One of the biggest time-savers in Mac OS X Leopard & Snow Leopard is the Quick Look, which gives you an instant preview of any file. It’s great for finding the right document, image, or mp3 when you’re not sure which is which, or choosing the correct version from a series of files with similar names.

To use Quick Look, simply select an item in the Finder and press the Space bar, or type Command-Y. An image of the selected item appears. (In the case of mp3s, the sound file also plays.) You don’t even need to open the document’s usual application. If it’s a photo, for example, you can see it without waiting for iPhoto or Preview to open.

To close the Quick Look preview, simply press the Space bar again, or click the x in the preview window’s upper-left corner. Alternately, you can type Command-Y or Command-W to close the image.

A few more tips to help you get the most from this amazing feature:

• If you want to preview additional items, don’t close the preview window. Just highlight a new file in the Finder, and the open preview window displays the newly selected object.
• Quick Look lets you view multiple-page documents. For longer files, a navigation scroll bar appears along the preview window’s right margin. It even works with PDFs and Keynote presentations.

In previous versions of Mac OS X, if you clicked on a file, copied it (Command-C), then opened an application (like Mail) and pasted it (Command-V), it would only paste that file’s name. Now, in some applications it pastes the actual file, so you can copy-and-paste a file from a Finder window or the desktop right into your application. Okay, so what if you do want just the name? Just click directly on the selected file’s name (to highlight it) and press Command-C to copy it. Now you’re copying just the name. It’s a Power Pasting thing!

In my classes I'm asked often how I navigate and get to a file in a folder so easily using my keboard and not my mouse.

I'm not against the mouse, but a simple MAC computer technique.  Using the mouse or trackpad means moving your hands off the keyboard, locating the cursor, making your move, and then shifting your hands back to the keys. Why not skip all of this and make things easier.

There’s nothing easier  than navigating folders within Finder windows. You can select, open, and browse folders from the keyboard for greater speed and less multiple window clutter.

See for yourself: In Finder, open a new window by pressing Command-N. To view the folders in List view, press Command-2. (Command-1 lets you view by Icons, while Command-3 changes the view to Columns.) I actually perfer Columns.

In List or Columns view, choose a folder that contains several subfolders, and open it by pressing the right arrow key. You can move up and down between folders or documents by pressing the up and down arrow keys. Close folders (or navigate backwards, if you’re in Columns view) with the left arrow key. When looking for a specific file, I also use QuickLook by pressing the spacebar and then using the arrow keys.

When you’ve located the file you want, speed your work even more by opening it with Command-O instead of double-clicking. In most Mac applications, you can close the file again by typing Command-W. BTW I also use this technique when in Photoshop or pretty much any of my applications.

Once you’re accustomed to navigating through folders and files with key commands, you may be surprised by how fast you can move around, mouse-free, on your Mac.

Have you ever noticed how crazy people are when you email them high-res photos from your digital camera? For example, your mother in Tallahasse may not have Photoshop, and so dealing with that 16MB, 28-inch-wide photo you shot with your eight-megapixel camera might put a strain on her system. That’s why you might want to reduce the size of those photos you’re about to email. You don’t even have to launch Photoshop — because you can do the resizing witnin Apple Mail.

After you attach a photo to your email message ( just drag-and-drop the image into the New Message window), take a look in the bottom-right corner of your email message window, and you’ll see a pop-up menu where you can choose the Image Size you’d like to send. As soon as you choose a size (other than Actual Size), the image is immediately scaled down right within the email message window so you can see the exact size of the photo you’re sending.To the left accross from the pop-up menu you will see the new file size.

With your Mac you can choose which applications you want to have open automatically at the time you longin on your computer. For example, you might want Safari and Mail to open every time you sign on. These automatically opening programs are called Login items, and here’s how to manage them.

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences and click on the Accounts button. Click on your account name (if it’s not already highlighted), then click the Login Items tab. A list of all Login items appears.

You can remove programs by selecting them and clicking the minus sign, or add new ones by clicking the Add (+) button and navigating to the desired application. If you check the Hide box next to the program name, the application will open automatically, but won’t be displayed onscreen until you select it in the Dock or via the Command-Tab key command (which cycles you between all open applications).

 

Login Items don’t have to be applications. You can also choose to automatically open individual documents, folders, or disks.

As you might expect, adding Login Items increases your startup time. Also, note that only a user designated as the computer’s Admin can modify Login Items.

Double-clicking a file on your Mac automatically opens it in the appropriate application. But sometimes you may want to overrule your Mac and open a file in something other than the default.

For example, say you’ve edited a series of images in Photoshop, and now you want to take a quick look at them. You might prefer to view them in Preview, a Mac OS X program that opens in an instant, rather than the larger, slower-to-load Photoshop application.

To quickly specify your app, right-click the item you want to open, then choose Open With from the pop-up menu that appears. This takes you to a list of every application your Mac considers capable of reading the file. Choose the name of the application you want, and the file opens in that program.

If you think you’ll be opening the file repeatedly in that program, you may want to specify an ongoing Open With preference. To do so, select the file and press Command-I to see the file’s Info window. Click the Open With tab and choose your program. Now the file will always open with your preferred application. And if you click the Change All… button, every file of the same type will open with this application.

 

Okay, so you’re working in a program like Flash, Aperture or iMovie, which can take up every vertical inch of the screen, and when you go to adjust something near the bottom, the Dock keeps popping up, this recently kept happening during my Adobe Flash class. You can always "try" to hide the Dock, (which is how mine always is) or move the Dock to where it’s anchored on the left or right side of the screen. But what if you could move it temporarily to the left or right, and then move it back to the bottom in just one click when you are finished and quick the application you were using.

Here’s what you do: Hold the shift key, click directly on the Dock’s divider line (on the far right side of the Dock), and drag the Dock to the left or right side of your screen. Bam! It moves over to the side. Then, once you quit Flash, Final Cut or what ever, just shift-click on that divider line and drag it back to the bottom!  That's an Apple for you!

If there’s one thing that can bring a document (or your system) to its knees, is when a font goes bad (bad font, very bad font) or I should say corrupt. Anyway, finding out which font fonts on your system that may be corrupt can be work. Here’s how to search for font corruption: Go to your Applications folder and open Font Book. In Font Book can either click directly on any font that you might think is bad, or Command-click on the fonts you want examin, then go under Font Book’s File menu and choose Validate Fonts.

This brings up a Font Validation window and if your fonts are well and working correctly, you’ll get a little round checkbox beside them. If any minor problems were found, you’ll get a yellow warning icon beside a font. If a font is corrupt, you’ll get a red round icon with an X in it, telling you not to use this font, that serious problems were found with that font. Click the checkbox beside that font, then click the Remove Checked button to remove this font from your system.

You may try after removing the corrupt font to reinstall the font onto your hard drive and into Font Book. Fonts we all love them, use them and hate them when there are issues.

 

Thats right, you have the ability to print a document right from your desktop from a saved file. Go under the Apple menu, under System Preferences, and choose Print & Fax. When the preference pane appears, choose the printer from the side menu and drag to your desktop.