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.

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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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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Imagine Publishing has launched a new digital-only, Multi-Touch ebook, iCloud For Beginners, specifically designed for Apple’s iBooks 2. Featuring slideshows, interactive images and more, it is one of the first ebooks of its type in the world. And it’s awesome.

Using iBooks Author’s fantastic tools, iCloud For Beginners teaches everything users need to know about iCloud, the free new back-up and sync service, with a Multi-Touch twist. From how to set-up your free iCloud account to sharing your information across your Apple devices, the ebook uses cutting-edge technology to deliver enhanced, easy-to-use tutorials that not only contain some incredible information, but also look great.

“At Imagine, we’re always excited by cool new ways to deliver our world-leading content,” said Editor In Chief Aaron Asadi. “iBooks Author is another great opportunity for us to create more products we love for a whole new type of audience. It’s this sort of game-changing innovation that makes us do what we do. ”

“With the speed that the publishing industry is changing, there’s nothing more exhilarating than grabbing hold of new technologies and seeing how we can get the most out of them to serve-up the content we’re so passionate about,” added Ross Andrews, Head of Design. “What could be better than going from saying ‘we should try that’ to a fully published product in just a few days? It’s hard to think of a more exciting time for the industry.”

iCloud For Beginners is available now on iTunes and iBookstore worldwide for just £0.99 in the UK and $1.99 in the US.

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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If you own an iPad, it’s likely that you know just how difficult it is to type long articles or other pieces using iOS’s software keyboard. While the layout of the keyboard is great, for prolonged periods of typing, a Bluetooth keyboard, or often just a Mac, is much easier to use. For those who can touch-type especially, the software keyboard presents a problem. Not any more, however.

The iKeyboard started life as a Kickstarter project which earned more than 6 times it’s target by raking in more than $26,000 after just a few weeks. Now, though, just over six months later, the project is finished and ready to ship to consumers around the world. And we really want to try one.

The keyboard uses strips of gentle adhesive to attach to the front of the iPad, and when you’re not using it you can either remove it completely or stick it to the top of your device. If you want to store your iPad, the iKeyboard is thin enough that a Smart cover will fit neatly over it (although we’re still not sure whether the screen lock would work – we will test it). It should also play nice with a number of cases, and those it can’t cooperate with will just mean you need to remove it before storage of your iPad.

There are instructions over on the company’s website on how to use the keyboard which neatly demonstrate the simplicity of the idea. There are no actual keys here, and nothing that needs powering, so really all you have to do is stick it to the front of your iPad in line with the Virtual keyboard and you’re ready to work. The raised bumps will provide feedback to enable quick typing, and while we don’t see this being so revolutionary that we throw out our Wireless Keyboards, it is so much more portable that it’s well worth the $35 it’s currently selling for on Amazon. It’s available there in black and white, but at the moment it seems both are out of stock, so we’ll be checking back regularly in the hope that the next shipment has arrived.

The editing features in iPhoto may seem a little basic on the face of it, designed to simply correct images that aren’t quite right. While this is true for the most part, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use what’s available to create something a little bit different. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to make use of the Adjustments area of the Edit section in iPhoto to create a pop art look for your photos and how to share them in an email. Pop art works well in email form as the pictures are smaller and they are grouped together. The great thing about using this technique is that it will hopefully show you how you can make striking changes to photographs, lifting those that you thought were just ordinary into something extraordinary. So, check out the steps in this tutorial but don’t be afraid to take the tips and run with them, creating your own cool style of photo enhancements.

1: Pick ‘n’ mix

Pick out a few pictures you want to try the technique with and create an album for the pictures to stay in. Select your first picture and double-click it.

2: Edit and Adjust

With your picture selected hit Edit at the bottom and the Adjust button when the screen changes. You are now ready to create your pop art.

3: Exposure

Dial up the exposure to blow out the lighting on the shot. This may look severe now but it will form part of the coloured highlights later on in the edit.

4: Contrast

Dial up the contrast. This will make the difference between light and dark areas much more apparent. Again, this will make more sense in a few minutes.

5: Saturation

Repeat the process with the saturation slider and you may also want to uncheck the ‘Avoid saturating skin tones’ box below the slider.

6: Colours

At the bottom of the Edit panel are two more sliders that will give us our pop art style – Temperature and Tint. Begin by using the Temperature slider.

7: Combinations

Combine the Temperature slider with the use of the Tint slider to achieve all kinds of new colours and tones. Here, we’ve achieved a cool blue.

8: Repeat and send

Repeat the process with the other pictures in your album and, when done, use the Share option at the bottom of the interface and then click Email.

9: Templates

Now you can pick a template that makes your pictures look cool and send it to a friend to show off your skills. Just add a note, address and hit send.

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