Adobe Photoshop for iPad has been released and it’s a free download. Technically called Photoshop Express, the Express moniker suggests a more full featured version may be in the works from Adobe to further utilize the power and screen size of the iPad. Photoshop Express is the as the Photoshop for iPhone version released last year, but the name has been updated and there is an iPad specific feature.

Photoshop for iPad exclusive feature set:
• Support for portrait and landscape orientations
• Redesigned Online, Edit, and Upload workflows
• Ability to work on multiple photos in sequence from within a single workflow
• Redesigned Organizer view with simplified album sharing
• Updated icons and visuals that make it easier to navigate and use the Editor
• Ability to upload to Photoshop.com and Facebook simultaneously

Adobe says that Photoshop Express for iPad lets you use the simple touch gestures to make quick edits and share the photos from your mobile device. Personally I think the existing features leave something to be desired, as there are a significant lack of real photo editing abilities. This is especially amplified considering some of the other relatively more powerful photo editing and manipulation packages available for iPad and iPhone.

Despite the shortcomings, the Photoshop app is useful and the brand is strong. I’m sure future versions will have many more features even if in the form of a paid download, for now though you can get Photoshop Express for iPad as a free download via iTunes.

You may recall the figure released last week by a research analyst saying that 70% of incoming college Freshmen use Macs, well, at some schools it’s already higher than that. Take this classroom at BCIT, where out of 17 computers in the classroom, 16 are Macs.

I’m not sure what the class is, and obviously certain majors could skew the Mac to PC ratio, but this image really captures the trend of Apple dominating in higher education. These pictures were taken by visiting lecturer Tod Maffin, who says he noticed “a lot of glowing white Apple logos staring back” and then asked the students to hold up their computers to take a picture.

Mac OS X defaults all screenshots to PNG files. Changing the default file type of screenshot captures is really easy, all you need to do is launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and execute a command string. After you have launched Terminal, type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
Most major image formats are supported including PNG, PDF, GIF, TIFF, and JPG. In this example we went with JPG since that is a common type of web graphic.

After you have executed the above command, you’ll need to kill the SystemUIServer for changes to take effect:
killall SystemUIServer

Now if you take a screen capture, it’ll appear as whatever file type you specified.

Many new Mac users are coming from the Windows world where they would access the Task Manager to end tasks and stop errant processes. The Mac has it’s own Task Manager but it goes by another name: Activity Monitor. Activity Monitor functions in a very similar way to how Task Manager does in Windows, letting you manage and end tasks, applications, and processes easily within Mac OS X.

The Mac Task Manager

Despite being named Activity Monitor many Mac switchers continue to refer to the utility as the Windows name of Task Manager, keep in mind that regardless of the lingo used it’s the same application utility being discussed and used.

Remember, the Task Manager for Mac = Activity Monitor!

Using the Task Manager in Mac OS X

If you’re used to Windows, you’d get to the Task Manager by hitting Control+ALT+DEL. In Mac OS X, it’s a bit different. You can launch the app directly within it’s containing directory or use Spotlight for quick keyboard access.

Access the Mac Task Manager
Activity Monitor is located in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder. The simplest way to get to Activity Monitor in Mac OS X is to use Spotlight as a keyboard shortcut of sorts.

• Hit Command+Spacebar to bring up the Spotlight search field
• Type in “Activity Monitor”
• Hit the Return key when “Activity Monitor” populates in the spotlight results
• You are now in Activity Monitor where you can manage and manipulate tasks

Killing or Stopping a Task/Process with Activity Monitor
From within Activity Monitor, simply click on the task or application you want to end and then click on the large red “Quit Process” button in the left corner of the app window. You will get a warning dialogue as follows:

Assuming you have selected the process/application you want to end, click on the “Quit” button. If the app is being unresponsive, you can click on the “Force Quit” button instead to immediately kill the process and stop the application from running without any further warning.

Get System Stats, CPU, Memory Usage, Network, and Disk Info in Activity Monitor
Looking at the bottom of Activity Monitor you can also get system usage information about your Mac. Just click on the tabs to see information about CPU, System Memory, Disk Activity, Disk Usage (space), and Network activity and usage.

Quick Tip for New Mac Users from the Windows World
Until new Mac users are more familiar with Spotlight and how their Mac works, I often recommend recent switchers keep Activity Monitor in their Dock for easy access. The good news is you will rarely use Activity Monitor, since Mac OS and applications within it run much better than Windows, but it’s good to have it readily available in case something goes haywire (like Flash messing up Safari or another web browser).

I’ve always thought having a screen in portrait mode would be odd, but as a secondary display it really makes sense for development. Here a 15″ MacBook Pro rocks a portrait mode 24″ widescreen display.

[ via Flickr ]

If you’re in the USA you probably know the iPhone 4 price starts at $199 with a plan and $599 without contract, but did you know that the top end iPhone 4 costs nearly $1000 in much of Europe and over a grand in Italy? Yikes! At least it comes unlocked…

All the prices in the above graphic are listed in euros but with the € euro stronger than the dollar it’s not too difficult to see the high prices. Much of the price differences are due to VAT and other taxes, but it’s still interesting to see nonetheless. The best deal for iPhone 4 looks like Hong Kong, where you can pickup a base model unlocked iPhone 4 for about $650, not bad considering $600 in the USA keeps you glued to AT&T!

The graphic comes from Flickr where you can see a much larger version, thanks for sending this in Rick.

You can immediately zoom back to 100% on any document within Photoshop by hitting Command+1 (yes like the number one). If you’re not a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you can also just double-click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom back to 100%.

I’ve been using Photoshop for years and I didn’t know this until I came across it on TheGraphicMac.com. Granted I’m not a big keyboard shortcut explorer, but sometimes these little tips really amaze me with how useful they are.

EPUB stands for ‘electronic publication’ and it’s the accepted standard format for digital book publishing. If you want to make an ebook that can be read on a digital device, you’ll need it in this EPUB format.

You can convert virtually any text containing document to EPUB format, which is the preferred format for reading on many ebook readers, including the Barnes & Noble Nook, Android, and the Apple iOS iBooks platform that runs on iPhone and iPad (note that the Amazon Kindle currently favors .mobi format which Calibre can also publish to). Here are the exact steps to convert a file to EPUB.
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There’s a pretty cool feature included in iOS that lets you run your iPhone in James Bond mode, causing the device to self destruct if an incorrect password is entered 10 times concurrently.

Ok, well it’s not really called James Bond mode and it doesn’t actually self destruct, but it does erase all the data on the iPhone, which is basically the digital equivalent.

Make iPhone erase all data contents after failed password attempts

Enabling this feature will cause the iPhone to erase all data on the device after 10 failed passcode attempts have been entered.

• Tap on “Settings”
• Tap on General
• Navigate to and tap on “Passcode Lock”
• At the bottom, switch “Erase Data” to “ON”

This is a great feature to enable if you are worried about theft or losing your iPhone and your iPhone has a lot of private data on the device that you don’t want in front of some prying eyes. Just be sure to backup your iPhone before enabling something like this, just in case!

You can quickly merge any two directories within Mac OS X by using the command line tool ditto. Launch the Terminal and use the following syntax:

ditto directory1 directory2

If a directory already exists at the destination (directory2) then the contents of the source (directory1) will be merged with the contents of the destination (destination2). So I want to merge pictures from “August 2010″ into “Summer 2010″ I will use:

ditto "August 2010" "Summer 2010"

The man page for ditto describes further:

In its first form, ditto copies one or more source files or directories
to a destination directory. If the destination directory does not exist
it will be created before the first source is copied. If the destination
directory already exists then the source directories are merged with the
previous contents of the destination.

If you’re not familiar with the command line, you may want to just use the GUI to perform this type of action.