O'Grady's PowerPage

Tag: shadow

  • Cocktail updated to 6.4

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    On Friday, shareware developer Maintain released version 6.4 of CocktailCocktail (Mountain Lion Edition), the popular shareware utility program that allows for additional Mac OS X system tests. The new version, a 5.5 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and features:
    – Added ability to change standby delay (Disks – Sleep)* – *Specifies the delay (in minutes) before writing the hibernation image to disk and powering off memory for standby. This setting is only available on compatible computers.

    – Added ability to disable shadow in window captures (Interface – General).

    – Added ability to show Debug menu in App Store, Photo Booth and Reminders (Interface – Misc).

    – Added compatibility with the latest versions of supported web browsers.

    – Improvements on the clear system caches procedure.

    Cocktail 6.4 retails for a US$19.00 shareware registration fee and requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.8 or later to install and run.

  • Apple announces September 12th media event

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    You’ve been waiting for this for about a year now.

    Per The Loop and MacRumors, Apple has sent out invitations for a media event scheduled for next week Wednesday, September 12. The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and is scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern. The tagline on the invitation is simply “It’s almost here.”



    The image sort of says it all, as a conspicuous “5” appears in the shadow, the company being expected to deliver a long-awaited iPhone 5 handset. Apple’s iPod lineup is also rumored to be seeing an update at one of the two events, while rumored iMac updates and the launch of a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro are likely to appear separately.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available and full coverage of the event come September 12th.

  • Adobe Lightroom 4.0 released

    If you loved Adobe’s Lightroom image editing program, you might think highly of version 4.0 which became available on Tuesday.

    The new version, which is priced at US$79 for the upgrade version for Lightroom 3.x user (US$149 for the full version) and adds the following features and changes:

    – Highlight and shadow recovery.

    – Photo book creation with templates.

    – Location-based organization including GPS data support.

    – A white balance brush.

    – Noise reduction and moiré removal tools.

    – Enhanced video support including adjustments.

    – Emailing from Lightroom.

    – Video publishing to Facebook and Flickr.

    – Soft proofing for color-managed printers.

    Adobe Lightroom 4.0 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later to install and run.

    If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

  • Adobe releases Lightroom 4.0 public beta, adds slew of fixes and features

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    On Tuesday, software giant Adobe released a public beta of version 4.0 of its Lightroom photo editing utility. The Lightroom 4.0 beta, a 409 megabyte download (via MacUpdate), adds the following fixes and changes:

    – Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.

    – Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.

    – Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.

    – White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.

    – Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.

    – Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.

    – Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr.

    – Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.

    – Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

    The Adobe Lightroom 4.0 beta is available for free and requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later to install and run.

  • Users Report Window Rendering Bug on MacBooks Under Mac OS X 10.6.X

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    As much as you may like Mac OS X, there may still be some bugs to hash out. Per CNET, several MacBook users have reported experiencing a problem in OS X where the system shows areas of graphics corruption around windows. The corruption appears to be a black area of blocky lines in no particular pattern, and seems to be in the area of the window’s shaded region, moving with the window when it is moved.

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    The behavior seems to be specific for computers that are running Intel GMA X3100 graphics chipsets. It started occurring with Mac OS X 10.6 for some people, though for others the 10.6.1 update spurred the problem, and as of the latest 10.6.2 release this problem has not been addressed. The issue seems to happen most when multimedia files are being played, especially with beta versions of Adobe flash are being used. From user descriptions, the problem seems to stem from a bug waiting to be fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6 operating system.

    Recent reports suggest Apple is working on significantly improving support for more OpenGL 3.0 functions and extensions in OS X 10.6.3, which implies Apple will be updating the graphics drivers in the next update. Hopefully the bug that is causing this problem will be addressed then.

    In the meantime, you can try the following fixes and workarounds:

    – Reset PRAM and SMC.

    – Boot into safe mode and clear caches with OnyX or other maintenance utility.

    – Try a different user account.

    – Try different graphics settings (bit depth, resolution).

    This glitch won’t hurt anything and only affects the MacBook’s rendering of window shadows, which can still be interacted with normally. If you’ve seen this issue on your end and found your own fix or workaround, please let us know.