Q: cleaning software

to remove remnants of things you think may be left behind on your HD you can open disk utility from the utilities folder and then select the mac HD on the left side, go into the erase tab and click on the button that says "erase free space" this will erase anything left behind and it's pretty quick as well.

before erasing anything though i always recommend having a current backup, just in case

Bo ...

Avoid third party cleaning and maintenance utilities. Your Mac runs maintenance for you in the background.

Mac OS X: About background maintenance tasks

This will accomplish nothing for the OP's situation.

Erase Free Space is more of a security measure. When you delete a file on the disk the data in the file is not actually written over until the disk space is needed but is is marked as not being in use so it is removed from the calculation of used space. So it is possible to recover the data even after it has been deleted. Using Erase Free Space actually  writes over this deleted data making it impossible to get at.

None of the so called disk cleaning apps out there are very useful and some are actually harmful to the system.

If you are experiencing problems list the problems you are having and we can help find solutions for you. If your disk is running out of space a program like OmniDiskSweeper can be used to list out the files on a disk and help find those taking up excessive space.

You're best defense against leaving remnants of files behind when using your graphic's program is to make sure you quit the program correctly so as to allow it to go through its procedures to remove any temp files it might have created. Also make sure you are familiar with its operation and any settings related to temporary files.

regards

i'm aware it's a security feature but since he stated he wanted to be sure there were no "leftovers" of the files i gave that as a suggestion since emptying the trash doesn't fully delete the files but doing the erase free space does get rid of it from the HD altogether so it's no longer taking up space as noted in the following article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5832

just trying to offer options geared to what the OP said he wanted.

Deleted files are not taking up space in any case once they are deleted.

As I wrote (and as the tech note you linked to stated)  this is sinply overwriting the data already unlinked and not reacable by normal means. It will not affect the actual free sapce on the disk. The sace used by the deleted files is already free.

With the Erase Free Space Options dialog, you can erase the free space used by deleted files so they can’t be recovered by a disk recovery application.

Again Erase Free Space is simply overwriting previously deleted files.

just trying to offer options geared to what the OP said he wanted.

Erase Free Space has nothing to do with what the OP is asking about.

regards