Software is the lifeblood of every computer. Without software, all you have is a bunch of silicon and metal that’s not good for much at all. Of course, most computers come with some software already installed, the operating system, and this can be good enough for some people who simply want to browse the Internet and read email. But for those who use their computers productively, software applications open up new worlds of functionality.

The Mac platform is rich with software. One can purchase, download, and install a wide range of software, from simple TextEdit replacements to the $1299 Final Cut Studio. The majority of the software produced is shareware or freeware, and here there are some real gems that can make anyone’s life a little easier. Today, I’d like to share some free applications that I find immensely useful. These applications in particular are useful for web and print designers, and should come in handy for anyone making a living pushing pixels or transforming type.

iPick

Another staple of design, and in many ways an even more important one, is color. Color has so many uses and applications in design that I’m not even going to attempt to describe them all; suffice it to say, designers need to choose the right colors for the right purposes. There are many ways to do this, from playing with hex codes in an HTML document to launching Photoshop and using its color picker, but isn’t there a better way?

Choose a main color
to generate a theme

Enter iPick (↓). iPick is little more than a glorified Apple system color picker, but therein lies its beauty. It offers two tabs full of color pickers, Color Picker and Theme Generator, and each color picker has a text box with the hex code for easy copying. Color Picker shows some common HTML attributes, like background, text and link colors, while Theme Generator attempts to create themes of related colors. This can be a handy way of quickly generating complementary colors to any given color; however, even without this feature, I like the Theme Generator tab because the primary color picker is so big. iPick lives up to its name and makes choosing the right color for the right situation dead simple.

Aquaruler

Finally, one of the last staples of design I’ll discuss today is layout, or more specifically, the distance between two points. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that without distance, there IS no such thing as design. Quality layouts are important for maintaining a consistent design across all of your project, whether you’re working on a magazine in InDesign or designing a corporate website. Getting the distance between two elements can sometimes be difficult; what’s the solution?

Drag the ruler’s endpoints
to measure exact distances
in pixels and inches

For this situation, you certainly need Aquaruler (↓). Aquaruler’s specialty lies in providing numerous screen overlays for you to measure the distance between two (or more) points. For example, you can enable a ruler overlay on your screen’s edges to provide the distance between two points in inches, given your screen’s DPI resolution. There are also floaters you can resize to give the exact dimensions of a box onscreen, or you can guesstimate it with a small box that follows the cursor and gives the coordinate of any pixel you hover over. Furthermore, you can combine multiple overlays in creative ways to achieve all your measuring needs.

Stay tuned next week for more cool Mac freebies!