consuming.

The ideal masking solution faithfully captures the shape of the subject, maintains translucency and soft transitions, and can be used non-destructively. It’s not a simple problem to solve, which is probably why I haven’t found a product that fit all requirements — until now. All of the other products I’ve tried erase background pixels rather than creating a separate mask. Some do a better job of maintaining transparency, some aren’t much better than using the Magic Wand. But I’ve found only two products that create non-destructive masks with nice, transitional edges: Power Mask, and EZ Mask, both from Digital Film Tools.

Both products do a great job; EZ Mask is just a bit, ah, easier (natch). When you see a product named “EZ Mask,” it’s tempting to think… well, you know. But trust me: it’s wonderful! Let me show you…

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I realize this doesn’t fall under the heading of “graphics,” but I’ll bet a lot of you have an iPod touch. Even though I’d heard that the screen is sturdy and scratch-resistant, I wanted to ensure its smooth surface would remain unmarred.

There are a bazillion products to protect these things; I first bought a protector for about $20 that used a squeegee, sponge, and a small container of liquid to adhere the film. I made quite a mess, but with a lot of squeegeeing (is that a word?) I finally eliminated all the bubbles, only to find a piece of lint trapped smack in the middle. Aargh!

Then I found this product, absurdly priced, on Amazon. At first glance, you might get the idea that this is a cheap product. Its enthusiastic tagline — “The greatest guarder for LCD screen” — is quaint. The back of the package says “For iTouch II,” but it fit my iPod Touch 3rd gen perfectly. (Despite the illustration, it wouldn’t be appropriate for iPhone, unless you’re willing to cut a little hole for the speaker.) But it’s very well made, smooth and flawless, and the application procedure is painless and well thought-out.

It’s currently priced at $3.00, so I ordered 5 of them (in case I botched the installation–still cheaper than the one protector I’d already used). This protector provides a “tack cloth” to clean dust off the screen (I recommend using a good glass cleaner first). And it has a unique approach: there are two sheets protecting the screenguard: one covering the adhesive side, and one to act as a thick carrier sheet as you position the protector. A small protruding tag on the carrier sheet makes it easy to position the protector and use your fingers (or the tack cloth) to “roll across” the sheet and anchor it. The surface is smooth (not “rubbery” like the previous protector I used). It’s crystal clear, and you don’t even know it’s there. Highly recommended.