iCreate » Tutorials & Tips

How to add animated graphics and sound effects – iMovie Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:57:28 +0000

The classic Batman TV show from the Sixties paid homage to its comic book origins by superimposing ‘Ka-POW!’ style captions over fight scenes to underscore Batman’s villain-clobbering punches and kicks. You can enhance your own fight or action scenes in a similar way thanks to iMovie’s Title browser. We’ll show you how to freeze the action on a punch and add an animated Batman-style caption to the footage. You’ll learn how to modify the caption’s font to make it look more ‘comic book’ and also learn how to emphasise the impact of each punch with one of iMovie’s percussive sound effects. Follow these nine simple steps and you’ll have a truly awesome comic book-style fight scene in next to no time.

1: Import assets

Go to File>New Project. Create a project with a Standard (4:3) Aspect ratio and a 24 fps Frame Rate. Go to File>Import>Movies and browse to Fight!.mov.

2: Add to project

Drag the movie into the Project window. Click on the icon at the top right of the Project window to display the footage as a single row.

3: Flash and freeze

Go to View>Playhead Info. Scrub forward 14 frames and right click. Choose Split Clip. Select the first section. Go to Clip>Special Effect>Flash and Hold Last Frame.

4: Shorten freeze duration

Click on the frozen frame and press ‘I’ to open the Inspector. Set Clip Duration to 1:00 sec. Tick Applies to All Stills. Click Done.

5: Add text

Click on the Show Title browser icon. Drag Sideways Drift over the frozen frame. Trim the duration of the title to 1:00 sec. Edit the text to read ‘KA-POW!’

6: Edit font

For a more comic book-style look click Show Fonts. Choose Impact. Click on the yellow colour swatch. Set Size to 9. Tick the Outline icon. Click Done.

7: Horizontal Blur

Scrub to 4:08 and repeat step 3 to split the clip, add a flash and freeze the frame. Add the Horizontal title and type in ‘SWOOSH!’ as the baddie swings his bag.

8: Add sound effects

Click the Sound Effects browser and go to the Booms folder. Drag ‘Slamming Metal Lid’ onto the ‘KA-POW!’ clip. Drag ‘Sweep Motion’ onto the ‘SWOOSH!’ frame.

9: Mix it up!

Vary the colour and title style as you add graphics, emulating the Sixties comic book look! Add music to blend the action, sound effects and graphics together.

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Create custom music loops in Garageband – iLife Tutorial

Freddie Harrison — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:37:25 +0000

Apple’s built-in GarageBand loops really are one of the program’s best assets. Loops allow you to take a piece of music and repeat it to create interesting and individual sounds, but with more and more people using GarageBand to produce music there’s a chance that your favourite loops from Apple could be much less original than you first thought. In order to keep your songs sounding fresh, why not make use of Apple’s easy-to- use editing tools and cut the best bits out of longer loops? You can then re-arrange your selections and loop them for a more interesting and original sound. It can sometimes be a little fiddly and it requires a good ear and an even better eye to select the correct audio, but if you follow these nine simple steps, you’ll be creating a more unique sound in next to no time at all. Don’t settle for the standard but get creative and you’ll appreciate the unique songs you get as a result.

Step 1: New beginnings
When you open GarageBand you’ll be faced with this dialogue box. Click New Project and then on the Loops icon.

Step 2: Give it a name
Give your new project a name. From this dialogue box you can also set your project’s tempo, key and time signature, but these are all adjustable later on.

Step 3: Drag the beat
In the loop browser, click on Beats and browse through the selection. Click loops to preview them and drag your selection into the multi-track area.

Step 4: Click and click again
Double-click on your loop to bring up the track editor along the bottom. This allows you to edit and adjust your loops in greater detail.

Step 5: Drag the playhead
Drag the red playhead to the point where you want your loop to start. You might have to play it through a few times to get a feel for where it should be.

Step 6: Split it
In the Edit menu click Split to separate the beginning of your new loop from the rest of the original loop. Alternatively use the shortcut Cmd + T.

Step 7: Top and tail
Repeat this for the latter end of the loop you don’t need. If you look in the multi-track area you’ll see the loop you want in the middle of the other parts.

Step 8: Delete and repeat
Delete the parts of the loop you don’t want; you’ll be left with your newly cut loop. From here you can repeat this by dragging the loop from its right edge.

Step 9: Add it to the library
If you want, you can add your new loop to the loop library. Just click on it so it’s highlighted and click Add to Loop Library under the edit menu.

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How to make a Keynote photo slideshow in ten minutes – Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:31:02 +0000

Creating elegant slideshows in Keynote is surprisingly easy. In this tutorial, we’re going to demonstrate how to use one of the 44 pre-installed themes to create a beautiful photographic slideshow to show off your images. Simply follow the steps to replace the placeholder images and text and then add your own using the media panel, adding images from iPhoto or Aperture and even music from iTunes and video clips. Learn how to apply one of the many transitions to make your presentation really captivating. You won’t need to dedicate hours to this project – all this can easily be completed in under ten minutes.

1: Select the size

Open Keynote and select the size from the drop-down menu. We’ve chosen 800×600, which is the resolution of most projectors.

2. Choose the theme

Choose one of the 44 pre-installed themes, then drag your mouse over the slide to view the slide designs. Either double-click it or hit Choose to open.

3: Design

Pick a design for the opening slide from the Masters drop-down menu at the top of the interface. There are plenty of combinations to choose from.

4: Edit

Replace the placeholder text by clicking the mouse in the text box, selecting the text and then typing. Edit the design of the text using the Font panel.

5: Adding images

To add images, open the Media panel and select Photos. Then select the image you want from iPhoto; drag and drop it onto the image you want to replace.

6: Edit Mask

Slide the button right to make the image bigger within the frame. Tap ‘Edit Mask’ and then hold the cursor onto the image to move it around inside the frame.

7: Add slides

Add new slides by hitting the ‘+’ icon at the top of the interface, then select the design of the slide using the Masters drop-down menu.

8: Transitions

Add a transition between each slide by opening the Slide Inspector and choosing from the ‘Effect’ drop- down menu. You can edit the duration in the next field.

9: Play

Check the progress of your slideshow at any time by hitting the Play button on the top left of the interface. When you’re ready to share, just save it.

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How to remove panels in System Preferences – Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:05:09 +0000

Mac OS X Lion has added a huge number of new features, some of which are so in-your-face that you’ll end up using them every day. However, there are also plenty of much smaller alterations that most users will likely miss unless they are looking for them.

One of these changes comes in the System Preferences pane. In Snow Leopard, Apple’s own preferences were unmovable, and those additional panels that you added could only be uninstalled to remove them. In Lion you can hide or show Preference panels without deleting them entirely, allowing you to save screen space and cut out the panels you rarely use, helping you to find what you want more quickly.

All of this is possible through the Show All button; where before it had only a single function, it now allows you to quickly select the preference you want, or customise the window with a click.

1. Customise

In System Preferences you can click and hold on the Show All button to bring up a list of all your panels. To switch to one you just have to select it, but for now select Customise from the bottom of the menu.

2: Click to untick

You will see all the panels now have tick boxes over them. Click on the icons to uncheck them, which will remove them from the window when you click Done without deleting them forever.

How to edit images with PhotoToaster – iPad Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:36:36 +0000

There’s a lot to be said for editing images on the iPad. You can edit photos anywhere you like and your proximity to the device makes the process feel far more immersive than using a mouse or trackpad. Then, of course, you’ve got simplicity. The iPad app we’re using in this tutorial is designed to give you great control without a barrage of menus or screens. In fact, this is one of the slickest editing apps we’ve used on the iPad so far. Of course there are some limitations: let’s not kid ourselves, this is no Photoshop. But it does give you more than enough opportunity to take a good shot and put an alternative spin on it through creative editing. We can’t think of a better way to spend some time with the iPad than editing a batch of great photos and putting a personal touch on them. As with most decent apps, there is the ability to instantly share your creations; so, once you’ve created a masterpiece it can be uploaded without the need for your Mac. Here’s a quick guide to this cool app and how to use it.

1: Pick a picture

The opening page of the app lets you select where you are going to source your picture from and a few other helpful options besides. Tap the Photo Library button at the top of the options.

2: Good guide

Once you’ve picked a picture, a cool little guide will appear. This gives you the lowdown on some of the basic editing tips that you will need as you work through the app.

3: Presets

If you tap the wheel at the bottom of the interface, you’ll see a bunch of presets appear along the bottom with handy preview thumbnails too. Cycle through presets by tapping the wheel again.

4: Buttons

You can add individual elements to the picture you’ve chosen by using the buttons at the bottom of the screen. Again, presets will appear and you can just tap on the one you want.

5: Slider

If you want to go in and edit the levels of a preset you think is nearly working, use the button on the corner of the top of the thumbnails to access this editing area.

6: Cropping

The cropping feature in this app isn’t as advanced as it should be, with just three presets available and no fine-tuning. Tap on the crop size that you would like to use and a window will frame it.

7: Pinched

Use a pinch or reverse-pinch to resize the snap inside the crop window. When you are happy with the new look, simply tap the ‘tick’ icon at the bottom left of your screen.

8: Ready to rock

Your selected crop will be executed and you can then go back to editing your image using the icons at the bottom of the page, or using the presets by tapping the wheel.

9: Share it

Use the Save icon at the top of the interface to bring up this menu. As you can see, sharing and saving is simply a matter of tapping on your preferred option: Tumblr, Facebook, email or Photo Library.

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Use Instant Alpha to quickly cut out images in Preview

Freddie Harrison — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:55:32 +0000

Preview is the application that opens by default when you double-click on a JPG, PNG or other image file on your Mac. As OS X has matured, Preview has taken on some interesting features that are not immediately obvious but that provide some of the functionality of bigger image editing programs. The ability to identify areas of an image that are of similar tone and colour is one such tool, and can be used to cut parts of a picture out of their background. It works with the alpha channel, which is a part of a digital image that stores information about transparency and the way that existing colours overlap. You don’t need Photoshop to work with the alpha channel – you can do it from Preview.

Step 1: Open your image
Take an image where you want to cut something out of its background or remove an element from the whole picture, leaving only the background.

Step 2: Choose the tool
Go to the Select button in the Toolbar in Preview and click on it to reveal the additional tools. Select the tool called Instant Alpha.

Step 3: Select the background
Click somewhere in the background and drag the mouse to choose a larger area. The detection works best where the background colour is quite uniform.

Step 4: Redo if necessary
If Preview has included some incorrect areas, click once to undo the selection. Drag the mouse while holding to increase or decrease the sensitivity of the tool.

Step 5: Hit backspace
With the areas selected, hit backspace on your keyboard. The selected content is deleted. With complex backgrounds it’s better to work in stages.

Step 6: Keep removing background
It’s rare that one or two selections will clear a whole background so you may need to keep selecting areas and deleting them manually.

Step 7: Use the other tools
If you’re left with lots of small, fiddly areas of background, switch to the Rectangle or Lasso tool and draw around larger areas to delete them quickly.

Step 8: Stick with it
When you have lots of tiny areas to remove, such as areas between strands of hair, you will have to spend a while deleting but you will end up with a cut out image.

Step 9: Reverse the process
To remove the subject rather than background, select using the Instant Alpha tool then choose Edit>Invert Selection. Hitting backspace will remove the subject.

(Click on the image below to zoom in and view the annotations)

Use Bamboo Paper to make notes on your iPad – Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:36:18 +0000

Note-taking on the iPad has been one of its biggest uses so far – popular with students and workers attending meetings. However, for the most part, apps like Evernote and SimpleNote use a typing interface to let you tap out notes using the iPad’s on-screen keyboard. This is fine for most people, but for some the lack of tactile feedback provided when typing actually slows them down.

There’s something about creating hand-written notes on a device like the iPad that we at iCreate really like. This only gets better when you’re using a stylus to write them, which is why when we gave Bamboo Paper a try, we thought it was only fair to try out Wacom’s Bamboo Stylus too – the two are designed to work brilliantly together, after all. Writing on the app is great with the stylus: it feels so much like a standard pen that it’s easy to write with the same speed as you would on normal paper.

Feature-wise the app is great, with options to customise the colour, name and paper-type of your notebook, as well as several pen options and a nice speed-based eraser function. What’s even better is the very useful option to export a single page as a photo, or the whole book as a PDF document, when you’re finished.

1: Welcome page

When you open the app up for the first time, you can tap the cover of the book to open it. This is the first page of the book, giving you all the tips and instructions you need to get going.

2: Choose a pen

By holding your finger or stylus on the screen, you will bring up the Stroke menu. Here, you can select a pen size and colour by tapping it. Tapping the pen icon has the same result.

3: Bookmark a page

After making your notes, you can mark important pages with bookmarks by tapping in the top-right corner, just like in Apple’s iBooks app. Sadly you can’t search through bookmarks, which is a real shame.

4: Export a page

From within the notebook, you can choose to export a single page as either a picture in your Photo Library or in an email. You can also print your page if you have a printer set up with AirPrint functionality.

5: Edit your notebook

At the main notebook screen you can choose to change the colour of the Notebook itself, add lines or squares to the paper, or just rename the notebook by double-tapping on the current title.

6: Export your notebook

When you’ve finished your notebook you have the choice to print the whole thing, or email it as a PDF. The app will make up the PDF for you and attach it to an email, so all you need to do is add an address.

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Use the Select tool to crop in Preview – OS X Tutorial

Freddie Harrison — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:55:33 +0000

The composition of a picture is almost as important as the lighting, exposure and colour balance. You may not realise it but almost every photograph that you see in a book, gallery or magazine will have either been framed meticulously when it was taken or, more likely, cropped manually afterwards. The reasons for cropping are numerous. For a start, you often need to centre your subject within the frame to make them the focus of the image. Or, you may need to remove an overhanging tree branch from an otherwise clean scene. In yet another example, cropping can be used to change the message given by a picture, for instance by removing a person from it, a trick that some tabloid newspapers are not averse to using. Luckily, cropping in Preview is easy enough to do. Read our step-by-step tutorial to find out exactly how it works…

Step 1: Choose a picture
Find a picture that could be improved by cropping and double-click to open it. It should automatically open in the Preview application.

Step 2: Select an area
Click the Select box in the toolbar. The default tool is the Rectangular Selection tool and if you click and drag round an area, you will see a marquee appear.

Step 3: Resize the box
Drag the handles at the corners and edges of the marquee to change its size. When you’re done, select Tools>Crop or press Command+K.

Step 4: Crop the picture
The area inside the marquee will be kept while the rest is discarded. Save the image under a new filename so as not to overwrite the original.

Step 5: Use a different tool
Take the original image, choose Elliptical Selection under the Select tool and select an area. You can hold the Shift key to constrain it to a perfect circle.

Step 6: Reposition crop area
Instead of dragging the resize handles at the corners and edges, you can drag from the centre of the selected area to reposition it.

Step 7: Crop the image
With your circular area selected, choose Tools>Crop as before and you will be left with a circular image rather than a square one.

Step 8: Use the Lasso
The Lasso tool can be used to draw custom selection areas. Click in the image and draw freehand around a shape, just like if you were cutting with scissors.

Step 9: Cut it out
Choose Edit>Invert Selection, then press backspace to erase everything except the area selected. This is a good way to cut things out in a freehand manner.

Add graphics to your Keynote presentations – iWork Tutorial

Freddie Harrison — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:55:28 +0000

It’s easy to create presentations in Keynote, but not so easy to make them stand out from the normal templates. This tutorial is designed to show you how to turn an average presentation into a great one by adding a few simple graphical elements. There a few ways to do this and although we’ve added three different elements to one slide, don’t feel restricted by this. Keep things simple by adding one element per slide or make a standing element by having the same thing throughout – this can help hold a presentation together if you have included a lot of information or images. The important thing is to experiment and have fun.

Step 1: Text box
The first way to add graphics that we’re going to show you is by using text. When you’re ready, go to the top of the interface and click on Text Box.

Step 2: Position text box
Position the text box in a place that you can see it clearly and then open the Font panel by tapping the icon at the top right of the interface.

Step 3: Choose a font
Make sure that ‘All fonts’ is selected and choose a font that is made up of graphical elements, such as Bodoni Ornaments or Zapf Dingbats.

Step 4: Test the font
Try out a few different letters until you find something you like. Then size it up using the Font panel and add some colour using the colour palette.

Step 5: Shapes
The second way to add graphics to presentations is by drawing them. Go to the Shape tool at the top of the interface and select the last option.

Step 6: Draw a shape
Click the mouse to add a new point and hold down the mouse key and drag to make a curve. When you’ve joined the dots together, add some colour.

Step 7: Stock images
Another way to add graphics is to use stock. Some sites are free, such as this one, and others such as iStock charge a fee. You’ll need to create an account first.

Step 8: Download an image
Type a keyword into the search facility and when you find something you like, click on it. Under ‘Availability’ check the licensing restrictions and then hit download.

Step 9: Import
You’ll need to import the image into iPhoto in order to see it in Keynote. Drag and drop to the place you want, then resize as required.

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How To create custom software instruments – Garageband Tutorial

Stephen Ashby — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:56:03 +0000

The software instruments that ship with GarageBand provide a decent selection of sounds, but one element seems to be missing: a sampler. This is an instrument that places short chunks of audio onto the notes of a MIDI keyboard so that you can play them into your song as MIDI sequences. On closer inspection, GarageBand does harbour a nifty hidden feature allowing you to build your own software instruments. This can be used as a basic playback sampler, playing back a set of audio samples from keys that you can assign yourself. It’s an intuitive way of arranging short sounds such as drum hits or vocal hooks as it allows them to be played in alongside the track in a more musical context.

1: Collect files

In the Finder, make a folder of sounds to use to build your instrument. These can be anything you like, as long as they’re audio files in .wav, .aif or .mp3 format.

2: Launch GarageBand

Click the ‘New Project’ sidebar and choose ‘Piano’. In the next screen, give your project a name, choose where to save it on your hard drive and click ‘Create’.

3: Select base instrument

Over to the right-hand side of the screen, in the Track Info pane, select Sound Effects>Radio Sounds from the instrument list.

4: Open Musical Typing

Select Musical Typing from the Window menu, or use the Shift+Cmd+K keyboard shortcut to reveal the Musical Typing window.

5: Set octave range

The most popular starting note for sample-based instruments is C1, so click the upper keyboard display or press the Z key until the Octave display reads C1.

6: Drag and drop

From the Finder window containing your drum samples, drag and drop them one by one onto the required keys. This initial window contains 18 key slots.

7: 18 plus

If you fill up the first 18 key slots, access the next 12 empty ones by tapping the X key to shift the keyboard range up one octave.

8: Save instrument

After placing your samples, pick a category to save your instrument in from the list and click the Save Instrument button. Type a name for your instrument and click Save.

9: Pick and play

Your new instrument’s name should now appear in the list. Like regular instruments, it will now be accessible for all your future GarageBand projects.

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Learn great keyboard shortcuts in GarageBand – iLife Tutorial

Freddie Harrison — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:55:25 +0000

Most applications for the Mac have a set of hidden keyboard shortcuts, and GarageBand is no exception. If learnt thoroughly enough to become second nature, these can substantially accelerate your workflow, which in turn can reap dividends when you just need to get that latest great idea down really fast. The most obvious way to speed things up is to master the keyboard commands for navigating your way around the song. Things flow much better if you can just press a key or two to shoot the playhead up to the beginning of a selected region, rather than dragging it there manually with the mouse. Zooming in and out and changing the part of the song currently on screen are other base level functions that can be achieved with a quick tap. In this tutorial, we’ll show you some of the most useful shortcuts, and give you the lowdown on how to discover the rest.

Step 1: (Return to) Zero
Pressing the Z key on its own returns the playhead to the top of the song (the Return key does the same thing). Alt+Z takes you to the end.

Step 2: Zoom
GarageBand’s arrange window zooms horizontally, and this is achieved by dragging the slider beneath the track list. The shortcut is Alt+Cmd+Left/Right arrow.

Step 3: Go to region start
Hitting the Function key + Ctrl + Left arrow will whizz the playhead to the start of the selected region. Tap the Right arrow to take you to the end of the region.

Step 4: Shift window
Another display trick is flicking the arrange window along by the visible width of the timeline. Hold down the Function key and flick the Up/Down arrows.

Step 5: A for Automation
Hitting the ‘A’ key at any point reveals the automation curve for the selected track, equivalent to clicking the small triangle button in the track header.

Step 6: O for over and over again
Select a region and hit the ‘O’ key and GarageBand will loop the region to fill the space up until the next region or the song’s end, whichever comes first.

Step 7: Split & Join
Regions can be cut at the playhead position using the ‘Split’ command – the shortcut is Cmd+T. To repair a split, use the ‘Join’ command – the shortcut is Cmd+J.

Step 8: Record and cycle
Hit the ‘R’ key while the song is playing to drop into and out of recording on the currently selected track. The ‘C’ key toggles the cycle mode on or off.

Step 9: Track manoeuvres
Hit Cmd+D to duplicate the selected track (but not the regions it contains) and Cmd+Backspace to delete it. Speedily create a new track with Cmd+Option+N

(Click the image below to zoom in and view the annotations)