Did you know you can select text from any image on your iOS or MacOS device? It’s as easy as double-clicking or touching the word and selecting copy. Check out the example below.
I remember in the 90s when OCR started to become a big trend, costing hundreds of dollars and taking several minutes to convert the scan to text.
RealityScan, a free 3D scanning app, developed in collaboration with Quixel, that turns your smartphone photos into high-fidelity 3D models—in the most accessible way possible.
Capturing real-world assets for digital experiences has traditionally been complicated, technical, and labor-intensive. Now in limited beta, RealityScan takes what people love about RealityCapture—fast and easy 3D scanning—and puts it into the hands of anyone with a smartphone, turning their cameras into an endless source of creativity.
Example of 3D Chair created from a smartphone camera
Learn More: https://www.capturingreality.com/introducing-realityscan
Presentify is a Mac App I discovered last month and I’m loving it. Presentify allows you to quickly annotate, highlight or spotlight your cursor. Whether you are creating a screencast, presenting in Teams, or just chatting over slack, Presentify provides a way to quickly highlight and communicate an idea without having to switch or juggle tools, apps, or settings.
Why is this important? Unlike Zoom which has the ability for everyone to annotate on a shared screen, Teams, Webex, and Slack Huddles do not have the ability. When walking thru a concept, sharing a story, or reviewing prototypes, Presentify allows you to quickly annotate in the context of the conversation and save time, making it easier to share an idea or communicate feedback.
After activating the app, you have a simple tool bar where you can quickly select 1 of 3 colors, which you can customize, select freehand tool, arrow, shapes, text or erase what’s on screen.
Hitting the / key allows you to display Shortcuts and see the current keyboard setting or you can customize the keys within your preferences.
Cost $5.99 – 1 time fee
Learn more: https://presentify.compzets.com
Using a Mac with the M1 chips is allow Apple to create and expand its features to make it easier for everyone to do more. A simple example, you can now right-click on any image, in the Finder, select Quick Actions and Remove Background. After a couple of seconds, the image will appear in its silhouetted format.
Growing up with Photoshop and learning how to create an alpha key, this just makes me smile because anyone can now isolate an object in seconds.
The COOLors site provides an easy way to explore, discover or pull palettes from a photo or image. It has a fun interface and allows you to test for certain types of accessibility. Watch the quick demo of how it works.
While creating a palette, you can also select View Shades which allows you to quickly view shades of a color and select or copy for use in your palette.
Need some inspiration and looking for a color palette, select Explore Trending Color Palettes.
Currently you can view from:
It’s free but a Pro license available which removes add and provides a easy way to save and access palettes for $36 per year.
Test drive: coolors.co
Great, free mac app allows you to quickly configure your menu bar, moving apps/icons you don’t need, and reduce the clutter on your menu bar. You can quickly access elements by clicking the icon. It just works and is optimized for M1 macs as well as intel.
Before:
After:
Got to hang out with Brent and Chris broadcast of Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee this morning to talk about the latest tech gadgets and apps to improve creativity and productivity. You can watch the replay via CrowdCast.
We also let 100+ attendees jump into the Miro board to add their own tools, ideas, and grab links during the session.
Next Steps:
Over the past several weeks The Learning Guild has been alternating between their Friday 2 pm Twitter Chat and a Zoom based event where a guest explains, dives deeper and answers chat questions on topics that were presented during online events this year. I was a guest and this is a summary of several of the topics we covered and wanted to provide a summary along with links. A video will be shared on YouTube later this month so keep an eye out if you missed the session today.
We covered a range of topics, ideas, tools, and resources so watch the video for everything. Download a PDF summary.
Growing up in a household of a teaching sparked a interest to always ask why, how, can I do it? So always be thinking about and breaking down what you do, why, how it works and what can you apply to your next learning experience? Tools that I use to keep up to date:
We got a question about using Snagit and Camtasia for creating, capturing, and building media. We use Snagit just about every day and Camtasia as needed, one thing I wanted to make sure you check out is their community support, blog, education (for registered users) via TechSmith Academy and resources. Make sure to follow Matt Pierce @piercemr on Twitter.
During the last part of the session, we invited 30+ attendees to experiment and add their thoughts around what they learned, what they wanted to share, and access to the resources. You can view the board and a gif below which shows the magic of 30+ people adding what they learned.
Download a PDF export of the board.
Check out the SpeakerChat Series on YouTube which features Mike Taylor, Sarah Mercier, Richard Goring and Carla Torgerson in the first series.
Please reach out to twitter.com/learningguild or @learningguild on Twitter to share your thoughts if they should continue the series. I VOTE YES and would love to see more interactions to continue and dive deeper into the latest community challenges, sharing ideas, and looking at how we can continue to grow.
Miro is one of those tools that gets me so excited about the possibilities and how it can help teams get stuff done because it works transparently, for the most part, and allows you to create, brainstorm, gather feedback or quickly collaborate on the next steps. The tool works via your browser or you can download an app for your desktop or mobile device. If you have an Apple Pencil, Surface Pen, or similar you can draw, annotate more naturally on screengrabs, elements, or just write some notes.
In the past 90 days Miro has launched several new features:
How I Use Miro:
This week launched a new MIROVERSE where you can share your templates with the community so that they can learn, get new ideas and personalize for your team.
Why are you still reading this? Jump over to Miro.com, sign up for a free account, and start to plan your team’s next collaboration session.
View & Download the deck from the presentation on Thursday, Feb 7, 2019.
Are you looking for amazing ways to use your mobile device to create content? In this session, you will learn how to use your phone or tablet to brainstorm, sketch, take notes, collaborate, create audio- and video-based media, and animate using several mind-blowing apps. You’ll leave the session feeling inspired and have the practical information to apply one or more apps when you get back on the job.
– Explore several apps to enhance creativity on your mobile device.
– Discover several free and inexpensive apps to improve brainstorming, productivity, and collaboration.
– Apply these apps immediately on your next project.
Whether you are experimenting with an idea, developing a new interactive experience you can now utilize Google’s Poly in your app or while using TiltBrush to pull together an idea quickly, storyboard a concept or just play around. Learn more at Google’s developer site or watch the quick video for a quick overview of how developers are using it.
We moved to Zoom last month and loving it. I work with several teams every day brainstorming, reviewing, and focusing on creating new experiences for our audiences. We had been a Webex house for several years and during a recent visit to San Francisco last month saw a billboard with Zoom.US on it and decided to check it out. Wow, it is powerful, what I love in the first couple weeks:
Great overview and quick tips to take advantage of iOS 11 screenshot and markup feature.
Source: Taking screenshots in iOS 11: hands-on with 10+ handy tips [Video] | 9to5Mac
Figma keeps everyone on the same page. Focus on the work instead of fighting your tools.
VR has quite a bit to offer creative types in terms of building worlds and images that would be impossible otherwise. Oculus Story Studio is is giving away Quill, based on a 1 day internal hackathon event.
Source: Oculus is giving away its mesmerizing VR painting tool, Quill | TechCrunch