Tag Archives: mac

Make your own Reduce File Size presets for PDF export

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Within Preview there is a filter that can be used to reduce the size of PDF files (think of PDF files that are 600 DPI high resolution).  Unfortunately it produces very poor quality images to the point of being unusable. Fortunately there is a way to create and install your own custom quartz filters for use in Preview that give large file size reductions while maintaining good quality.

After some googling, I found a perfect article that explains why the default Mac OS X Reduce File Size filter produces terrible quality images .. and how to fix that:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120629091437274

The filter, which is just a XML file, can be edited with any text or programming editor then saved to the  /System/Library/Filters  directory with a unique filename.  The Reduce File Size (Good) filter is what I use .. rather than posting as a code block and messing around with escaping the XML so the code displays correctly, the file is available for [download here].

Simply download the contents of this file, ensure it is renamed to a .qfilter file, then copy into the system filter directory (so it is available for all users). I chose to use /System/Library/Filters/Reduce File Size Good.qfilter. You may need to be a Mac OS X Administrator to write this file into the shared system library folder. At this point, in Preview you can use this filter to reduce large scanned PDF files by almost a magnitude of order.

Here is the text of the original post:

 
Make your own Reduce File Size presets for PDF export
Jul 05, ’12 07:30:00AM Contributed by: zpjet

I was never satisfied with results of “Reduce File Size” Quartz filter when trying to make some PDFs smaller before sending them by e-mail. It made them too small, and the graphics were fuzzy.

I eventually found where these filters are:

/System/Library/Filters

I was delighted to find out they’re XML files easily editable with TextEdit (or any other text editor). I also found why this particular filter makes quite unusable PDFs, as these parameters were just too low:

Compression Quality 0.0
ImageSizeMax 512

So I copied this file to my Desktop, and then made two more copies of it, and called them Reduce File Size Good, Better and Best. Then I changed the parameters of each file to 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 for Compression Quality, and used these three values for ImageSizeMax:

842 (that’s A4 at 72dpi)
1684 (A4 at 144dpi)
3508 (A4 at 300dpi)

Finally, I changed the default string for the Name key at the end of each file to reflect the three settings, so they display the names I have given them in the menu.

Then I copied them to a /Library/Filters folder I created (for some reason, ~/Library/Filters doesn’t work in Lion) and now when I open a picture or PDF in Preview, I have the option of four different qualities for reduced file sizes.

As an example, I have a JPEG of scanned A4 invoice at 300dpi and it’s 1.6MB. When exporting to PDF in reduced size, the file is only 27 KB and it’s quite unusable – very fuzzy and hard to read. The Good one is much easier to read, slightly fuzzy and still only 80 KB. Better is 420 KB and clear, and the Best is 600 KB and almost as good as the original even on a laser printer.

Apple Airport Utility 5.6 on Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

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Apple has been continuously dumbing down the AirPort Utility to the point where their default AirPort Utility (version 6.x) is virtually useless.  Settings such as syslog destination, NTP settings, etc can only be set with AirPort Utility 5.6 – problem is it cannot be loaded on Mountain Lion (10.8.4).  Discussion here at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4172563?start=15&tstart=0 shows how to install AirPort Utility 5.6.1 on ML without clobbering version 6.

In case Apple removes that thread (written by Douglas Urner), here it is:

Just in case you’d like to use AirPort Utility 5.6.1 on Mountain Lion (and probably Lion as well), here’s how to install it:

  1. Download the disk image (you can find it here:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1536).
  2. Mount the disk image and drag the install package (AirPortUtility.pkg) to your desktop.
  3. Fire up Terminal and prepare to show off…
  4. Make a temporary directory and cd into it: mkdir tmp ; cd tmp
  5. Extract the Payload file from the install package with xar, here’s the command: xar -x -f ~/Desktop/AirPortUtility.pkg Payload
  6. The result will be a directory named AirPortUtility.pkg (just like the file, but now you can move into it to get the files you want). Inside will be a file called Payload that is a compressed archive of AirPort Utility.app.
  7. So our next move is to extract the app. Here’s the command: gzcat AirPortUtility.pkg/Payload | tar -xf –
  8. When it finished there will be three new folders Applications, Library, and System. Your nice new copy of AirPort Utility 5.6.1 will be in the Utilities folder inside of the Applications folder. Use Finder to rename it (assuming you want to keep version 6 as well) then drag it to your Applications/Utilities folder.
  9. The other two folders hold the AirPort Base Station Agent and its supporting files. I’m not sure if you need/want these or not. As best I can figure the agent does two things: it checks for updates for AirPort Utility and it monitors AirPort base stations for problems. You probably already have a version running as it comes with the system and it seems to know how to talk to both versions of AirPort Utility (I got nagged about updating).
  10. The final step is to launch AirPort Utility and confirm that it works. You’ll probably want to go into preferences and turn off the option to check for updates. If all is good you can remove the temporary directory: cd .. ; rm -rf tmp (or drag it into the trash with Finder).

That pretty much does it. I hope it helps somebody out there.

Resetting user passwords in Mac OS X Leopard without Administrator

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For those odd times where you need to reset the password for a user on a Mac (OS X 10.5 Leopard) and you don’t have access to the / an administrator account, this is a procedure that will work if you have physical access to the system and can reboot it. No boot DVD is needed if you can boot the system off the internal hard disk.

We boot into single user mode off the internal hard disk, then reset the target user password.

  1. Boot into single user mode (press Command-S at power on)
  2. Check the root filesystem first
    fsck -fy
  3. Mount up the root filesystem
    mount -uw /
  4. Load system directory services
    launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
  5. Edit user information
    dscl . -passwd /Users/username password (replace username with the targeted user and password with the new password)
  6. Reboot then sign in with the new password.
    reboot

Apple Exemplifies Fine Software Engineering

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So I’ve been a recent Apple user for a mere eight years, when I purchased my first iBook  running the new OS X (10.1). I’m a fan of the form engineering that goes several steps beyond the basic function engineering that is so prevalent in consumer technology these days. For Apple, it’s not good enough that there’s windows, they have to look good too – like a master craftsman that puts finishing touches on the product rather than just slapping some cheap molding on and calling it done (or Windows).

This is too fine for words.

After working through successively newer notebooks (iBook, PowerBook, MacBook Pro), I have recently upgraded my first gen MacBook Pro to a new uni-body MBP. All the way through the online store (with the complication of being a grad student and navigating the education part of the online store), the process was pretty painless. But the real wow was when my new MBP showed up three weeks ago and I decided to use the Migrate function to just suck the contents of my old MBP to my shiny new uni-body MBP (thanks for the encouragement, Jonathan). I figured since I didn’t have the time or energy to setup another computer from scratch, I would try this migrate feature – with a heavy dose of battle earned skepticism. When I turned on the power on my new MBP, it seamlessly guided me through the setup .. and asked me if I wanted to migrate from an existing Mac or even a TimeMachine backup of a Mac.  I said yes, hooked the old and the new together .. fully expecting this to not end well and have to restart some install process.  Well a little while later, the migrate was done .. I restarted my new MBP (didn’t have to), and it looked exactly like my old MBP. All of my Applications were there. All my documents where there. iTunes was there. iPhoto was there. The positioning of the icons and documents on my desktop was exactly like my old MBP. Wow. A migrate function that actually worked.  Really. All the way.  Ok, well I did have to re-setup my home wireless connection .. for some reason that didn’t seem to come across, but with the totally customized settings I use, I’m not too surprised although it only added about 120 seconds onto my migrate time.

So at the time I’m writing this, Apple has announced the next generation of the MacBook Pro (the Intel i5 and i7 processors).  Since I’ve only had my shiny new uni-body MBP for a week, I call the folks at Apple and speak to a very pleasant customer service rep (send me an email or website message and I’ll forward his name), who not only cheerfully agrees to accept my new MBP back, but helps me order the new generation. They waived the return shipping and any refurbishment fees, as well as the express shipping for the new unit to me.  Gives me his direct line so if the Apple provided UPS return sticker expires before I get the old-new MBP migrated to the new-new MBP, I can call and get a new label. All this (and I ordered a new mouse) and they refunded a net of nearly $900 back to my credit card.

Well, I’ve just finished the migrate from the old-new MBP to my new-new MBP and again, it was seamless. I don’t think I’ll rebuild a new Mac from scratch any more – this is just too fine for words.  So I can get back to my Master’s thesis and life in general, and not worry about the software out there that is half baked or just barely good enough to get by .. with lots of manual care and feeding.

Thanks Steve and crew – this is why I’m an Apple shareholder.

Accessing Ubuntu desktop from Mac Snow Leopard

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Accessing my Ubuntu 9.04 Gnome desktop from the built in Mac OS X 10.6.2 VNC viewer took a bit of tweaking on the Ubuntu Gnome side. I have an OpenVPN SSL tunnel between the Mac and the Ubuntu desktop, however a SSH tunnel could also be used to protect the VNC session. In this post, I’ll just cover the VNC server setup assuming a secure connection between the Mac and the desktop.

Initially I followed the guidance at sanity, inc.”How to OS X Leopard Screen Sharing with Linux“, on Ubuntu I installed tightvnc:

apt-get install tightvncserver

Then tested it out by starting up the vnc server on the Ubuntu system as the user I want to run the remote session as:

tightvncserver -geometry 1024x700 -depth 24 :1

As tightvncserver starts up the VNC service, it will check for a .vncpasswd file in the user home directory. If it doesn’t exist, you will be prompted for a password to use to protect the remote session.  Note VNC is not designed to be used for multi-user remote access.
On the Mac, rather than use Bonjour to automatically discover the Ubuntu screen sharing service, I just referred to the VNC session directly within Finder which invokes the built in VNC viewer. Enter the VNC session password when prompted and the Ubuntu desktop is displayed. connect-to-server Within Finder, either use Go -> Connect to Server or Apple-K to bring up the Connect to Server window.  The server address is the URL that points to the Ubuntu VNC instance vnc://10.10.1.2:5901 where the port is 5900 + the display number specified when starting up the tightvncserver (5901).

This all worked fantastic, except for the keyboard mapping within Gnome – it was scrambled.  After googling several possible solutions, the only one that was successful for me was to disable the keyboard plugin in Gnome

Amit Gurdasani wrote on 2008-04-28: #51

I’ve also encountered this issue with TightVNC and the hardy release. My solution was to capture the xmodmap -pke output as ${HOME}/.Xmodmap at the login screen (DISPLAY=:0 XAUTHORITY=/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth sudo xmodmap -pke > ${HOME}/.Xmodmap). When gnome-settings-daemon starts up and finds an .Xmodmap, it asks if it should be loaded — I answer yes. As a side effect, if gnome-settings-daemon were to be restarted without the .Xmodmap, it’d scramble the keyboard layout again. With an .Xmodmap in place, it’ll load the .Xmodmap every time.

Due to another issue (#199245, gnome-settings-daemon crashing with BadWindow every time a window is mapped), I disabled the keyboard plugin using gconf-editor, at /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/keyboard. Since it’s not being loaded, I suspect it might not garble the layout even if I remove the .Xmodmap now.

So maybe disabling the keyboard plugin is a better fix.

On the Ubuntu system, invoke the Gnome configuration editor (gconf-editor on command line), then navigate to apps -> gnome_settings_daemon -> plugins -> keyboard uncheck the Active keyword.  Kill the VNC daemon and relaunch it – problem fixed.

pkill vnc
tightvncserver -geometry 1024x700 -depth 24 :1

Various methods exist to automatically start and kill the VNC server, but for now this will do it for me.

Mac OS X Command Line notes

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Encrypted Filesystems with Sparse Bundles
Mac OS X offers encrypted filesystems through sparse bundles.  To mount up a sparse bundle, given the password used to create the bundle, use the hdiutil:

hdiutil attach -verbose -readonly /path/to/sparse.bundle.directory

This will mount up the sparse bundle located at the directory path specified.  To unmount the sparse bundle, use:

hdiutil detach /Volume/sparse.bundle.name

Adding entries to /etc/hosts
Although simply editing /etc/hosts should work, there are times where the new entries may not be recognized, in these cases the OS X name cache daemon needs to be kicked:

dscacheutil -flushcache

Mac OS X Hostnames
Although you can change the hostname of your Mac OS X device through the System Control Panel -> Sharing, the following command line can lock the name so DHCP and other dynamic networking protocols don’t mess up your hostname (from RichardBronosky):

sudo hostname my-permanent-name

sudo scutil –set LocalHostName $(hostname)

sudo scutil –set HostName $(hostname)

Handy Command Lines
Command line short cuts:

pmset -g batt   Show battery status

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist; sleep 1; launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist Reload syslog daemon

SHA Hash on Mac OS X
Mac OS X doesn’t have sha256sum, but does have openssl, so the following can compute a SHA256 hash:

openssl dgst -sha256 Fedora-17-x86_64-DVD.iso

Synchronizing directories

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Fast way to synchronize the content of your iTunes libraries – this doesn’t sync the playlists or any iTunes meta information (and you may need to perform an Add to Library .. to import any new content). This was just a quick and dirty way to sync up my iTunes downloads with another iTunes library at home. This assumes that you’ve opened up the ability to Remote Login (ssh) to the target Mac (topic for another time).

rsync -av -e ssh "Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/" ahull@10.20.1.103:"/Users/ahull/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music"