July 3 - 8:45am EDT   Hasselblad took steps to drive more of its medium-format camera users to digital today by adding the CFV-39. The digital back adds a 39-megapixel sensor to any of the company's V System film cameras and brings them up to similar features found in the H3DII line. Upgraders can shoot either to CompactFlash or to a Mac or PC using FireWire tethering, and also have the same ISO 50-800 sensitivity as one of Hasselblad's fully integrated digital cameras. [full story]

June 26 - 5:00pm EDT   Brushed Pixel has announced Catapult, a new Aperture plug-in designed to integrate external RAW photo converters. Supported software currently includes Adobe Camera Raw, typically associated with Photoshop, and Nikon's proprietary Capture utility. Catapult automatically exports RAW files to one of the converters, and imports the resulting JPEG or TIFF files, all the while stacking versions together to keep photos organized. [full story]

May 14 - 4:10pm EDT   Ubermind has released a more sophisticated version of its Aperture plug-in, Maperture Pro. Both versions of Maperture are designed to infuse Aperture with data from Google Maps, associating photos with the location of their shooting. The Pro version expands on the basic toolset with features such as altitude tagging. [full story]

May 8 - 4:15pm EDT   HDRsoft has released a new version of Photomatix, built as an Aperture plug-in. The software merges bracketed photographs into a 32-bit HDR image, displaying a greater tonal range than a conventional photo. The plug-in also gives users the ability to align handheld photographs, and reduce problems such as noise and chromatic aberrations. [full story]

April 19 - 9:55pm EDT   AttendeesAlerter 1.3 ($15) is a utility that can send reminder e-mails to contacts listed within an iCal event. The application periodically checks through a user's iCal events, searches for assigned contacts and sends a reminder e-mail using Apple's Mail application. The update includes a fix for a minor bug. [Download - 5.4MB] [full story]

April 15 - 3:40pm EDT   HumanSoftware has released v1.7 of HSC Edit, a plug-in for Apple's Aperture workflow suite. The software lets users apply a variety of effects to photographs automatically, supplementing or bypassing regular adjustments. The v1.7 edition includes the new HyperFocal module, which simulates sharper focus through combinations of local, global or detailed contrast techniques. Users can also limit effects through masks or tone range selection, and tweak color balance and saturation. [full story]

April 14 - 5:35pm EDT  Apple today released updates to consumer movie editing application iMovie as well its professional photography application Aperture and remote administration tools for Mac OS X Server installations. iMovie 8.02 fixes an issue with projects having a size of 0KB where attempting to open these projects would cause iMovie to quit unexpectedly at launch. According to Apple, the update also addresses a problem where full-screen mode could not be accessed on some systems. Apple's Aperture 2.1.3 update improves overall stability and addresses minor issues in a number of areas, including the display of thumbnails on import and image rotation. The free update is recommended for all users of Aperture 2.3 ... [full story]

March 18 - 12:00pm EDT   locr has posted locr for Aperture 1.0, a new plug-in designed to upload photos and albums from Apple’s Aperture workflow software. Similar to an earlier plug-in for iPhoto, the company’s new one is meant to offer professional photographers the integration of locr’s geophoto capabilities in post-production work. [full story]

March 13 - 11:50am EDT   Apple is indeed on the verge of releasing a new version of Final Cut Studio, new sources are said to corroborate. Although some sources have suggested than an updated Final Cut Studio suite could be announced on March 24th, people "familiar with the company's plans" are said to indicate that Apple is timing a release around the National Association of Broadcasters expo, scheduled for late April. Apple and some other major companies are not attending NAB, but the event is known for bringing major video-related product unveilings. [full story]

March 12 - 11:15am EDT   Creaceed has released an update to Hydra, its high dynamic range (HDR) tool for the Mac. Available in stand-alone or Aperture plug-in versions, the software combines as many as 10 different photo exposures to simulate the full light sensitivity of the human eye. Source images do not have to be closely aligned, as a warping algorithm provides necessary compensation. [full story]

March 3 - 10:55pm EST   Apple on Tuesday released two new application updates, iLife Support 9.0.1 and iPhoto 8.0.1. iLife Support 9.0.1 is designed to improve overall stability while addressing a number of minor bugs. The new version is recommended for all users of Aperture, iLife '09, and iWork '09. The iPhoto 8.0.1 update also provides improvements to overall stability, with specific enhancements in areas such as Internet connectivity, keyword import, and slideshow export. [full story]

March 2 - 7:00pm EST   Apple has released software updates for Aperture 2, iPhoto '08 and iPhoto '09, along with a firmware update that is designed to extend the battery life of MacBooks. Owners of Nikon D3X and Epson R-D1x digital cameras will now be able to upload RAW-format images to Apple's photo software. The update also addresses compatibility issues with specific cameras and improves overall stability. [full story]

February 17 - 1:40pm EST   Pomfort has released PaintGrade Plugin for Aperture, offering a painting approach to color correction within Aperture. The software allows common adjustments like brightness, saturation and contrast to be painted into the picture, making adjustments to only the areas affected by the brush strokes. The plugin uses dynamic color keying, allowing interactive modifications of the keyed area and uses algorithms that smooth and soften all the manipulations within a painted area, avoiding hard edges and color clipping and engineering smooth tonal changes between original and adjusted areas within the image. [full story]

January 6 - 2:00pm EST   Kensington on Tuesday announced a range of new products, including a hands-free car kit for use with Bluetooth cellphones, its SlimBlade TrackBall mouse and a pair of two space- and energy-efficient notebook chargers. The Bluetooth speaker clips onto vehicle's sun visors and can pair up with three different cellphones and holds three frequently-called phone numbers for each handset. Swapping between the three handsets or dialing any of the pre-programmed numbers is done via pressing a single button. Kensington has integrated noise-cancelling technology for the device that makes calls loud and clear. Two battery packs are included, providing users with 10 hours of ... [full story]

December 8 - 2:35pm EST   onOne has released the latest version of its image resizing plug-in, Genuine Fractals 6. The update now allows tiling for smaller printers and batch processing. A gallery wrap function has been added, along with support for Adobe Photoshop CS4, Elements, Lightroom 2 and Apple Aperture 2.1. The company claims that its fractal-based interpolation algorithms allow image sizes to be increased by 1000 percent without losing sharpness or detail. The utility also allows images to be cropped to fit a variety of common document sizes. [full story]