Zoom It-more options for viewing that tiny little text

In the previous article I discussed the options that Apple includes with OS X Mavericks (and earlier versions, too!) for zooming tiny little text. Now in this article I’ll discuss a paid option for zooming text. It’s called Zoom It! and it costs $2.99 in the Mac App Store.

 

To begin with, Zoom It uses the loupe options, the “Picture within a Picture.” You get to choose between two kinds of loupes:

 

The Square loupe that you saw in the Accessibility Pane:

 

Or a Round Loupe

And now you have the option to take screen shots of just what lies within the loupe. The keyboard combination for that is Command+Shift+2. 

But you don’t get a cryptically named file on the Desktop. No! You get a full File Dialogue box so that you can change the name and location where you save the file. The file format, though, is stuck at the format the default screenshot takes. In my case, it was the PNG format. 

 

What other goodies does Zoom it offer? You can choose to temporarily pop up a loupe with the Control+Z shortcut. You can toggle the loupe on and off with the Alt/Option+Z keystroke.

 

You can change the shape of the loupe on the fly with the Control+0. That’s control + the zero on your keyboard, not the letter “O” by the way. 

Want to change magnification level? That’s Control+= to increase magnification, Control + - to decrease magnification.

 

 

 

 

Well, here’s the help screen. It’s one simple page:

 

 

Want to change the keyboard shortcuts? Just go to the Settings panel, which you access from the menu bar icon:

 

 

 

Summary:

If you tried the Zoom options in the accessibility system preference and want something more, this is the program for you. You can control the settings from the keyboard. Best of it, it’s only $2.99 in the Mac App Store. If you can’t afford the 27” Thunderbolt Display right now, this should fit the bill.

 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog