Tools to Help You Sweat the Small Stuff

In my last post, I suggested that it’s important to pay attention to the details when putting together a presentation, including the composition of our slides. This attention to detail can become tedious, though, without some tools to help expedite the process. Here are some tools I use to help me sweat the small stuff.

Keynote (by Apple-$80)

The first place I start is with the presentation software I use. Keynote allows for fine control over the placement of text and objects on a slide and even offers limited capabilities for image manipulation and alpha masking. While PowerPoint is gaining these capabilities, I still find Keynote offers the better environment for detail and precision. At $80, Keynote is not cheap, but it is also far more inexpensive than PowerPoint.

in the process of alpha masking an image in Keynote

the background color is now gone

image alignment guides in Keynote

Skitch (by Plasq-free)

Skitch serves two purposes in my workflow. Fist, it serves as my primary tool for taking screenshots. Also, it does well as a rudimentary image editor. It’s a nice tool for getting the exact shot you might want for a technical presentation, and you can then immediately edit and crop the image directly within Skitch. Being a free application, it’s easy to pass a recommendation along.

framing a screenshot in Skitch

Kuler (by Adobe-web app)

Kuler is a great place to go to find color schemes for use in your presentations. It’s like having thousands of color swatches at your disposal without having to find a place to keep them all. If you find yourself liking kuler, the next recommendation makes using it simpler.

Color Picker (included in Mac OS X)

The OS X Color Picker is available in most Mac OS X applications, including Keynote. Using the Color Picker takes the guesswork out of matching colors on your slide. Clicking on a magnifying glass icon allows you to choose any color on the screen. You can then store the matched color in the bins at the bottom of the Color Picker for easy access. When choosing a color scheme from kuler, Color Picker’s matching tool lets you save the color scheme without having to write down a bunch of hex values.

color matching in OS X

Flipping Typical (by Stuart Robinson-web app)

Flipping Typical allows you to see sample text displayed in several fonts at one, and all of the fonts you see come from your computer. If you’re having a tough time picking the exact font you want to use, Flipping Typical can come to the rescue.

xScope (by Iconfactory-$27)

If you really need to get detailed, an application I’ve recently been using, called xScope, might be helpful. It is a suite of tools that can:

• magnify any portion of the screen, displaying colors under the cursor in HEX, RGB, and HSB values.
• precisely measure in pixels anything on the screen.
• measure the dimensions of any object on-screen.
• measure the distance between objects on-screen.
• demonstrate the amount of real estate available in various screen sizes.

It can also do much more. I’m still evaluating whether or not I’m going to get enough use out of it to justify the price, but if these features sound attractive to you, give it a try.

a sampling of xScope’s tools

What About Windows? You Forgot My Favorite App!

Now I’m looking for feedback from you. What do you use and recommend? Do you have a favorite screenshot application or a better color picker? Also, you might notice that every application I recommended (except the web apps) are Mac-only tools. That doesn’t help my Windows-based readers very much. What do you recommend for them? I’m hoping to see some exciting suggestions show up in the comments. Having an eye for detail is good, but design is much easier when you have some good tools to help you out.