[MJCP]

The Mac isn't just a computer, it's a lifestryle. Whether working or playing, Mac solutions embrace creativity and inspire "different" thinking when it comes to solving problems. What follows is my studio diary from last week. A glowing endorsement of Apple technology. A wide variety of tasks all completed without a single hiccup, thanks to four great Mac setups and some great software from Apple and others. Read more.

[thomasina]

[To the tune of Mack the Knife]

Oh the Keith has pretty neat gear
And it's all clad in pearly white.
Just an Apple's what you need here
Cause the Mac is out of sight.

He can scan stuff, make it straight dear
Then convert it overnight.
Just a big screen is enough dear
Cause his iMac's out of sight.

He's got raw sound coming in dear
And it's cleaning up all right.
Take an LP for a spin dear
Cause Garageband is out of sight

There are some who are in darkness
And the others are in light.
It's the Mac, dear, that's all brightness
Those in darkness drop from sight…

With apologies to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill

[Gillymaru]

Great story Keith! Isn't it wonderful to be able to easily do this sort of creative work on our Macs.
I am doing similar stuff at the moment, wading through boxes of old family photos and scanning them into iPhoto.
Just seeing these old pictures jump to life on the screen is wonderful. Now that I have started I don't know where to stop, the project seems to keep growing!
The next step will be to make up some photobooks and distribute them around the family.
These are the sort of articles I would like to see more of in the magazine, how anyone can easily use their Mac to do creative worthwhile projects.

[mickdevlin]

One of the members of my MUG is engaged in a project similar to the first one Keith descibed. The difference is that he is importing from books rather than fiche. As the books are old and the paper is very fragile, scanning isn't an option. He begins by photographing a page then importing it into iPhoto. He then cleans it up and exports the page as Unicode. The page is then imported it into Readiris – an OCR application – where the page is recognised and can be edited.

The two main problems he encounters are the inability of Readiris to recognise certain old fonts, thus making editing tedious, and getting the page correctly lit when photographing it to aid recognition. I have emailed him the URL to Keith's blog as some of it may help him in his project, particularly the section describing the lighting of the newspaper pages.