If you’re a Mac user and new to ProWritingAid or are slavishly devoted to the online editor, there’s a better way. With every premium license, you can download a nifty desktop app that works with Word, Scrivener, Text, Rich Text Format, HTML, Markdown, or Open Document files. You can run all the same reports you get in the online editor directly on your desktop.
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Before You Get Started
There are three things you should know:
Built-in Editing for That Extra Polish. Writing isn’t just an art – it’s also a craft. Like a second pair of eyes, Papyrus Author’s Style Analysis highlights missteps like filler words, repetitions and overlong sentences. Developed in close collaboration with best-selling authors, this tool offers three options of editing strength. Manuscripts helps you get started on the right track. The app understands the format you need when submitting to your target journal. It can even warn you of missing sections, violated word limits, and many more factors affecting your submission. MS Word, RTF, OpenOffice, (Multi)Markdown, LaTeX, and many more.
- To use the desktop app, you need a ProWritingAid Premium account. You can find out more here.
- The desktop app keeps your original formatting so you don’t need to worry about losing it. Even if it looks different in ProWritingAid itself, your formatting is preserved in the original doc.
- The ProWritingAid desktop app needs an internet connection to work.
Ready to go? Let’s take a look at the app.
Getting Started
If you haven’t already, first download the Mac desktop app from ProWritingAid.com.
You may want to keep the desktop app in your Mac’s dock so it’s always there when you need it.
Once you've downloaded the app, you’ll see this screen. You’ll need to log in with your ProWritingAid account details:
Now you’re logged in, you’re ready to get started. You can use ProWritingAid to create new documents or to open and edit your existing documents.
Creating New Files
You can create a new HTML, Markdown, or Text file with ProWritingAid:
Once you’re done with your file, you can save it as a .txt file.
How to Open Documents In the ProWritingAid App
You can upload several types of document into the app including Word, Scrivener, Html, and Final Draft docs. We’ll cover Word and Scrivener docs here. Use the contents box above to skip to the document type most relevant to you.
Word Documents and ProWritingAid
Once you’re in ProWritingAid, hit 'Open' (or 'File,' 'Open File') and then select your chosen Word doc from your Finder menu.
When it opens in ProWritingAid, it’ll look like this:
You won’t be able to see your formatting, but don’t worry, it will be retained in your original Word doc. Once you’ve made your edits, hit 'File,' then 'Save' and they will appear back in your Word doc. Simple!
Pro tip: If you left your Word doc open while you were editing, close it and re-open it to see the changes you made in ProWritingAid.
Scrivener and ProWritingAid
You can open your Scrivener projects in ProWritingAid to edit them. When you open your project, it will look like this:
Notice how you have access to all your folders and files in your Scrivener project in the same left-hand menu. Like with Word docs, you won’t be able to see your formatting, but don’t worry, it will be retained in your original Scrivener project. Once you’ve made your edits, hit 'Save' and they will appear back in your Scrivener project.
Of note: Make sure that Scrivener is completely closed while you are making edits in ProWritingAid. If Scrivener is open, your changes may not be saved.
LibreOffice and OpenOffice and ProWritingAid
You can use the same process as above to open your LibreOffice and OpenOffice files. Go to 'File' - 'Open File' and select your document. Your text will then populate within the Desktop App. Edit as normal, then go to 'File', 'Save' to save your changes back to your original document. Easy!
How to Save Your Changes
Every writer knows the importance of saving your changes regularly. There are a couple of ways to do this in the Desktop App.
1. Save Manually
To save your work manually, go to 'File,' 'Save.' If you haven't made any changes since your last save, the 'Save' option will be grayed out. Once you make another edit, the 'Save' option will become available again.
When you click 'Save,' your changes will save back to your original document.
If you’d like to create a new copy of your document, click 'File,' 'Save As.'
You’ll be prompted to enter a new file name. Your updated document will be saved there as a new doc, and your original document will remain as it was when you opened it in the app.
Please note, if you have auto-save enabled and you open an existing document in the Desktop App, any changes you make will save back to that original document automatically.
If you want to create a new copy of an existing document, edit with auto-save disabled and use the 'Save As' option. Or, duplicate your original file and edit the new version in the app.
2. Auto-Save
The Desktop App also offers an auto-save feature. To set your auto-save interval, go to 'ProWritingAid' in the top left-hand corner of your screen, and then click on 'Preferences:'
This will open a dialog box allowing you to set your auto-save interval as well as your writing style, language, and quotes settings.
Note: We recommend saving your work manually at the end of every editing session to make sure you have saved the most recent copy of your work before closing the app. It’s also best to close the app when you have finished editing, and then to re-open once you’re ready to start editing again.
How to Set Your Writing Style, Language, and Smart Quotes Preferences
Customizing your editing experience is easy. Just go to 'ProWritingAid' in the top left-hand corner of your screen, and then to 'Preferences.'
Use the menu to change your settings:
You can also access your wider analysis settings with the link in the menu to change your settings for specific reports and features like the Style Guide.
Using the ProWritingAid Reports
Now you’re all set up, you’re ready to run some reports!
Regardless if you create your file directly in the app or open an existing file, you have the same options to run any and all reports.
You can run each report by clicking on its icon in the reports bar:
ProWritingAid offers over 20 powerful reports. To see them all, click the 'More Reports' icon on the far-right of the bar.
Pro-Tip: ProWritingAid works best when looking at fewer than 10,000 words at a time. This is because our high-powered reports must contact our servers to function. Many ProWritingAid users break their documents up by chapter to get under that word count and to avoid becoming overwhelmed with suggestions.
Let’s look at some reports:
The Sticky Sentences Report
What makes a sentence sticky? Every sentence contains words that have very little meaning, but are used to stick your sentences together. ProWritingAid will tell you when you could cut down on the number of glue words you’ve used in a sentence:
As you can see, ProWritingAid suggestions appear as colourful highlights on your document. When you click on the highlight, you’ll get a message telling you what change you could make to make your writing more effective.
ProWritingAid’s suggestions are just that—suggestions. You can choose to accept or ignore the suggestions as you please. After all, you know what’s best for your writing! You can also click on 'Disable Rule' to stop that kind of suggestion from appearing in your future documents.
Pro-tip: You can click on the orange 'i' icon to learn more about ProWritingAid’s suggestions. That little orange 'i' is your gateway to informative videos, in-depth blog articles, and more:
The Thesaurus Report
Often, changing just one word in a sentence allows a writer to present a more nuanced or specific idea. The contextual thesaurus allows you to explore a wider vocabulary. Unlike most thesaurus suggestions, our report takes into account the context of the word in the sentence and offers replacement words that fit within that context.
ProTip: In all of the reports, you can click on the arrow icon to the right of the suggestion to accept or ignore suggestion and move next. This will allow you to move quickly through each suggestion in your manuscript, as below:
Word Explorer
You can access the Word Explorer by double clicking on any word in your manuscript. With the explorer, you can dive deeper into the words you're using, finding collocations, clichés, common phrases and more. You can even find quotes that use that word for a little inspiration!
Final Thoughts
The desktop app is more convenient than going to the online editor and still gives you all the power you want and expect from ProWritingAid. And it works with all popular file types to maximize your writing potential. Regardless of where you write, ProWritingAid likely has an app for that.
Not a ProWritingAid User Yet? Start Editing Like a Pro with Your Free ProWritingAid Account
Good writing takes work. Editing your writing can be a slog, but it doesn’t have to be. With ProWritingAid, you can get an overview of your writing before you start editing. The editing tool also looks at elements of structure and style that have an impact on how strong and readable your writing is. Then, you can go line by line, editing at sentence level with the help of suggestions that real copy-editors would make.
More, it helps you learn as you edit, making you a better writer every time you use the program.
The best way to find out how much ProWritingAid can do is to try it yourself!
- January 02, 2021
- 18 min to read
Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.
But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.
1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)
Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.
2. Luminar (7 days trial)
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Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.
Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.
Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.
3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)
Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.
All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?
Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!
4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)
As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.
Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.
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Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.
5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)
Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.
6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 (Trial link)
Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.
In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.
7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)
Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.
Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.
8. Google Photos
Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.
Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.
9. PhotoScape X (Free)
A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.
The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.
The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.
10. Gimp (Free)
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Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.
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Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.