Macworld If you’re a professional photographer or designer you need editing software that provides precision and control over your images, as well as support for editing RAW files and multi-layer editing tools. The popularity of selfies and smartphone photography in recent years has given rise to dozens of affordable photo-editing programs aimed at amateur photographers. While these free (or low cost) apps are great for people who simply want to smarten up their selfies or holiday snaps, they may not offer the features pro photographers need to edit photos. If you want to edit your photos like a pro – or you are a pro photographer, designer, web developer, graphic artist or other creative professional, then you may wish to…

Macworld PDFs can be a pain. As they were initially designed to be forms that were printed out and filled in by pen, they can feel somewhat anacronistic in the modern digital age. But, it’s not as hard to complete forms or annotate documents in this format, and you don’t even need expensive software to do it. Here we look at a collection of PDF apps that are either completely free, or have a free trial version with a lot of the necessary functionality for a one-off PDF editing requirement. Some of these apps do certain things better than others, so the best PDF editor for you will depend on what your particular needs. For example, if you want a…

Macworld Portable power banks that charge your phone are popular, but wireless battery packs using Apple’s MagSafe technology offer a simpler and smarter cable-free solution for iPhone 12, 13 and 14 users. Phone batteries are prone to run dry just when you’re heading away from a power source, so having a portable charging source is one of today’s necessities. Annoyingly, most power banks require you to carry around a cable, too. Wireless power banks do away with cables but come with their own major limitation–the inefficiency of wireless charging means you need a high-capacity power bank to fully charge a drained iPhone. I use one as a quick bedside iPhone charger so I can charge and use the phone at…

Macworld It’s never been easy to upgrade the storage in Macs, so it’s always a good idea to buy an external drive to provide extra storage for all your work files, photos, videos, and games. And, of course, you should always have an external drive available for making Time Machine backups in case anything ever goes wrong. Modern solid-state drives (SSD) are the best option as they’re really fast, reliable, and compact. However, SSDs are still relatively expensive, with 1TB drives costing around $100/£150, whereas that same amount of money can get you a 4TB basic desktop hard drive with a USB interface (drives with high-speed Thunderbolt ports tend to be more expensive) Hard drives are slower than SSDs, but…

Macworld Macs may be a far less tempting target for malware and viruses, but they’re not immune from attack. Even if you don’t care about adware or being used as means to infect users on other platforms, it’s still possible to fall victim to ransomware, or password theft. Accordingly, good antivirus for Mac software will protect your Mac on all of these fronts. It’ll catch malware that’s still spreading or in circulation; block ransomware; protect older systems with out-of-date software from security vulnerabilities; prevent your Mac from acting as a carrier for malware aimed at other operating systems; and keep infected files off of any virtual machines you’re running. As to the question of which Mac antivirus software you should choose,…

Macworld In recent times, with many of us working at least part of the time from home, it has become more necessary to have access to a printer in our homes. There are so many different types of printers available and it’s important to make the right choice and buy one that suits your needs–and doesn’t end up costing a fortune in inks. In this article we round up the best printers available for Mac owners, as well as for those who want to print from an iPhone or iPad. Which printer to buy: Inkjet or laser? Laser printers are relatively expensive, primarily aimed at business users who need a high-performance device that can cope with the workload in a…