Ever wanted a free close up maginification tool in Apple's Motion or Final Cut Pro?

It is funny how you can stumble across things that will be so handy when you are doing something completely different!
I was making some icons in iconbuilder in the Developer Tools that come bundled with OSX. I was intrigued what 'Pixie' was and to my delight found it to be a pixel magnification application that works across all apps.

Would it work whilst running Motion so I could analyse pixels or click on that one pixel edge? You bet, see the example on the left.

Magnification ratios go right up to a whopping 1200%! You can also open up the preferences to toggle on other cool features that can lock the area.

This can be a huge advantage if you are doing really detailed graphics work or trying to spot out pixels, as your main display can stay at 100% resolution.

So how do you go about finding Pixie? It is part of the Developers Tools in OSX. Take a look at the top level of your hard disk and if you cannot see the Developer folder you will have to find the original OSX installation disks.

So, having now found the folder, navigate to Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/Pixie . Easy as that, you might want to drop the icon into your dock for fast access.

Enjoy!