Basic mac operating system tips If you’re new to the mac, you can click on the help menu at the top of your finder screen, and then select “New to Mac? Tour the Basics.” This will give you a brief overview of some helpful tips & tricks.

Using the dock for shortcuts At the bottom of your screen is a row of apps. This is called the “Dock,” and its purpose is to have shortcuts to quickly open any application on your computer. You can add apps to your dock by going to the “Launchpad,” (looks like a rocket ship), and dragging an app in between two existing apps. If you want to delete an app, just click on it and hold your mouse and drag the app up out of the dock to “poof” it! Practice by adding and deleting some of the apps we use in this class.

system preferences System preferences is a mac app that lets you customize your computer to look and operate how you want it to. In your dock, look for an icon that looks like a gear, and click on it. It will open up your system preferences, where you can change your sounds, highlight colors, desktop image and screensaver, and how your mouse operates.

Making new folders and naming them It is important to create folders and name them so that you can store files that belong together. you need to be organized in graphics and film, or you will waste a lot of time looking for files that are randomly all over your computer. It’s also important to name your files for the same reason. To create a new folder in your finder, click on the “file” menu at the top of your screen and select new folder. Then right click on the folder and select rename and type the name of your folder. You can also “command shift N” and this will create a new folder and place it on your desktop. Rename it as described above.

High resolution vs low resolution images (crisp vs pixelated) There are no excuses for pixelated out of focus images in your graphics or in your films. When I see them I cringe, but more importantly you lose points on your project because it is so easy to have beautiful, sharp, professional looking images in your work. Use the “TOOLS” button on google images to select size, color, usage rights, type of image, etc. If you don’t specify size, you could get a very small image which will result in pixelated, out of focus images when you enlarge them on screen or in print. Click on the link below for a short video explaining how to specify size and pixels when searching for images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqwLyQnNaL4

Check the class website on a weekly basis to see what’s going on and for important resources!! Film Class website/weekly agenda: http://www.nkurland.net/dfp1 bookmark it on your browser and check it weekly for assignments and resources

Check the class website on a weekly basis to see what’s going on and for important resources!! Computer Graphics Class website/weekly agenda: http://www.nkurland.net/cg234 bookmark it on your browser and check it weekly for assignments and resources

programs used in this class Digital Film Production 1 class: imovie (editing films), itunes (music library), photos (images library), garageband (mixing your own beats). We have the entire adobe creative suite on the macs, so if you want to learn more advanced programs like premiere pro for editing or after effects for creating special effects, go for it! Computer Graphics 2,3,4 class: Photoshop (editing pixel based images such as photographs), Illustrator (drawing and creating vector based images such as logos, illustrations), InDesign (page layout), and Acrobat for pdf files. We have the entire adobe creative suite on the macs, so if you want to learn more advanced programs go for it!