John Voorhees

5628 posts on MacStories since November 2015

John is MacStories' Managing Editor, has been writing about Apple and apps since joining the team in 2015, and today, runs the site alongside Federico. John also co-hosts four MacStories podcasts: AppStories, which covers the world of apps, MacStories Unwind, which explores the fun differences between American and Italian culture and recommends media to listeners, Ruminate, a show about the weird web and unusual snacks, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about the games we take with us.
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voorhees@macstories.net

Pixelmator Pro 2.1 Adds ML Crop, Quick Fill Color, and Text Tool Updates

The team at Pixelmator has released an update to its Mac photo and image editing tool Pixelmator Pro that includes several new features.

Teased last month, Pixelmator Pro 2.1 has been updated with ML Crop, a machine learning-based cropping tool that algorithmically suggests ways to crop your images. The feature joins several other machine learning-based features that the app has added in the past couple of years. In my limited testing, ML Crop works well, suggesting crops based on the subject of photos that are more dramatic and focused on the image’s subject. The entire cropping process is non-destructive, so even if you aren’t entirely happy with a suggested crop, it can be used as a starting point and easily tweaked manually.

Source: Pixelmator.

Source: Pixelmator.

Pixelmator Pro has evolved into more than just a photo editor. The app includes powerful image creation tools that got an update today too. Quick Fill is a fast way to fill an image layer with color by simply dragging the color from the app’s new color well that also supports switching between foreground and background colors.

The app has added a Stroke with Brush feature that facilitates painting with the app’s brushes along the path of shapes and image layers too. The feature joins a new brush picker and an option for smoothing strokes. Also, the Type tool has been updated to add a slider that quickly resizes text and the ability to control paragraph spacing.

There are other smaller refinements throughout the app too. For instance, when you hover the pointer over a predefined crop, your image updates with a preview of what the new crop will look like. The feature works dynamically in tandem with ML Crop when that feature is turned on, and there are now multiple crop overlay options in the latest update like the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Ratio, the Golden Spiral, and others. Image perspective can be adjusted, and the background of the app’s editor can be changed too. For a quick demo of the highlights, Pixelmator’s announcement video is worth watching:

I haven’t had a chance to try all the new features of Pixelmator’s latest release yet, but I like what I’ve seen so far. The app’s machine learning-based features are fast, especially on an M1 Mac, and they work well in most circumstances. Even when the results aren’t exactly what I want, the app’s machine learning tools are a handy head start with editing.

Pixelmator 2.1 is a free update on the Mac App Store, and currently, the app is available for $19.99, which is 50% off of its usual price until July 6th.

AppStories - Ep. 229 - 46 minutes

Shortcuts Preview

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 229 - Shortcuts Preview

0:00
45:47

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John walk through all the changes coming to Shortcuts this fall, including changes to the Shortcuts editor and the new actions you’ll find in Shortcuts on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.


On AppStories+, Federico explains his new iPad Home Screen for writing his annual iOS and iPadOS review and other Home Screens he’s considering and Federico and John discuss Shared With You.

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MacStories Unwind: iOS and iPadOS Beta Updates and Shortcuts News

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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30:11

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Sponsored by: GoodTask – Get It Done With the Task Manager Based on Apple’s Reminders and Calendars

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico re-engineers his Timery timer setup in Shortcuts
      • John covers the many ways to use Shortcuts on the Mac
      • A Remote Control & Mobile Mouse giveaway
      • Results of our WWDC 2021 straw poll

AppStories

Unwind

App Debuts

John

AirBuddy AirBuddy gained a handy feature this week with the ability to alert you when the batteries in your Bluetooth devices run low or are fully charged. The menu bar app, which is an excellent way to manage connections between your Mac and headphones with Apple’s H1 and W1 chips, including AirPods Pro, AirPods...

AppStories, Episode 228 – Federico’s Research and Note-Taking Setup→

This week on AppStories, we dig into the latest iteration of the research and note-taking setup that Federico is using to prepare his annual iOS and iPadOS review, a big part of which features Obsidian.

Sponsored by:

  • Pingdom – Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code APPSTORIES to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
  • Genius Scan – A scanner in your pocket.
  • Pillow – Sleeping better, made simple.

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Dr. Drang on How Shortcuts Fits Into Existing Mac Automation→

We speculated for years about whether Shortcuts would come to the Mac and, if so, in what form. In 2019, Dr. Drang wrote about his concern that Shortcuts would come to the Mac as a Catalyst app that couldn’t interoperate with existing Mac automation tools. It was a legitimate concern, especially given the state of Mac Catalyst apps at the time.

As Drang explains in a post today, those early concerns haven’t materialized. Shortcuts for Mac isn’t limited by Mac Catalyst, and Apple has directly plugged the app into the existing Mac automation ecosystem. Drang concludes that:

All in all, this is looks like everything I wanted in Mac Shortcuts. As I said in the post two years ago, the ability to run every kind of automation from every other kind of automation is key to making a fluid system, where you can use each tool for what it does best. Also, it means that third-party automation tools like Keyboard Maestro, which has a good AppleScript dictionary for running its macros, will fit in well with the new environment even before they incorporate Intents that are directly accessible from Shortcuts.

As Drang notes, Shortcuts for Mac’s ability to run AppleScript and for shortcuts to be run from AppleScript or from the command line is an important feature that promises to significantly increase the app’s utility from day one. Even before existing Mac automation apps do anything to support Shortcuts, they will work with it if they support AppleScript or shell scripting. That will allow users to build shortcuts that incorporate workflows created in apps like Keyboard Maestro and for Keyboard Maestro to run shortcuts from the very start.

However, before automation fans run out and install Monterey to start building new automations, it’s worth noting that Shortcuts for Mac is a brand new app in the first beta of Monterey. As Drang notes, some functionality isn’t enabled yet, and there are significant bugs that need to be worked out throughout the app. That’s to be expected, and there are still good reasons to be excited about Shortcuts for Mac. For now, though, adventurous automators should approach Shortcuts for Mac with realistic expectations about what they will be able to create.

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Photo Editing and Management App Darkroom Adds Extensive Shortcuts Support

Photo editing and management app Darkroom, which added a new Clarity tool last month, has added substantial new Shortcuts actions to the app that allow users to automate a wide variety of its features for the first time. The update is notable because it allows Darkroom to work hand-in-hand with other apps, something which few photography apps do. For now, the shortcuts are available in Apple’s Shortcuts app on iPhones and iPads, but this fall, when macOS Monterey is released, the Darkroom team says that it plans to offer the same actions on the Mac.

The update features five Shortcuts actions:

  • Import to Darkroom
  • Flag Photos
  • Reject Photos
  • Add Photos to Favorites
  • Edit With Darkroom
Darkroom can automate cropping to a long list of aspect ratios.

Darkroom can automate cropping to a long list of aspect ratios.

The Import to Darkroom action adds images to Darkroom and can simultaneously apply a filter with the intensity you choose, set a frame aspect ratio with an inset, and optionally prepare the processed image for export. The Edit With Darkroom action can also apply filters and apply a frame to an image and adds the ability to crop an image to any of a long list of preset aspect ratios and add a watermark to images, all without opening Darkroom. Cropping an image has also been added as an edit that can be pasted to multiple images inside the Darkroom app itself.

The Flag, Reject, and Favorite actions do as you’d expect, allowing you to mark images accordingly without doing so from inside Darkroom itself. Flagging and rejecting photos is a recent addition to Darkroom, which I previously covered on MacStories.

It’s fantastic to see Darkroom adding such deep support for Shortcuts. The app itself is one of my favorite photo editors. However, by freeing its core features from the app itself, Darkroom gains the advantage of becoming part of more complex photo-editing workflows, automatically processing images in multiple apps, without the images having to be opened sequentially in each app. I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what Darkroom’s new Shortcuts actions can do, but the possibilities are intriguing.

AppStories - Ep. 228 - 41 minutes

Federico’s Research and Note-Taking Setup

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 228 - Federico’s Research and Note-Taking Setup

0:00
41:11

↓

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John dig into the latest iteration of the research and note-taking setup that Federico is using to prepare his annual iOS and iPadOS review, which features Obsidian.


On AppStories+, Federico and John catch up on post-WWDC rest and project planning.

Read more

MacStories Unwind: An App Review Comic Book, Podcast Subscriptions, and Shazam Milestones

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps
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18:09

AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

Sponsored by:
* MacStadium – The Developer Cloud for Mac.

This week on Unwind, John is joined by Alex Guyot to recap the week, including John’s story about the 5th anniversary of the App Store Review Guidelines comic book, milestones reached by Apple’s Shazam service, plus Apple Podcasts channels and subscriptions, developer reactions to WWDC, and TV and movie Unwind picks.

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Federico on his new iOS and iPadOS review Focus mode
    • John imagines his ideal research app
    • An interview with Apollo developer Christian Selig
    • A Pillow giveaway
    • A reader poll

AppStories

Unwind Picks