January 7 - 2:00pm EST   Creaceed (booth S-332S) this week unveiled version 2.0 of Hydra, its HDR photography application. According to the company, Hydra creates an High Dynamic Range (HDR) image which is "much closer to what one can actually see." The program is available as a Mac application or as the "the only" HDR plug-in for Aperture. Version 2.0 offers a new "Perceptive" default tone mapper for improved and more natural results and "Homography", the new default alignment technique that is very useful for small distortions. It also adds "The Loupe," a new tool for real time 1:1 full quality preview. [full story]

December 31 - 5:50pm EST   Creaceed has announced Hydra 2.0, an update to its high dynamic range (HDR) photograph application. The latest version offers new advanced configuration options, a redesigned tone-mapper and an improved user interface. The program allows users to combine up to ten underexposed and overexposed pictures to create HDR images, while automatic alignment capabilities eliminate the need to use a tripod for stabilizing the camera. The software currently supports TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PSD, PDF, RAW and DNG file formats. [full story]

May 12 - 10:10pm EDT   Creaceed on Monday delivered version 1.5 of Hydra as well as a beta Aperture plugin for easy HDR image creation on Mac OS X Leopard. Hydra 1.5, which features an updated imaging pipeline and Aperture integration, gives human eye perception to photographs by creating high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras. The created image compensates for the limited dynamic range of cameras, the company claims. "In addition, it more closely resembles what is actually seen. Unlike most HDR softwares, Hydra does not require images taken with a tripod." Hydra supports photo resolutions above 20 megapixels ... [full story]