Mac question....grrrrr....
 

So there is no way to simply right click, and create a new document in a folder? Are you f*ing kidding me?

BTW, the way macs handle photos is ASS. Horrible. Iphoto is simply horrible. IE level horrible. Could someone explain why you have to import a photo before you can preview it? If I have 15 similar photos on my iphone, I don't want to import 15 photos, have iphoto create yet another new 'event', then look through them and delete the others. I just want to preview them, and import the %^&^@#$%@# one I want! Image Capture and Preview will not allow this either. A preview application that.....doesn't let you preview? WTF?

The mac OS is great at something things, but it is really clunky compared to windows.

Seriously. Right click, create doc. Does Apple have some bizarre reason for not including context menus?

Seriously. Whiny PC users are annoying as hell.

Of course there's a way to do it.... go figure it out.

If you spent half the time doing a Google search as you did *****ing about it, you'd have it figured out by now.

if they are anywhere near as annoying as Apple fanboys, I know just what you mean.

It's not the computer, it's the software. I process hundreds of photos a week on Macs and I don't use any Apple software for it. iphoto IS horrible. Mac computers are great, but Apple software ... not so much.

Well, for quite some time, Apple gave users only a One-Button mouse. (under 5 fingers, each with independent, and multiple degrees of freedom)

The whole 'User experience" vs 'input efficiency" is interesting to me.

In short, 'User experience" draws in new users, whereas 'input efficiency" makes for faster i/o.

Totally confused.

Boh Image capture and Preview will allow you to preview pictures at a reasonable size then select the ones you want to import.

Granted they are showing you the thumbnails but even those are plenty big to figure to see even small difference in images. It's actually a smart way to do it and the entire purpose of thumbnails.

Regardless, even if it showed you the full res file you'd still be "importing" them, you need to pull the data across the wire for it to be displayed. A 20 mb image is going to take the same time to show up on screen whether you are importing or previewing it. You can't get away from having to pull the data from the device. Again, it's the purpose of thumbnails, to get you to see the item as quickly as possible.

As for contextual menus there are plenty. You want to right click and create a new file, a file of what? The new file would be a blank document that you then need to open in the appropriate app to add content to then save it

Simply launching the app and creating a new file is the same number of steps, the only difference is steps 1 and 2 are reversed.

what software do you use?

????

Thats simply not true. Are you telling me you can tell which photos are the sharpest by looking at a thumbnail? Was your dad an eagle? :)

Are you looking at them from a camera that is plugged into the mac or another drive - like a thumb drive?

Thats not true, because Windows opens the appropriate app for you when you double click on the file. Right click, create new doc, double click, doc, app opens and ready to go. 3 seconds.

I know everyone has their ingrained habits....but I'm right dammit! :D

Plug in the camera. iPhoto shows the images. Either select the thumbnails you want and "import selected", or click "import all". And you can turn on or off the "event" organization. iPhoto may not be all things to all people, but it is not as inflexible as you may think.

Plug in the camera? ...who does that?

I mean, that seems to be the slow boat, always. Do people have cameras w/o removable storage? ...oh, right; the iPhone

Whether you plug in your camera, use a dock for a flash card, plug in your phone - whatever method you use to attach your photo acquiring device to the mac - don't let iPhoto be your default - and if it pops up - just turn it off - and change your preferences.

Go to the desktop - find the drive/camera/phone icon and then view the photos directly from the device, just click on the files and they will open in preview - actual size - and they won't download onto the Mac, they will remain on the device until you decide which ones to download.

My cameras have removable storage, but easier to simply plug them in than deal with removing the media. If I had many hundreds of RAW images on a DSLR, that might be different.

Soon it won't matter, USB 3.0 is very fast.

OS X does the same thing, double click a file and the app opens. If it's a blank file then you still need to put content into it. Hows that different from launching the app and hitting Command N?

Well see now you are being a little clearer in what you were looking for out of the preview.

Like I said in the other thread you started go download MacFuse and iPhone Disc.

It'll take all of 5-10minutes to d/l, install, reboot.

Now every time you plug in your iPhone the entire thing shows up just like any other disc.

So you can browse to your photo folder, hit the Spacebar and get full screen previews of your stuff.

Would have taken far less time than starting another thread to complain about advice you chose to ignore.SmileWavy

Left click on your mouse. In the dropdown menu you will see Quick look. Wheel down and there you are looking at pics in preview.
Hold down shift to select more than one image

You can get into Quick look by simply selecting a file and hitting Spacebar.

That's my iPhone mounted as a disc over there using FUSE.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298067312.jpg

The main advantage I see (unless there is a OSX tweak - which I'm sure there is) with the Win method is I right click in a folder, create a file (many file types supported), and it is in the location I want. Double click (just like OSX to open/edit). The savings comes in not having to negotiate the File/SaveAs/**Now locate your target folder** menu from the Application.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298067981.jpg

So, when you right click to add a document to the folder - I see that it shows microsoft applications (such as the evil publisher) but does it show things that you would really use - like Adobe Creative Suite?

I don't have ACS installed so I can't answer that. However adding to the New-> menu can be done through the registry (lots of guides on the web) by the user so I guess if Adobe's installer sets it up then yes.

That's entirely possible with OS X.

OS X come with these wonderful integrated utilities called AppleScript and Automater.

That can be built pretty quickly using them.

And yes, when the kids are to bed tonight I might go ahead and do just that.

I figured there had to be a way - should be that way out of the box IMO. I'm sure there are many Apple converts who miss that sort of functionality from their crappy PC days ;)

From MacWorld....

New documents wherever you are

The standard way of creating a new document in a specific folder is clumsy: you open the app, create a new document, select Save, and then navigate to the folder where you want to store the doc. But when I want to create a new document, the folder I want to store it in is usually already open in the Finder. So I use Document Palette (New document here | Utilities | Mac Gems | Macworld). With Document Palette running, I can just press a keyboard shortcut, and a list of document types appears on the screen; I choose one, and a new document of that type is created in the current Finder folder. You can customize the list of document types that appear, and you can include document templates. (For people who prefer a more Windows-like approach, NuFile (Right click = new file | Utilities | Mac Gems | Macworld) lets you create new documents by right-clicking inside a Finder window.)—Dan Frakes

Today I learned...

I have been using OSX at home for about 2.5 years now and never knew about quick look. I always thought browsing through a folder of photos was a pain and preview sucks because you can't move from file to file.

NuFile is out if date. Developer abandoned it couple of years ago. Not even Leopard compatible.

With quicklook I navigate files and directories using the arrow keys, holding shift while using arrows selects multiple.

Likely not like that out if the box for a couple of reasons. Primarily because Word, excel etc share codebase with Windows that the OS has no trouble creating the blank file independent of the application.

Took a few minutes before I bugged out of the office and created a contextual for a basic text file which any .nix can create.

It should work the same way for things like PDFs since CUPS is part of OS X and it can create PDFs

Rolled one for Word and it sort if worked, what it did was to launch word with a new doc so if I can get it to accept the selected folder as the default save that should accomplish the same thing in a roundabout way.

Wow, great information in this thread. Thank you for responding to my rant with useful info.

I'll send you the contextual drop ins when I get them done

Sitting out back with the wife, some wine and the outdoor fireplace going so may not finish tonight

Photoshop, Bridge (which ought to be a part of PS) and Lightroom now and then.

I agree with regard to iPhoto- It wants to do too much for you. In Windows, I imported my pictures to a file. I knew EXACTLY where that file was, and when I wanted to move those photos to a file, I did just that. iPhoto takes over your computer, and you wind up trying to put your pictures in a "document" file on the Mac so that you can find old photos when you want! iPhoto is STUPID!

Listen, I've had this MacBook Pro for 13 months now, and I'm not looking back- this machine is NIGHT AND DAY better than the stupid [!] Windows-based PC's. The exorbitant price of the Apple product more than makes up for how much better the computer works!

But iPhoto SUCKS! And Snow Leopard doesn't make it easy to simply create a file, and then sub-files, which is how I organized my photo files on my previous Sony Vaio. My laptop is my tool for touring the internet, cataloging my files, and doing work with my company. While I have a backup, I run my life around this machine.

I DON'T need it to be a puzzle too-

N!

PS: This last was a pointed criticism to the folks at Apple in Cupertino.

Found Bridge as part of our CS5, thanks.

+1
Kill iPhoto. Just trash it and use the method above.

Bridge is fantastic. It's the best workflow program for images.

Contextual menus for file creation, not folder.

Anywho, I have contextual scripts for Create New Text File, Create New Word File and Create New Excel File.

The Word and Excel work a little different. It will launch Word/Excel if not currently running and create a new blank doc then save to selected folder so the end result is the same, right click to create a new file in the selected folder and not have to deal with navigating to a save location.

Send me a PM if you want/need them.

Scott

Same thing if you plug in any 2-button USB mouse. I use a generic optical mouse with two buttons & scroll wheel when I want to plug it in. Drivers are all resident in the OS to support PC-like functionality.

I use iPhoto a lot, and find it fairly useful, especially the built in facial recognition in the new version. What iPhoto does for me is store photos and delete the originals from the camera's memory. It's basically two clicks. I do commercial photo sessions a couple times a month on average, and I appreciate iPhoto's lightbox features.

When I started using iPhoto, the PC alternatives still required you to have a camera-specific driver in place to deal with file transfers. All seemed to be built in to OSX. Iphoto was also able to support RAW format before the alternatives. If I were starting out now, I'm not sure Mac/iPhoto is the best solution for managing photography. My hard core photo bug friends prefer Aperture.

Confused, "files"? You mean folders.

iPhoto is actually really simple to browse in the Finder. Meaning not launching the application.

Mac apps are packages, inside the package are the resources that the app uses.

First thing I recommend is always run in column view.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298147786.jpg

In the left hand side bar you should have an icon for "Pictures", click it, you should see an Icon for iPhoto Library, right click it and one of the contextual options will be "Show Package Contents".

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298148006.jpg

Once you open it go to the Originals folder and all your pictures are laid out in hierarchal order.

I would not add to or other wise manipulate the contents of the package, you don't want to confuse the DB that manages the library but copying items out of it is a none issue.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1298148303.jpg


In terms of making nested folders it's stupidly simple. Again recommend column view,

1) right click select new folder,
2) name it, keep it selected,
3) right click in next column, go back to step 1

I am not a Bridge user but would toss-in a vote for Lightroom for robust photo management. I guess a few bazillion people agree with me.