The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 9 out of 10]

• Developer: Stairways Software / [Product Page]
  
• Price: $20.00

This week's Pick of the Week is a revisit to a previous Pick of the Week. Back then, Keyboard Maestro was just an application switcher. In its new 2.0 incarnation, it's now an application switcher, a window switcher, a clipboard switcher, and (most interesting to me) a keyboard macro creation tool. The clipboard switcher lets you have any number of items on the clipboard, and you can then paste any specific clipboard with a simple keystroke. This is a great way to store often-used logos, signatures, etc. The application switcher has some very nice features, including the assignable hot keys, the ability to have the switcher window open under the mouse, and scalable icon sizes. For instance, here's my switcher panel:
There's also a separate window switcher which brings up a palette of open windows within any application -- this alone makes it worth the asking price for me! In Photoshop Elements, there's no simple way to switch between open images (unless I'm missing something obvious and yet well hidden!). You either have to click on a portion of the image or use the Window menu -- command-tilde won't even cycle between them. With KM 2.0, I just hit Control-Tab and pick the image I wish to work with from a floating palette.

Finally, the macro tool is quite well done. Macros are, by their very nature, complex to write. This makes it tricky to write an easy-to-use macro creation app. KM may not be perfect in this regard, but it's quite good. I was able to easily create some menu-activating macros that save me time each day. One of them selects Photoshop Elements 3's "New Image from Clipboard" menu item, which is buried in a sub-menu of File -> New. Now, regardless of which app I'm in, once I have a graphic on the clipboard, I just hit Shift-Command-Control-E (user assignable, of course), and the graphic appears in a new image in Elements. I've also set some macros up to set Artis' SmallScreen to various resolutions.

I've barely touched the surface of what KM can do; if you're interested in a good all-around utility to add to your tool set, give it a look.