Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Graphics in Mac OS X

Now you're talking! If you want to see dilated pupils and sweaty palms, just say "graphics" to any Mac OS X junkie.

Yes, Mac OS X has made graphics a huge deal, thanks to its sophisticated Quartz graphics-processing technology. Everywhere you look in Mac OS X, you'll find visual effects that would make any other operating system think about early retirement.

For example: Menus are transparent, and when you release them, they fade away instead of snapping off. You can set Excel 3-D graphs to be slightly transparent, so that they don't block other bars in a 3-D graph. When you paste files into windows in icon view, their icons fade into view. When you open an especially long message in Mail, its text fades in from white. When you open a widget in Dashboard, it splashes down with a pond-ripple effect. And when you switch accounts using Fast User Switching, your work environment slides off the screen as though it's pasted on the side of an animated cube.

UP TO SPEED: AppleScript and ColorSync

Using AppleScript, described in Chapter 7, you can harness ColorSync in elaborate ways. Just by dragging document icons onto AppleScript icons, for example, you can embed ColorSync profiles, modify the profiles already incorporated, remove profiles, review the profile information embedded in a graphic, and much more. Better yet, you don't even have to know AppleScript to perform these functions—just use the built-in AppleScripts that come with Mac OS X.

To find them, open the Library→ColorSync→Scripts ...