August 15, 2004
Universal Access, Core Image and remixing the desktop
Built into Mac OS X are some nifty features for manipulating the on screen display of any content. While they are designed to assist people who have difficulty viewing the screen, they also let you 'remix' the visual output of your computer.
The Universal Access system preferences pane allows you to zoom in on a part of the screen, invert the image so that text becomes white on a black background and increase the contrast. The best things about these functions are that they don't seem to use too much additional CPU power, they are controllable via keyboard shortcuts and they are quite responsive. Any video or image may be effected as these apply to the entire display output. Invert a DVD video, increase the contrast of a Quicktime movie to the point that it looks posterised, zoom in on any image...
To increase contrast press: control+option+command+.
To decrease contrast press: control+option+command+,
To switch zoom on or off press: option+command+8
To zoom in press: option+command+=
To zoom out press: option+command+-
To switch to and from white on black (invert) press: control+option+command+8
Note: this also sets the screen to greyscale when called via keyboard shortcut, for best effects I recommend using the actual preference pane to switch to invert in colour.
These effects are very basic in comparison to those coming soon in Mac OS 10.4 - Tiger with Core Image. Using the graphics card to handle image processing at a lower level, this looks like it will produce some exciting effects in real time.
If you've got about an hour and a half check out Steve Jobs'WWDC 2004 keynote presentation, which shows a good demo of the new Core Image / Core Video features in action.
Posted by David Wolf at August 15, 2004 07:27 PM