Camtasia Studio has long been the best solution for recording and editing screencasts. It is a wonderful tool for creating tutorials, among other things, by recording the activity on a computer screen. Camtasia users have long thumbed their noses at Mac users, as it has only been available for the Windows platform. Until now.

The folks at Techsmith, makers of Camtasia, have let it slip they are going to release a Mac version on August 25. I am one of the lucky folks who have been beta testing Camtasia for Mac for weeks and all I can tell you (due to NDA) is: get it. As soon as it’s available. It is a superb method to record screens and the editor makes it a breeze to pretty things up.

(Via jkOnTheRun.)

ScreenRecycler allows you to use your other computer as a second monitor.

Many Mac users have a second computer sitting right next to their main computer on their desk including a nice display. ScreenRecycler now enables you to use this spare computer as second display for your Mac. You can even use an idle machine for that purpose.

It’s like a dual monitor setup without the need to buy an additional monitor.

Just start ScreenRecycler on your Mac then connect to ScreenRecycler via VNC from your second machine.

Recycle your old Mac and Windows machines !

DOWNLOAD NOW (2MB)

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

Hugin is an open-source panorama photo creation tool. It can put multiple photos together very easily and the end result is smooth and stunning!

Hugin uses the same open source library used by many other software including shareware like PTMac from Kekus Digital. Hugin is, however, free and you can start making panoramic photos without buying any expensive software or equipment. Unlike many similar software, Hugin considers the shapes of the lens and can adapt to the particular distortion profile of your camera.

For advanced users, hugin also has many features for making panoramas with special equipment, including two types of fisheye lenses and more.

WHAT’S NEW

Version 0.8:

• Fast Preview window

  A new Fast Preview window has been added, this uses OpenGL graphics acceleration to show changes as they happen. You can drag photos around the window and they will warp to their new positions in real-time. Everything else you need to turn, pan and crop your panorama can now be done interactively in the Fast Preview.

  This Fast Preview also now acts as a hub for working with a panorama project: the Identify mode lets you click on the overlap between two photos to bring up the Control Point editor for that pair of photos.

• Celeste sky identification

  Stitching makes use of static scenery such as buildings to match photos together, however objects that move cause misalignments, and clouds move enough to be a particular problem. To make better panoramas, Hugin has now been trained as a Support Vector Machine to ignore clouds when matching photos.

• New panorama projections

  Panoramas tend to have a very large field of view, and Hugin does a good job simulating virtual wide-angle lenses for output. But painters and artists can do better than photographers, often spanning scenes that look absurdly distorted when squeezed into photographic perspective. Influenced by these vedutismo artists, Hugin introduces some new projections for more elegant wide-angle perspectives: Pannini, Biplane and Triplane.

  In addition, Orthographic and Equisolid output have been added to Hugin’s already extensive set of azimuthal projections.

• Batch Processor

  Creating Hugin projects is now easier than ever, but actually stitching large panoramas slows your computer – Usually at the same time that you want to do something else. Now with the Hugin Batch Processor, stitching can be postponed until it is convenient for you.

  Projects can be added to the queue from Hugin itself, or directly by drag-and-drop from a file manager. In the Batch Processor you get an overview of progress where the projects can be easily rearranged, paused or canceled.

• Online help

  The manual has been updated to cover the new features and adds more glossary pages explaining panorama and photography related words.

• Languages

  Most translations have been updated, plus Hugin is now available in Slovenian and Chinese Traditional. The manual has been completely translated into Italian.

• Other improvements

  There are many more changes in this release, here are just some of them: a Reset… button in the Camera and Lens tab, better support for ’special’ characters in folder and file names, Align… now works properly when loading saved lens .ini files, hints added to Control Point tab pull-down lists, stitching now starts with a series of tests, gcc-4.4.0 support, better Makefile plugin support, man pages for command-line tools, new button icons throughout and a command-line version of Celeste

More information

(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)

Sunset Over the Clouds: “

Desktop Wallpaper

I was on a plane when saw the sunset: there was a layer of clouds below the plane and still some over it, so the flaring red was just in between and the sky up above stayed blue

Resolutions: 2560×1600, 2560×1024, 1920×1200, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1400×1050, 1280×1024, 1280×960, 1280×800, 1280×720, 1024×768, 1024×600, 800×480, 480×272, 320×480, 320×240.

(Via InterfaceLIFT: Newest Wallpaper.)

Windows only: LightBox is an extremely user friendly tool for editing photos when you need more than a simple crop and resize but less than a full out Photoshop massaging.

How user friendly is LightBox? When you run the program you’re presented with a sidebar of common tasks like color balancing and red-eye removal. Mousing over each of them provides not only an explanation of the tool but sample pictures showing the results and every tool within the editor itself has mouse over tips. Once you’re actually editing your image you can easily—as seen in the screenshot above—divide the image to show how the alterations are effecting it compared to the original. The divided and side by side comparison feature is great for photo enhancements where your goal is to make the picture more appealing without giving it an unrealistic appearance. If you need additional functionality, there is a Plus version available for $19.95 which adds on features like masking and auto color correction. The basic version of LightBox is freeware, Windows only.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Make this low-cost camera stabilizer for smooth, professional looking video.
Thanks go to Johnny Lee for the original article in MAKE, Volume 01.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Startup company doubleTwist today launched a public beta of a new universal media application for the Mac that’s like iTunes for everything.

doubleTwist’s goal for the product is to be ’a single, streamlined interface that connects to any device, media source or network.’ In other words, they want to make moving your media around, from your computer, to websites, to gadgets, a complete no-brainer.

Here’s doubleTwist’s intro video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If doubleTwist can get this right, it could radically simplify working with media.

The beta Mac application is available as a free download at doubleTwist (Intel Mac and Leopard required). The Windows remains in private beta but is expected for final release in March.

Details below.

Here’s a list of the devices that doubleTwist currently works with, or plans to support:

• BlackBerry Curve, Pearl, Storm and Flip
• Sony PSP
• INQ1 by INQ
• G1 and Android phones
• Nokia N & E Series phones, including the N95, E61i, E62, and many others
• Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones
• Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 platform (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm) — currently PC only, will be available for the Mac very soon
• LG Viewty, LG Voyager and Shine
• Motorola (V9 and V3xx) and most Razr phones
• Zune (sync is via Zune software) — PC only
• Sansa e200 series and Sansa View
• Amazon Kindle
• iPhone — currently PC only, stay tuned for Mac support!
• iPod — currently PC only, stay tuned for Mac support!
• Nintendo DSi — coming soon!
• Most digital cameras
• Most flash-memory-based camcorders are supported

(Via Podcasting News.)

Desktop Wallpaper

Summer certainly flew by and while I occasionally wish we had just one more month to squeeze in, I realized that since my fingers are almost frozen, autumn definitely arrived! P.S. Meanwhile it’s Winter!

Resolutions: 2560×1600, 1920×1200, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1400×1050, 1280×1024, 1280×960, 1280×800, 1280×720, 1024×768, 1024×600, 800×480, 480×272, 320×240.

(Via InterfaceLIFT: Newest Wallpaper.)

Animoto is a mashup tool that allows users to make movies from the images and music they already have on their hard drive. Over the last year they have introduced a variety of features and functions. The latest of these is Animoto for Photography.

Animoto takes the pictures as slide show concept a bit further than most by incorporating a kind of artificial intelligence into the process. This twist means that the movies you get often seem more like trailers than home videos. Over the last few months they’ve applied this approach to a variety of things, from creative music mixing to business videos and everything in between.

This new feature, Animoto for Photography, enables photographers to use Animoto’s interesting technique to make their photography into a video. Animoto makes it easy to create these photography-based videos, freeing up a photographer’s time by reducing the amount of time spent futzing with the computer.

How is this different from the existing Animoto mashups for music, business and more? The company has added adjustable speed to the image display. Formerly the ‘intelligent’ Animoto program would match the images to the tempo of the song they were being displayed with, now photographers can make the images appear at the intervals they design. they can also let Animoto match images to the song tempo still, if that’s what they want. Animoto for Photography gives them the choice.

The other feature Animoto has added is a button at the end that can call viewers to action. This makes Animoto a new way for photographers to market their work and services. Photographers who have tested the software seem to love it as a sharing and marketing tool:

‘Animoto is a perfect fit for professional photographers,’ said award-winning wedding photographer, Linda Jennings. ‘I can quickly upload my photos, pick just the right song, and Animoto automatically creates a show-stopping video. And when the video is complete, I can easily share it in more ways than ever before: email, blogs, my own website, Facebook, iPhone. The possibilities are endless with Animoto.’

Animoto for Photography is not free. It will run you $99 for three months or $249 a year. The subscription does allow photographers access to a library of music that is licensed for public use, which is a great benefit in addition to the other features subscribers get access to. Animoto’s claim to fame is that its artificial intelligence (aka Cinematic Artificial Intelligence) ensures that no two videos are ever the same, even if you use the exact same images and music.

(Via Mashable!.)

Desktop Wallpaper

I wanted to create an image with the feeling of a dream. I mean, when you look at the landscape and everything is perfect and you want to be there to feel free a.s.o. And capturing the moment of a falling star makes the title of it.

Resolutions: 1920×1200, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1400×1050, 1280×1024, 1280×960, 1280×800, 1280×720, 1024×768, 800×480, 480×272, 320×480, 320×240.

(Via InterfaceLIFT: Newest Wallpaper.)