Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial – Good for Genealogists

Snapheal 2.0 The Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial, a “Name Your Own Price” bundle, is one of the better deals for Mac-using genealogists, even if it doesn’t have any Mac OS X genealogy software in the bundle.

It ends on May 7th, and it comes with several applications, including software that would let you run Windows apps on your Mac (without needing to install Windows or run Boot Camp), an application that can remove unwanted objects from photos, as well as fix damaged photos (tears, scratches, etc.), data recovery software, and PDF/OCR software.

The apps I listed above are all very handy to a lot of genealogists, and can be had for under $10 (or more deepening on how much you feel it’s worth to you). If you paid full price for all of the apps, it would be over $800, and even the apps I singled out would cost $280.

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VueScan 9.4.29 Released

VueScan 9.4.29 ($39.95 Standard, $79.95 Professional), the popular cross-platform scanner software, was released a few days ago. Version 9.4.29 is mainly a fix for some scanners: – Fixed problems with some Brother document feeders, Epson A3 scanners, some Image Capture scanners running under OS X 10.9. – Added support for … Read more

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Available

Earlier today, Adobe officially made Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 available, both in the full and upgrade packages. Along the way they’ve reduced the pricing as well. Keep in mind that this is not like Adobe Photoshop, although it shares some of the same features and does work with Photoshop. Lightroom … Read more

Non-Genealogy Software Updates – Feb 23, 2012 Edition

Following in the footsteps of last week non-genealogy software updates (Feb 16, 2012 Edition), the following is a list of recent software updates that may be of interest to Mac-using genealogists.

VueScan Version 9.0.81 has been released.
VueScan is scanning software that supports a large number of scanners (and it’s what I use). Version 9.0.81 has fixes for Plustek, PIE, and Reflecta scanners, and addresses an issue with option changes and the scroll wheel.
More information: Hamrick.com (VueScan website).

ExactScan version 2.19.3
ExactScan is also scanning software, however it is focused on document scanning, including as an example, support for document scanners that handle 60 and 120 pages per minute. It supports over 200 document scanners (Avision, Kodak, Oki, Visioneer, Xerox, Canon, Fujitsu, and others, including many that do not have support for Mac OS X from the manufacturer.

There are two versions, both available through the App Store
ExactScan – ExactCODE
ExactScan Pro – ExactCODE

ExactScan Pro offers the ability to do Optical Character Recognition (OCR) directly to PDF (in a searchable format), “Imprinter” to print text into the scanned image, barcode recognition to file stacks by barcodes, and batch processing of existing image files.

WordPerfect Spotlight and Quick Look Plug-ins Version 3.6 (February 18, 2012)
This is a set of two plugins that do what they describe – they enabled Spotlight search and Quick Look thumbnails/previews for documents and graphics files created by any version of WordPerfect running on any operating system from WordPerfect 1.0 up through WordPerfect 11. They will even pass information such as the document format/WordPerfect version and whether a file is encrypted (password protected).

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OS X Mountain Lion – Improved Scanning and Printing

Last week, Apple released details of OS X Mountain Lion, notice they dropped the “Mac” from the title, that was probably deliberate. Most of us will still call it Mac OS X 10.8. Anyways, while I know I will be sticking with VueScan for my scanning needs, it looks like … Read more

Related Software Updates – Feb 16, 2012 Edition

This marks the start of a weekly series, not always on the same day, where I’m going to cover software updates that maybe of interest to Mac-using genealogists.

VueScan 9.0.80 was released today. It’s scanning software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and has been my preferred scanning software for several years. It handles a large amount of scanners and provides more features than most factory-default software that comes with your scanner. There is also an iOS version of VueScan (VueScan Mobile – Hamrick Software) that takes advantage of WiFi-enabled scanners to scan straight to your iOS device.
More information: Hamrick.com (VueScan website).

iPhoto Library Manager 3.7.3 was released yesterday, mainly covering bug fixes. iPhoto Library Manager is aptly named – it allows you to have multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having everything contained within one iPhoto library. It also supports copying photos from one iPhoto library to another. I use it to keep track of photos from different branches of my family (and my wife’s family) as well as separate personal/family photos (vacation, holiday, etc.) from older genealogy-related photos. It supports Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, and iPhoto 4.0.3 or higher. Handy for those using older Macs and older versions of iPhoto.
More information: Fat Cat Software

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