Beginner

The latest PBS Off Book episode, dubbed Photoshop Has Changed the World, takes a look at several aspects of the impact of digital image editing on illustration, retouching and online popular culture. It's a brief but worthy effort, although there's more to all this than simply Photoshop. For example, one can agree with the claim that, "With the ability to alter any image in the media landscape, everyday people now have the means to critically comment on culture and spread their ideas virally, leveling the playing field between traditional media creators and consumers." But those "everyday people" are for the most part not creating wacky cat photos with a product that sells for $699.

MyScript Calculator recognizes your handwriting and performs mathematical calculations. It's really great to solve simple and complex equations. Perfect for kids to learn math. Use the scratch gesture to correct any item. And, use a '?' to substitute an item in your equation you want to find.

Best of all it's free in iTunes.

Manga-Camera is fun new app that allows you to create manga comics with your iPhone. See few pictures I snapped around the house for the effects you can create. You can share your photos on Facebook and Twitter or save them into your Photo library for later use. The app is free in the iTunes Store.

We all use pinch to zoom in and out of maps, but there is another way to zoom. To zoom in you can double tap the area you're interested in and to zoom out you can tap once with two fingers.

Here is a quick and simple trick to manage your e-mail better in iOS Mail.app. We all know that if we want to archive a message we can tap the box icon in the middle of the bottom row. But what if we want to delete a message instead of archiving it? Simple just tap and hold the same icon to bring up a menu which includes a red delete button as well.

Apple Maps is fast and beautiful, but it is not as up-to-date with points of interests as Google Maps and sometimes contains incorrect information too. However Apple is committed to get the maps better fast as Tim Cook expressed in his open letter on the subject.

Apple releases OS X 10.8.2 with new Facebook, Messages and FaceTime features. You can now not only Tweet right from your desktop but also post status updates to Facebook. See the images of how it looks like to share webpages from Safari, share a post from the sidebar notification window and post a picture from your desktop. Facebook integration also allows you to add your location and select the audience for your status updates. If you're posting an image you select the album too.

How is life treating you in the post-Flash era? Has your online experience become richer as a result? Are more things possible? Is the Web a more beautiful, inspiring, creative place to hang out? I ask myself these questions from time to time, usually when I stumble over one of the increasingly rare designers or developers who have created something worthy that's Flash based and doggedly maintain it. I had that experience recently when checking out the one2edit service, which makes it possible to review, edit and deliver InDesign documents online.

If you enjoy the sharing capabilities of Google Docs, but want to have a local copy of all the files try the newly released free service Insync.

Adapted from Photoshop Compositing Secrets (Peachpit Press)

By Matt Kloskowski