Back in early 2011, I was looking for the perfect recipe app so I reviewed three applications, MacGourmet, SousChef & Yum. Long time has passed and sadly, Yum development has stopped. Our pick from the three Recipe Apps was MacGourmet, and it’s still on heavy development! They released the third version of their application, as well as a new iPhone companion app. With a sweet new icon for both and the familiar interface it’s a win! You can follow them on Twitter @MacGourmet and Join their page on Facebook.

I was so happy when I found out this app and started using it on it’s second version, so when I read about the upgrade, I was so excited! The designer in me always thought they could have done better with their icon and they did on both sides: Desktop and Mobile. What I absolutely loved about the previous version was the ability to sync wirelessly! This version besides having the option to do it wireless, you can also sync through iTunes, so every time you sync your device it syncs your recipes. Talk about convenience!  Here you can read the highlights for our favorite recipe app:

Plan Your Meals: Use the weekly planner to plan meals and make menus with an optional plug-in, letting you create weekly planners, Create shopping lists for all the recipes of the week (just one trip to the grocery store!), you can send your meal plans to iCal so you can organize your busy week, You can create menus and print them along with a schedule for the week.

Smart Lists: This is by far one of my favorite features. Create lists that automatically keep themselves updated when you make changes. It’s as simple as adding keywords to your recipes when you add them and let MacGourmet do the hard work for you. Or maybe keep track of the recipes you’ve already prepared and the ones you still haven’t tried- everything works so you don’t make the same meals over and over again!

Free Recipe Packs: Download one of the many easy-to-import recipe collections available here. Also check out their MacGourmet Recipe Swap Forum so you can share your cooking love with others and exchange recipes. you can find more than recipes, there are tips, tricks, talks about kitchen gear. There are so many recipes to swap your head will spin!

Looking to Import from other Mac Apps?  Import from Cookn’Text, MacGourmet Binary and Text, MasterCook, MasterCook MX2, MasterCook Mac, Meal-Master, RecipeML and Yum XML. You can also check the Competitive Upgrades Page, so if you already own another Mac recipe app and are thinking about switching, just download the importer for the product you use, import your information into MacGourmet and give it a try. MacGourmet really makes it easy for you to switch!

Read your Recipes from a Kitchen-safe Distance: View your recipes in an extra large format, perfect for your kitchen while you cook. You don’t want your mac next to the oven or the stove now, do you? You can place your mac nearby and with the extra-large sized Chef View it’s easy enough for you to read your recipes from a safe distance for your Mac. And a little plus, you can use your Apple Remote to select ingredients, directions, turn on speech recognition and talk to your Mac, and have MacGourmet’s chef view speak the text of the selected ingredient or direction. MacGourmet is the kitchen helper you never had!

Import Recipes straight from the web: MacGourmet was the first application that gave us users the option to import directly from the web. They have over 40 sites compatible with MacGourmet and have more on the way! What you need to do is when you are on the recipe that you like, select the link on your browser and then either go to Safari>Services>MacGourmet>Import Recipe from WebPage or hit Shift-Command-O and voilá the app does the job for you. YAY! No more transcribing recipes… just make sure to add keywords so the recipes come up as you search for them. Here’s a list of the most popular sites that have compatibility:

• Fine Cooking
• Martha Stewart
• Bon Appétit
• Food52
• Food Network (as well as the Canada and UK sister sites)
• CookStr
• Epicurious
• All Recipes
• Food & Wine
• You can read the rest of the list here (too long to add!)

Sync With iPhone & iPad: Take your Recipes, Notes & Lists on the go:

• MacGourmet touch for iPhone: The companion app to MacGourmet for Mac, lets you take your recipes, shopping lists and notes with you by syncing your iPhone or iPod touch with your copy of MacGourmet or MacGourmet Deluxe. It’s MacGourmet in your pocket! Buy MacGourmet touch for iPhone and iPod at the App Store for $2.99! (regular price $4.99)
• MacGourmet touch for iPad: Lets you take your recipes and notes into the kitchen. The step-step-step directions of the included chef view make cooking easy. It’s MacGourmet in your hands! Buy MacGourmet touch for iPad at the App Store for $4.99 (regular price $9.99)

Requirements for both: iOS 4+, Mac OS X 10.5+, MacGourmet 3+

Requirements for MacGourmet 3.1: Mac OS X 10.5+, MobileMe account for online  publishing.

MacGourmet can be purchased for only $29 from the online store or the MacApp Store

*This article was pubblished first on The Foodies’ Kitchen, my cooking blog.

I’m a big fan of Code Line Software. I’ve been using their stuff since 2006 when my PowerBook came with Art Director’s Toolkit pre installed. Years have passed and so has our way to interact with hardware. Even though we still do most of our work on Desktops or Laptops, now we find ourselves doing work on the go. For me, this happens more often these days. I remember back in 2009, when I had to go to Mexico for work, my mac broke down. It was so bad, my favorite Apple dealer in Guatemala gave me an iBook so I could work for a couple of days while they got mine back into life. In between times, I was checking files on my iPhone… except that I couldn’t see my InDesign or Illustrator documents! Time has passed and Code Line came out with this beautifully designed and handy app.

This app doesn’t work like you would guess: syncing documents from iTunes or wirelessly. This is not that type of app. This is a file helper! For me, one of my must-have tools when on-the-go is DropBox. What SneakPeek does is it opens the file as you would preview for Documents or Spreadsheets.You can click each picture to see the bigger screenshot on Flickr. When you get a screen that says “Unable to open file”, click on the lower right corner of your screen and choose SneakPeek as the app to open it with. This will launch SneakPeek and open your file. This is where the fun begins!

Now, you can see the art work (multiple pages on Illustrator too!) From an Illustrator file, you can check the swatches and fonts used.

From an InDesign file you can get the same information, along with linked images – and another plus is that you can go with Horizontal Orientation on the iPhone to get more screen space.

You also have the choice to delete the file from SneakPeek or Archive it for future reference. SneakPeek renders previews of graphics files stored on your device, so the best way to get the most out of this app is to have higher resolution Previews. You can see how this is done on their own blog here. This is definitely one of those apps that you need on your iPhone as a serious designer: It allows you to quickly view your files on the go!

The app requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad running iOS 4.2 or later. It is available on the iTunes App Store for $9.99.

I am a huge fan of having my billing info on the go and that’s why after trying different apps, I decided to stick with Marketcircle’s Billings 3. All works good, even after I got my iPhone stolen last year, I was able to sync back my information without a hitch to Billings Touch.

Billings 3 on the Mac lets me do quoting (and keep a better track of it, instead of using Pages and Numbers!), Time & Expense Tracking and Invoicing. I can make my own design for Statements and Invoices(they have a very nice explanation for the Anatomy of an Invoice). Send it all from within the App. And the most important thing for me: Multi-Currency Support! I have clients in Guatemala, El Salvador… You know the drill. I need to be able to send my invoices as I need to.

An additional feature for Billings Touch is that you can track Mileage/Gas. It would be much better if they could literally track it with the GPS function from the iPhone, but that’s on my wish list for the next version. You can even receive payments with Billings Touch, thanks to it’s integration with Credit Card Terminal. This morning, after updating statements for clients, I went to sync… Nothing happened. Second try, Billings Crashed. After looking into this thread at the MarketCircle Forums, I was a bit lost but decided to uninstall the app from the iPhone and download it back again.

Hope this helps you and saves you time!

Billings:

Requires OS X 10.5.8, Version 3.7 $39.99

Billings Touch:

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later. Free to download. To be able to sync, you need to get the In-store purchase $14.99

Font Management is essential for any designer who uses more than just a handful of fonts. As many designers know, if you keep all the fonts activated at the same time, it uses more system resources, making any mac and its applications run slow. Font Management allows to activate fonts for the time that you actually need them. We get fonts from all the place: Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Quark – just to mention the fonts that get installed with the applications that we use every day. To this, you need to add the fonts you purchase and use for client projects. With a good Font Management system, you can find, sort, preview, activate/deactivate fonts as you go. If I hadn’t look more into Font Management, I would be lost!

After this tweet from @curtismchale (and going back and forth a few times) I decided to right this article about Font Management. I started really looking into Font Management a few years ago, just before heading to the InDesign Conference in Miami back in 2008. I was using Font Book from OS X since it became available, but the Adobe and Macromedia apps integration was flawed and not very efficient. Font Book would  ask for missing fonts in documents, but wouldn’t “call” them for activation. This would take time specially if I was working on several projects at once. At the conference, I got the hint about (then free version) Linotype FontExplorer X. I immediately fell in love with the application, and let’s face it, there were not any functional, affordable or pretty Font Management applications for OS X. I could create collections, sets and manage them all from FontExplorer and not worry about how the fonts would be called from the apps. After a while, FontExplorer X went from free to paid, so I went back for a while to Font Book. I couldn’t get used to the downgrade so I started a quest to find a cheaper replacement to cover all my needs.

I tested just two applications: FontCase and FontExplorer X Pro. There are two other solid and good applications that I’ve tried before but didn’t test back then. My reasons where that both FontAgent Pro and Suitcase Fusion had the same features as FontExplorer and since they cost the same, I already felt comfortable enough with what I knew. Researching for this article, I found a couple of nifty features from Suitcase Fusion that I would love to see ported to FontExplorer X: Find Similar Fonts by selecting any font in your collection, Suitcase Fusion does a glyph-level comparison of all fonts in your collection to locate similar fonts. And Web Page Previews, to test/preview fonts on sites before purchasing. Now, moving on to my comments from each of the two tested apps.

Fontcase

Developed by Bohemian Coding, Fontcase is a slick, pretty looking, functional and intuitive Font Management. However, I found that with a overly large and extensive font collection it will become slugish. It is indeed the iTunes for Font Management. It displays a preview of your activated and deactivated fonts, like iTunes would do with a cover. You can Tag fonts, group them in collections, smart folders and sort them by languages. When an applications needs a font that’s inactive, FontCase can activate it for you, keeping track which fonts were auto-activated and it will deactivate those when you quit Fontcase. There’s an option (for InDesign only though) to deactivate those fonts when closing documents. You can compare fonts not only with sample text, but complete paragraphs. Also, you can share (via Bonjour) your font collection to other macs in your household or office, making it easier to work as a team. But this is not just plain sharing, it’s preview and download fonts from shared libraries. you don’t need a server since it’s already built in. You can password protect it, share just select collections, control if you allow font downloads from others and look for shared libraries (as you would in iTunes).  You can also look for duplicate fonts and make beautiful print outs of your fonts (previews and metadata). One thing that it does not have though, it’s a built in font store. Some other functions like Maintenance, are run through plug-ins (available at the plug-in page) made from both Bohemian Coding and other font case users. This application has much room to grow, and for the amateur font user or a designer that doesn’t require many specifics on Font Management, this is their winning choice.

OS X 10.5 and greater are supported.

Pricing:

• Single user – $53 (Can be used by on e person on up to 5 Macs)
• Family pack – $87 (Can be used for up to 5 Macs or family members)
• Business pack – $251 (For up to 15 Macs or 15 people within the same company)

FontExplorer X Pro

Linotype (Europe and rest of the world) and Monotype Imaging (US) got together and gave life to FontExplorer X. When I launched it the first time after using Fontcase for a month, I felt right back at home. I had been using the free version for nearly two years, and became more than used to it, so yes, I was home. Not only this is serious Font Management, but you can use  folders, tags and smart sets to make it your own back yard. And like it says on the site, the software is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible – and I love it. Keeping up with the game, this app has also Print functionality, making it easy to print a detailed sample of the typefaces through templates (preformatted and customizable through drag and drop). One of my favorite features from the app is Auto-activation for InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop (also available QuarkXPress).  You also get control of how Font Explorer reacts when certain applications start up. For example, I can make a set to get active every time I start up Illustrator or InDesign. You have smart sets already created (under the Library Menu) that can help you on your every day design and management: System Fonts, System Collections (from Font Book), Last Imported and Conflicts. You can choose how to address those conflicts and get them out of the way, from duplicates, to fonts no longer in the Finder or Fonts with missing printer-font files. You also have an Activation Control center, that allows you to see all the application sets (mentioned before) as well as Font requests and Activations (Fonts activated Permanently, until quit or Log out). They also have a built in store that can keep track of your purchase history, favorites and a shopping cart. For font usability, you don’t have big paragraphs like in Fontcase, but you get an extensive selection of Preview Samples that you can change at will and customize on the go for a quick preview of single words or phrases. With careful importing handling and exporting options, you get a robust set of features from this app: for example, when importing a duplicate, FontExplorer asks if you want to keep the current font or the new one. And yoou can keep the Finder folder structure of your fonts. Me? I let the app make sense of them under it’s own folder. You can monitor fonts for incompatibility, duplicates and major activating, deactivating and exporting fonts. What would a mac app would be without backups? You can backup your configuration (and load if porting from another mac) and you can also backup your entire library. This backup includes the fonts, folder and smart set structures, labels, ratings and preferences. Another nice feature is that you can Clean and Organize your Fonts folder (and review those orphan fonts that always sneak around), Clean both System and Application Font Caches.

Supported Systems OS X  10.4.x, 10.5.x and 10.6.x

Pricing:

• FontExplorer X Pro, a $79 standalone font manager;
• FontExplorer X Server, which uses FontExplorer X Pro as a front-end client. For pricing, you must contact them.

Final Choice

My personal choice was FontExplorer. All around, this is the go-to app if you want to get into serious Font Management. It gave me all the tools I needed, peace of mind and amazing performance. I’m currently using it with CS4 and they plugins are already updated to CS5.

Final advice: Test run them all. You’ll know after a couple of weeks if it’s the right app for you. I did my research and figured that these two are what I wanted to try out. Don’t be afraid of test them all, just don’t do it at once– make sure to install and uninstall the apps as directed and always always backup your font collection before any trial version testing.

On a quick side note and bonus fact, @Vonster pointed out that @Hicksdesign created the Font Explorer brand icons. You can see more of the project here.

Such a fan girl! Yesterday I was glued to my iPhone watching the live cast of Steve’s keynote. I’m a big fan of the iPod Classic because it’s the only iPod big enough to hold my entire library- I was relieved when I didn’t see them kill it (though I know it’s on the last spin!). All the updates are nice (particularly curious about the iPod Nano Touch), but iTunes 10… now we’re talking.

iTunes 10

Yesterday, the download was a no-show, so the first thing I did this morning was turn on the mac and hit update. First impression… Nice. I didn’t had to restart the mac to launch the app. Now to the good stuff. I’ve been an iTunes user since it’s public beta days. I’ve seen the icon change. The icon is not the best- we know it.

One thing I am really proud of is that I have a pristine and very organized collection. I’ve been building it since iTunes beta! I’ve grown to love the interface changes Apple has made, but this showing the Album Artwork only if it has more than 5 songs (medium preview)/3 songs (small preview) is not growing on me. I loved to see the album artwork- even if it was for a single song. But, on the other side, I can say that iTunes is loading faster.

On iTunes 10, the default view is list, without any artwork. When you change to List with Cover flow, I get the list view, but the compilations are off. That’s why I had Album by Artist/Year chosen as my “Sort by” mode- mistake #1 from Apple. I want to see the covers, yes, but also I appreciate if iTunes would show the albums as they were released! I get a new “Plays” column that I couldn’t care much about it- and they take away the Year column. It does matter to me the year that the album was released. Like I mentioned before, I have a very organized collection and I am proud of it. So, Year- mistake #2.

The interface all around does not bother me. It’s gray and dull but the Album artwork and now playing window get enough color on it. For me, it’s better since it’s focusing on the content (making it the star) instead of the interface visual aspects. The app definitely runs faster. Oh, and other thing, I removed my Last.fm plugin/App from the mac. It was slowing it down terribly and syncing would take forever. I deleted my account too- what’s the use of Last.fm if I can’t use it for free in Guate? And I’d rather listen to my own collection anyway.

When placing the iPhone on the dock, you see much smaller tabs on the top. The capacity graphic on the bottom is much simpler (don’t know if I like it or not). The only big change is the Apps Tab. Now, the App list is sorted by default by Kind (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, then iPhone and iPod Touch only). This is an update focused on the content of the App, making the application work for you- Your media.

Ping

I still can’t say I like it or hate it. There’s not enough interaction yet. The sign up process is pretty smooth. You get to fill up a profile: Name, user picture, small bio, and you either let iTunes tell you what are your top 10 choices of you can choose them manually- I chose that second one.

You can choose all from artists/songs that are on the iTunes store- it would be better if you could choose from your own library. I have some nice tunes from artists that are not on iTunes- Steve, better work on that, it will make the conversation much better!

It seems that not all the user pictures are being processed just yet, I still have a pre-set user pic. I started following a few people and bands. Nothing big. Let’s see what the final verdict is going to be in a few months.

All around, I liked the update. Now let’s see how intuitive and useful it really is!

Did you know that there are some apps other than Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop- you did know that, right? It’s always good to know what your other options are, so here’s a review of two applications that can help you to do so!

One of the companies also dedicated to develop such programs  is Xara, who has been on the field since 1981. A little story about them: Xara, a company based in London and  their first Windows illustration software, Xara Studio, was licensed to Corel and distributed for many years as CorelXARA. Now back under Xara control this product has been enhanced and relaunched and is now sold in two versions, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro. Xara was  acquired by Magix in 2007 and are one of the top competitors in the graphic  business in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Netherlands. Now, they’ve relaunched Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, and Xara Designer Pro.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6

Previously known as Xara Xtreme, it’s an all around complete application that offers both vector and pixel power under one hood. This is a bundle of new things wrapped together! With powerful image editing and photo tools and (very) flexible page layout features it’s a very intuitive program. Coming from the Adobe school, you can find yourself a bit lost, but after 30 minutes or so, you see that many of the tools offered on other applications, have found their match on Xara Photo & Graphic Designer.

Photo Editing:

With RAW support out of the box, you can give your pictures the retouch details that you want to without thinking too much. Smart cropping, resizing, and One-Click tools like Exposure, White Balance, Auto Color and Color Saturation you can get the job done in less time. Xara also offers Red Eye Removal and Image restoration tools. A very wide selection of tools to choose from when working your pictures. One of their New features is the Selective Optimization tool, that brings selection masks (cut out and edit areas flexibly while the rest of the image remains protected). They also bring to the photography editing playground the Intelligent Zoom, a tool not shy to compete against Photoshop’s Content-Aware Scaling. They also offer selective content fill, making it a contender to Content-Aware Fill in it’s early days. The last improvement that brings out amazing results is the Panorama Montages, taking your pictures and turning them into a Panorama worth framing!

Graphic Design:

This is were you see a merge of a layout and a vector app. Xara  Photo & Graphic Designer 6 brings so much to the table. They offer vector tools, from importing files such as PDF, EPS, AI, CDR, DRW (though the Illustrator file imports go up to CS2), it’s a relief to have an application that can handle multiple file formats! With powered Text tools, you can create impressive layouts for  the real world in little time. You can easily import your creations to PDF or EPS,  with CMYK color support for optimal printing. The offer the Magix Print & Online service (powered by MPix) that offers really good pricing, take this Calendar for example, 3.5 x 2.5″ for Under $2.00

Extra Bits:

One of the best new features is the ability to use your tablet with Xara Apps! Now you can get the power of the tablet and touch sensitive graphics to create stunning results. But not give Xara a rest yet, this app also can make powerful interactive presentations that will get some Oohs and Aahs from your audience. They even offer 500 MB free online storage for your presentations,  and give you a unique web address for your presentations. Another sweet bit, is that you can upload your pictures directly to Flickr and a big win on my book is the Automatic backup and restoring for opened documents, all are saved automatically and restored when the program is restarted! The best thing, the price! It’s a full on application for $89.99. You can find more information on Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 site and look for all the videos and tutorials!

System Specs & Minimum configuration:

• Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• PC with Intel® Pentium® or AMD® Athlon® 700 MHz or higher
• 256 MB RAM, 150 MB disk space for program files
• CD-ROM or DVD drive, Microsoft® compatible mouse
• SVGA graphics card with min. 32 MB RAM (min. resolution 1024 x 600, 16-bit high-color)
• Integrated online services and video tutorials require an Internet connection and up-to-date web browser

Xara Designer Pro 6

This application comes up with a full new ​look, both on the user interface and the icons. One other nice add to the user interface are the fly-out tools and buttons, to offer time saving shortcuts.

Design, Drawing & Text:

​Many features are making this a major overhaul to the application, but a few worth mentioning are the line/arrowhead tool, which provides a really simple way to draw single-segment straight lines and a new way to control the arrow head and tail on any line. The New Sketch Mode button on the Info bar of the Freehand tool removes the automatic line joining feature, so that you can rapidly draw lines without worrying about them being automatically attached, great for sketching. Also on these lines, is the support for pressure sensitive tablets, which is more accurate and responsive. This also works as solid real-time variable-width rendering as you draw with a pressure pen on a tablet. The other big enhancement has been the addition of bullets, numbered lists and indents, along a Find and Replace function that can search for text on a single text flow, page or all pages of the document.

Photo Editing:

Content Aware Scaling/Zoom and ​the Clone area tool have found their way from Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, adding special and precise functionality to the application when handling a much more demanding picture editing job. The addition of the EXIF viewer, semi transparent and configurable, brings the embedded EXIF values of a JPEG photo. My favorite tool on the Photo section of Designer Pro (as a Photographer) has to be the Curve over the Levels Dialog, which gives me spot on detail and a much stronger control of the brightness levels of the pictures. This app also has an Auto-downsizing of imported photos and JPEG Optimization tools. All around, the updates have been good.

Web:

For the web section of Designer Pro, you have an enhanced NavBar handling and DHTML support, being able to drag around the bar as a floating object around the page for placement. You can make all the buttons look the same with a few clicks. With the Drag and Drop function for themes, you can change the color scheme of a site in a breeze, and also, why not add some of the popular Media Widgets like Picasa or YouTube, or maybe a shopping cart or Maps. Another big plus is that you can save the FTP Details of your server within Xara, saving time if you have several websites and projects!

Extra Bits:

As well as with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, there are some extra bits of sweetness into the app, such as an optimized photo dialog, the Panorama tool, PDF export and import improvements, and RAW support. Xara offers too 500 MB free online storage for your sites, as part of Magix-Online world. You can get the application for $299. This is a much more robust and complete application comparing it to Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 6, adding Web authoring and a much wider selection of design tools to help you on your design, along Pantone color books. You can find the complete details and lists of improvements in this version on their site.

System Specs & Minimum configuration:

• Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7
• 256MB of RAM
• 200MB of available hard-disk space

Good morning! It’s Friday, it’s nice outside and surprise surprise, there’s a new update for a very cool iPhone app: Photoshop! It was called Photoshop Mobile, now it’s Photoshop Express. In it’s version 1.3, this is an upgrade that offers initial iPad support, bug fixes and performance improvements.

The big improvements are made on the iPad side:

• Support for portrait and landscape orientations
• Redesigned Online, Edit, and Upload workflows
• Work on multiple photos in sequence from within a single workflow
• Redesigned Organizer view with simplified album sharing
• Updated icons and visuals that make it easier to navigate and use the Editor
• Upload to Photoshop.com and Facebook simultaneously

The iPad users get the sweetest part of the deal on this update… Is this a sign that I have to buy an iPad? You tell me!

You can find this update by clicking here (iTunes link)

I love to take pictures, but also I love to cook. My recipe collection is growing so fast, I find that having Pages documents and folders is not enough, specially when scaling recipes- down for an every day dinner or scaling them up when we have more people over. So, looking around online I found three applications: MacGourmet, SousChef and Yum. I’ll compare the use of the three applications with the same 3 recipes.

MacGourmet

The first application that I used was MacGourmet. With this application, I had to manually enter the recipe ingredients, but just did a copy/paste with the directions. Interface is nice and clean, comes with with three panes: the first one, holds the recipes, notes, shopping lists, and wine notes (the only application that , along with clippings- this last one contains recipe text grabbed using Text Clipping), Featured (recipes from MacGourmet online and Kitchenware/Cookbooks from Amazon), Find results and all of the Collection and Smart Collection to sort your recipes. The second pane, lists the recipes, and the third one is the recipe itself. you can customize the Display template. If you don’t like any of the pre installed viewing styles, you can download more online. MacGourmet can also help you publish with ease your recipes to a site or to an eBook. This application, is like iTunes for your recipes. You can also browse the entire library on a small inspector window, like the Media inspector that you can find in Mail.app or any of the iWork apps. I have a MacBook Pro, and being able to hook it up to an external screen has been helpful: Now more with the Chef View. I just turn the 19″ screen to face the kitchen and I can place on the second screen the Chef view: Big font, no pictures. A feature that I really find useful is the scaling feature. You can find it while editing the recipe, under ingredients (Change recipe to x servings- make sure you click the Scale button and Save afterwards to see the scaled recipe). I wish the scaling of the recipe was more handy, or with a shortcut, and not let me change the original recipe, just display it on the “Chef’s view” window. I’d rather not change the original. What I’ve done so far is scale it up or down, and when I’m done, change it back to it’s original servings… But saving me that step would be nice. MacGourmet also offers an iPhone app: you have Recipes, Wines, Notes, Shopping and a Sync Button. You sync your iPhone and your mac over a Wi-Fi Network, like most apps do (Things, Documents ToGo or Air Sharing). This comes handy when going grocery shopping and having your recipe book in handy when away from the mac. You can purchase additional plug-ins to enhance your experience: Mealplan (to add meal planning and menus), Cookbook (PDF cookbook creation) and MacGourmet (nutritional analysis). MacGourmet is $24.95 and it’s iPhone app is $4.99. Each plugin can be purchased for $11.95 or you can buy a bundle of the three for $29.95. All around I think it’s a good pair to have to sort out your recipes.

SousChef

Second in line, is SousChef. This application is easy to the eye also. To start, I imported the three recipes I had already on MacGourmet. This is very easy, you can go to File>Import>MacGourmet Database. Everything transferred correctly, even the keywords so you’re all set. The interface also comes with a three pane view. The first one is the Source Pane, which lets you see the Recipe Library, Search Results, Recent Imports, Recently Cooked smart collections and Grocery Lists). Then it’s followed by the other two panes, the Recipe List and Recipe itself. Underneath the recipe you’ll find five buttons: Edit, Print, Mail, Blog and Cook Mode. This last one, gives you a similar option like MacGourmet with the Chef’s View. Here, you can choose to not only see the recipe but hear it. There’s a command to make your mac talk to you! When you get into Cook Mode, you get prompted with a window asking to calibrate the Text to Speech settings on System Preferences- it even opens up the settings for you. When you close that window, you’re back to SousChef and you can listen to your recipe. The view settings for Cook Mode, is described also as a ten foot mode so you can place your computer somewhere safe but still read your recipes from across the room. SousChef also talks Blogger so you can blog about it with ease. This app has what MacGourmet lacks, a shortcut so you can scale recipes (Command – Y). this also modifies the entire recipe, not just the quick view mode of it. I’d rather not modify the original! But all extra points go to SousChef for making it easy to get to it. Another nifty feature here is the Substitute ingredients on the fly. If you check under the Preferences, you can see that there are already some substitutions, but you can add your own. SousChef doesn’t have an iPhone app, but apparently there’s  one on the works. No release dates yet though. You can buy SousChef for $30, but if you’re upgrading form a competing product you can upgrade for $20. That’s a good deal! I believe SousChef has features that will continue to grow into a more robust application and with the iPhone app that’s still in development, the future seems bright!

Yum

The last application to review from the three is Yum. I found about it the latest out of them all. Visually, it doesn’t strike me as much as the other two. But, don’t get me wrong. This application gives you plenty: From iPhone sync to Print on album cards and sharing. You can sync the recipes to your iPhone through a Wi-Fi Network connection. The iPhone version (free on the iTunes Store) lets you browse through your recipes and categories, along with the shopping lists. They also have Smart Paste to the ingredients list, which is useful when copy/pasting recipes from your old recipe book system (such as my Pages documents and folders) or from the web. First, importing the recipes was not that easy, but I exported the MacGourmet DataBase to a MasterCook Mac file and got that one to import easily to Yum. A little workaround, but not painful at all. As its contenders, it also offers Recipe Scaling. Yum is the only application that doesn’t completely modify the recipe. You do have to make some tweaking on the preferences (Under “When printing and viewing recipes” select “Scaled Amounts For All Recipes”). This simple tweak will allow you to view the scaled version but the original servings of the recipe still is the original one, you just have to remove the Scale to Serve option while editing the recipe. One thing that troubles me is that Yum doesn’t have a specific place to add a picture. You can add it under the directions of the recipe, but both MacGourmet and SousChef have a dedicated spot for the picture, so it doesn’t get on the way of the recipe. This app also offers an easy way of creating shopping lists for you to print and take on-the-go. One other thing that you can print, is your recipes for your old-school album card holder. You can choose to print them to 4″x6″ album cards as well as 3″x5″ index cards- useful when you can’t move your mac or don’t have it with you. One other way to share the recipes is by mail. Yum doesn’t offer blog integration, but the email sharing feature comes handy when trying to send the recipe to someone else. You can buy Yum for Mac for $26.00, and the iPhone application is free. It’s a developing app like SousChef, but this one has more room to grow.

My Pick

After serious consideration, I feel that MacGourmet is a good match for my needs. I was always leaning to it from the beginning, but SousChef also got my attention. The iPhone sync works like a charm and with your recipes and wine lists at hand, next to the shopping lists the app is a good pick to have on-the-go or even having it as your “in the kitchen” in case you can’t have your mac around when cooking. I hope this review helps to make up your mind about what Recipe app is best for you. My best advice, is test drive them all and find which is the one you feel most comfortable with.

Since 2006 that I got my (last generation) PowerBook G4. I remember it had Art Director’s Toolkit pre installed. Became a fan of Code Line Software right away. As my career as a designer grew, they grew in apps too… When I got the chance, I got to try the next set of apps, including Art Files (to archive and collect Illustrator files- much like the Packaging feature from InDesign). Then came SneakPeek Pro, with it’s unique ability to preview within Apple’s Quick Look several file types- without opening the actual application- including Illustrator, InDesign, EPS files, Freehand documents and Swatch Exchange (ASE) files. My latest purchase from them was Color Expert, an iPhone app that has a Color Wheel (to create color schemes) and Swatch list (that includes Pantone Solid Coated and Uncoated libraries, Pantone Goe Coated and Uncoated libraries, Web Safe colors and HTML Colors). Both sets can work to create color lists from a picture.

Today, Code Line releases SneakPeek Photo, a second Quick Look Plugin, but now aimed at photographers. This Plugin allows you, with a simple space bar to get detailed information.

On the top right side, you can see the type of file, size, f/stop and focal length, color profile and a tiny histogram:

Another sweet feature is that on the top left side, there’s a few buttons too. You can hover your mouse over them to get some info from the file: Exif data, camera settings, a Loupe View with high resolution zooms, and a large Histogram to see the blueprint of your shot. For those with cameras with Geotagging technology, the coordinates and a map of where the picture was taken. If you click on the icons once you get the information to stay on, to make it go away, click on it once again or change the info you want to see and move on to the next button:

Here are some more screenshots of the plugin in action:

EXIF data: Aperture, color space, Date, ESIF version, Exposure Bias Value, Mode and program to mention a few:

Large Histogram, picture resolution, Camera Model, Lens Model, Exposure program:

TIFF Information: Compression, Date and time that the picture was taken, Make and Model of the camera:

When you install SneakPeek Photo, you get a System Preferences panel and there are some pretty nice addons there too, like the ability to Badge RAW images on the Finder, Warnings about double clicks (to open the file), show the histogram and Enable Loupe view (the previews are processed 50% larger than regular, you can experience some processing time lag but the previews are better).

SneakPeek Photo sells for $10 dollars, with a 15 days trial version for you to try. You can also follow Code Line on Twitter.