Digital Anarchy released their latest updated photo re-touching software Beauty Box Video 3.0. The latest edition of the plug-in accommodates Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Apple Final Cut Pro 7 and X, with support for Assimilate Scratch, Sony Vegas, Nuke, and Avid currently available in beta upon request.
The iPhone has long had a reputation as having an excellent camera and image processing combination. According to Flickr, the iPhone 4S, 5 and 4 models hold the top three positions of the most used cameras on the site, highlighting the enduring appeal of the iPhone for casual photographers. At WWDC, Apple gave the audience a quick run through the beta version of the revamped Camera and Photos apps in iOS 7, highlighting some of the new features in both apps. So is there more to their new 'flatter' app icons and visual redesign?
Apple has settled a lawsuit brought by the photographer of the now-famous "Retina" eye image used to demonstrate the quality of the company's high-resolution displays. Swiss photographer Sabine Liewald argued that Apple had licensed the image from her US agency, Factory Downtown, for limited uses only and not for the promotional and advertising uses it was eventually put to. Settlement terms were not disclosed.
Apple issued an update to Aperture late Friday, its pro-level photo-management and editing software. Version 3.4.1 is a bug-fix release, primarily addressing an installer issue in v3.4 that caused the application to quit on launch for some users due to accidentally corrupted preferences. The new version also improves the reliability of syncing photos to iOS devices via iTunes, cleans up a bug with downloading and viewing photos synced with Facebook albums, and generally improves overall stability.
Adobe late Monday announced the new Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11, the company's consumer-level photo-editing and video-editing programs. The new versions have both been given makeovers in the user interface once again, with modes separated by skill levels (three in PS Elements, two in Premiere Elements) and new effects. The workflow has been re-thought to make the editing quicker and easier to use for both Mac and Windows users, and both include more sharing options than before, including Vimeo.
ACD Systems has launched the first major upgrade of its photo-management and editing utility ACDSee Pro for Mac, now at version 2.0. The program, which has been out since 2009, offers an alternative to "vault"-based systems such as Lightroom, Aperture and iPhoto by allowing photographers to handle file and folder management entirely as they like, cataloging local and remote images wherever they are stored.
Users of Path can now use Lenses on the Android version (Free, Google Play) of the social network-enabled photo sharing app. Lenses, available to iOS Path members for the last year, allow the user to apply filters to the viewfinder, before taking the photograph itself.
Corel has delivered its first "service pack" update to its photo workflow tool, AfterShot Pro (formerly known as Bibble 5.x). The program is aimed at professional photographers and competes with programs like Aperture, Lightroom and ACDSee Pro. The new update adds support for 20 new cameras, improved highlight recovery processing, and improved plugin SDK, support for higher-resolution file sizes, and two new plugins.
Popular mobile camera styling and sharing app Instagram has updated to 2.2, improving the speed of the camera function in the app as well as fixing bugs, including one that sometimes prevented pictures from being saved to the photo library, and another issue caused by the Lux option. The update also added support for sharing photos for two of the world's largest non-US social networks, Japan's Mixi and China's (Sina) Weibo.
Photo-enhancement software maker ArcSoft has made its beauty and glamour software Perfect365 available for Mac, having already launched the application for Windows in early November and an iOS version two weeks ago. The program detects faces and softens skin variations, lets photographers retouch blemishes and under-eye circles, removes shine and whitens teeth along with other enhancements aimed at female portraiture.
Version three of the Tiffen Company's Dfx Digital Filter Suite is now available, bringing more than 10 new filters, updated host support, interface tweaks and other improvements to the popular photo and video filter suite. The software simulates over 2,000 Tiffen glass filters, optical processes, film grains and specialized lenses and natural light and photographic effects. The new version adds enhanced multi-processor acceleration for significant speed gains.
Professional photographer Mitchell Feinberg has reportedly designed his own large-format digital camera back. The unprecedented design was said to be an essential replacement for an 8x10 Polaroid back, enabling the photographer to instantly preview a composition, in full color at 10-megapixel resolution, before committing to captures using sheet film.
Stellar Information Systems, known for its Stellar Phoenix drive-recovery software, has updated its version of the software specially aimed at recovering photos, audio and video from camera and mobile-phone memory cards as well as hard drives. Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery v4 tries to recover images and AV files in over 50 different formats from drives where the files have been accidentally deleted or formatted, or suffered from corruption, read/write errors or have been improperly ejected.
MacNN has reviewed the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr DPL900, a small GPS device that is bundled with software to allow users to simply and quickly add location information to digital photos. After carrying both the DPL900 and a digital camera on a photo shoot, the GPS device matches the timestamp of the user's digital camera after recording where the user was over the same time period. It captures waypoints, rather than tracking the location every second.
Pangea Software has released Bracketeer 4, the latest version of its photography utility that combines bracketed exposures into a single image, resulting in a wide range of shading in each photograph. The software provides users with an alternative to Tone Mapping, with a different technique called "Enfusing.” The program creates images directly from the bracketed source images, without ever having to create an HDR image first. This is claimed to help deliver a more realistic looking picture while improving processing time.
Tiny Pictures has released an iPhone app for its Radar photo sharing social networking site. The app lets users share their daily lives with friends by posting pictures and notes on Radar.net or through Facebook and Twitter. The free app allows users to upload photos from an iPhone camera or photo library with privacy controls that restrict who sees each post. The home screen shows the latest postings from friends and daily content feeds from various providers. The app uses caching techniques to quickly load low-resolution versions of photos while the full-sized versions download in the background.
A new D90 clue emerged that suggests the asking price will be $1300. A screen shot was taken of a Circuit City inventory screen was posted on nikonrumors.com showing an active SKU for the D90 with a 18-105mm VR lens. It is common practice for retailers to add an item's information and pricing into their computer system when it is put on order from the manufacturer. Other photos have surfaced recently of the long-anticipated Nikon camera.
Epson announced the release of its new multimedia photo viewers for professional photographers on the go, with the P-6000 and P-7000. Either gives photographers the ability to download and view their digital photos on 4-inch, 640x480 (VGA) resolution LCD screens that are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors. The P-6000 sports an 80GB hard-disk drive, with the P-7000 upping it to 160GB and both feature a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connection that allows download speeds up to one third faster than the models they sit atop in Epson's range, the P-3000 and P-5000.
CopyTrans has announced CopyTrans Photo for transferring photos between iPods and Windows PCs. The software allows two-way transfer, allowing users to not only carry photos uploaded from a PC, but also to download photos off an iPod onto other PCs. CopyTrans Photo supports drag-and-drop file transfer and works with any photo-capable iPod, including the iPod Touch and iPhone models. It works with Windows XP and Vista, and costs $50.
The Boy Genius Report has released what appear to be the first snapshots of the iPhone 3G straight from the box. The photos show a small neatly organized black box similar to the one used for the original iPhone. As expected, the new model sports an all-black case back with a white apple logo. The back is a bit more rounded than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G appears to be a bit more tapered on the top end. Overall, the device does not look that much different from the current model. Update: A video of the unboxing is also avaiable.
For the past six years, a group of developers scattered across the globe has been quietly working to reinvent the way we watch movies and listen to music. The result is Boxee -- a media player based on the XBMC Open Source platform -- released in alpha form this month initially on the Mac. The developers says Boxee was born of frustration over what they saw as the somewhat clunky way computers gather and display content. Separate applications are needed to display photos or play music and movies, and content is often delivered in formats requiring proprietary media players. The ambitious end game for Boxee is to become the “one-size-fits-all” media center that works with any kind of content on any platform.
Calling its photo-sharing service is a “natural extension of the Macintosh application experience,” Smilebox on Tuesday announced support for the Mac platform by releasing a free application that allows Mac users to download photos, videos and music and offers “seamless” support for iPhoto, iTunes and Photo Booth. Smilebox says it has more than 700 designs and templates for scrapbooks, slideshows, greeting cards, photo-books and post cards. Launched in 2006, Smilebox says it has 2.6 million PC users each month. Users can create and share their own designs, or purchase "premium designs" from Hallmark, Making Memories, Madison Park Greetings, K & Company and Smilebox's in-house designers. Individual items can be bought for $2-$4 or through a $5 monthly subscription.
Shortly after the WWDC keynote, Phanfare on Monday unveiled a new camera application for the iPhone that allows users to share photos on the web in a simplistic manner. Phanfare provides 1GB of free online storage for photos (without advertisements), while users can opt for unlimited storage options. Once users take a photo with the iPhone's built-in camera, they have the option to caption and upload a photo to a new or existing album. The unlimited storage version of the service costs $55 per year.
Apple's .Mac service, once a promising method for sharing media, performing online backups and more, has paled in the presence of free alternatives and represents an untapped opportunity for Apple according to a recent report from CNET. The articles posits "$99 a year is hard to justify for the .Mac service. 10GBs of storage? I can get that for $20 from Google, and I can get much more if I want it. Photo sharing? I can do that for free on Flickr, and upload as many photos and videos as I want for $24.95 a year. Build my own Web site? Lots of services offer that capability for free."
Five years from now, Apple will have made significant strides in its consumer product strategy, expanding its digital home offerings to include products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the HDTV-stereo audio-visual infrastructure in consumers' homes, according to Forrestor Research. CNET reports that the research note predicts a bridging of the "AV/IT divide [...] for video, music, and photos in most homes." The report also speculates that Mac OS X will likely be sprinkled throughout the home, and predicts the introduction of a home server product that would act as the digital hub to push video streams, music, and photos throughout the home. Other potential products include an "AppleSound universal music controller" that could serve many purposes: a standalone iPod, a music and video controller, via dedicated home stereo amplifiers.
Digital Foci is now shipping the new "Image Moments 8" 8-inch screen digital photo frame. The device features LED Backlight Technology, 450MB of internal memory, and built-in memory card slots to let you display and share photos on its high-resolution digital LCD screen. It also features an Auto-Start feature, that will automatically start a photo slideshow. Hardware components include an 8-inch high-resolution SVGA (800x600) digital LCD screen with 500:1 contrast ratio and a proprietary Adapter Ring design that supports custom framing options The frame also features an interchangeable mat with 3 color selections; a hinged memory card door and an easel leg for alternating between landscape and portrait positioning. The device also features 450MB internal memory.
Luxology has announced a modo 302, the newest version of its 3D content creation software. Free for registered modo 301 customers, modo 302 adds new natural lighting capabilities, additional layered Photoshop file support, an animation Track View, new modeling tools and numerous other enhancements. Luxology is also making available the first version of the modo File I/O software development kit (SDK), which allows developers to import or export data directly from modo. modo combines a real-time subdivision surface modeling engine with an artist-focused set of tools.
Global Delight today introduced Web2 Delight 1.0 for Mac - its tool for easily searching and downloading online video or photo content to a Mac. With Web2 Delight, users can find content from any popular video or photo sharing service, such as YouTube and flickr, and save it to any Mac - all from one application that costs less than $20.
AKVIS has released ArtSuite 3.0, an update to the company's photo editing application and plug-in that adds three new effects as well as an 'Autorun' button. The new effects, which arrive alongside a Spanish version of the software, are titled 'Black&White,' 'Shift Colors,' and 'Channel Mixer.' ArtSuite 3.0 provides users with 15 total effects as well as a Pattern Library to generate a wide array of different effects. The software is priced at $50.
Apple's post-production photography software, Aperture, is more usable to both amateurs and pros since the company released version 2.0, according to one report. The New York Times writes that Aperture 2.0 provides a more accessible, streamlined interface and eases the process of handling photos in full-screen mode. The update also increases speed considerably when dealing with large numbers of photos, but maintains original versions of those photos more efficiently than iPhoto -- Apple's consumer-oriented photo software.
Apple today unveiled iPhoto 7.1.3, an update to its photo organization, editing, and printing application, introducing several fixes. Unfortunately, details on the update are very scarce, saying little more than "this update addresses issues with wire-bound books and cards." The update for iPhoto 7.1.3 is available both through the Apple support downloads website and through the Software Update application, located underneath the Apple Menu.
The Eye-Fi crew today released Eye-Fi Manager 1.5, an update to the Eye-Fi Card firmware that adds a new feature -- 'Smart Boost' -- to make wireless photo uploads more efficient and determine the most efficient way to upload photos to a desired location. "In the past, the Eye-Fi Card would first upload your photos from the camera to the Web, where they would then be sent to your online photo-sharing site and to your computer via the Web-based Eye-Fi Service," the Eye-Fi crew said.
.Mac subscribers have received an email describing recent changes to Apple's support for .Mac Web Galleries, Aperture post-production software, and Apple TV device. Apple TV owners who update to the company's latest software can view public photos and movies of .Mac members, and a new entry in the Photos menu allows users to navigate to any .Mac member's account, according to Macworld.
Pangea Software today unveiled Bracketeer, a utility designed for photographers to combine bracketed exposures into one image for a broad representation of shading in an image. Rather than traditional HDR imaging, which is tone mapped down to a standard image, Bracketeer uses an alternate method called "Enfusing". Enfused images are created directly from the bracketed source images, rather than an HDR image, which eliminates halos, random pixel garbage, and washed out contrast. Bracketeer is available from Pangea for $20, and includes a license to PanoPreviewer.
Mustek today unveiled the PF-E700 digital photo frame, a seven-inch TFT LCD that features a built-in alarm clock, indoor temperature gauge, and snooze functions. The display is measured at 480 by 234 pixels, and accepts a wide range of multimedia cards, such as SD, SDHC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro Duo, and Compact Flash. In addition to photos, the PF-E700 can also play MP3 files, and movies that are saved in AVI and MPEG formats. Mustek will ship the frame in April at a price of $150.
Apple has begun offering customers in Australia as well as New Zealand the ability to create hardcover photo books, glossy calendars, professional cards, and prints from custom photo libraries. The final products are delivered directly to each customer's door, according to Apple. Picture books are priced from A$40, while Calendars and Postcards start at A$27 and A$2, respectively. Greeting Cards are available from A$2.70, and prints start at A$0.30 each.
DataMind recently unveiled Jade 1.0.2, a program designed to enhance image colors, contrast and dynamics, while preserving overall image quality. Users can fine-tune the algorithms that Jade uses to tweak any processing done to a photo. Jade can also batch process images, saving users the work of repeating a set of corrections to potentially thousands of images. DataMind is offering a free 30-day demo of Jade, with the full copy available for the current discounted price of $100.
Creaceed today began shipping its Hydra 1.0 HDR photography software for Mac, and unveiled a major upgrade to its Morph Age application for morphing as well as warping images and movies. Hydra aims to give the human eye perception to photographs by creating high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of standard photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras. Hydra is priced at $60, but is available for an introductory price of $40 until the end of January. Hydra requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to run.
The second day of CES has drawn to a close, with many companies making major announcements about new products and services. Intel unveiled its 45nm Core 2 mobile platform with integrated SSE4 and 6MB of cache, available in speeds ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.8GHz. Microsoft announced that its Xbox Video Marketplace service will see content from Disney-ABC and MGM, and formally denied rumors that Xbox 360 with built-in HD-DVD is in planning. HP’s MediaSmart gear was given a complete overhaul, while also introducing several new laptop products. Seagate was on hand to show a number of different new storage options, while RealNetworks showed various products that use its Rhapsody media service.
Xias today unveiled several new products that it will display at CES 2008, including two digital photo frames, two cameras, USB memory sticks, and an MP3 player with an accompanying digital download service. The PF-821WF and PF-1021WF are an eight- and 10-inch digital frame, respectively; both models feature a display resolution of 800 by 600. Up to 12 images can be displayed simultaneously, and images sit in a floating, swiveling base. Seven digital media formats are supported, which can be uploaded to the frames from either of the two bult-in memory card slots. Four different play modes are supported – full-screen browse, slideshow, thumbnail browse, and zoom in/out – while viewing time can be adjusted in both browse and slideshow modes. While pricing was not announced, Xias will ship the frames during the second quarter of 2008.
Pharos Science and Applications today announced a new geologging hardware product called Pharos Trips and Pics, which is designed to interface with any digital camera. Trips and Pics allows users to do a photo catalogue of their travels for personal or professional purposes. By using the iGPS-500 receiver with a pocket battery unit, users can upload the post-trip data to their computers through USB, where Trips and Pics presents a step-by-step set of download instructions. Pharos Trips and Pics will be available for purchase at major retail outlets in January for $90.
Creaceed today unveiled Hydra, a new application that aims to ease the process of creating HDR photographs on Mac systems. Hydra is designed to give human eye perception to photography by creating high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras. Hydra is priced at $60, but will be available for an introductory price of $40 until the end of January after the application begins shipping during Macworld on January 14th. Hydra requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to run.
No less than 10 Apple inventions surfaced today at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, with three new applications filed alongside seven documents that were officially granted to the Cupertino-based company. Apple's latest inventions include 'Pulldown correction for progressive display of audiovisual recordings,' as well as two patents related to iPhoto that create computer generated mosaics and touch up photos to remove blemishes. Seven previously-filed patents detail technology for DVD Web system, MagSafe, speech synthesis, and more.
AKVIS has released AKVIS Frame Suite 2.6 for Mac and Windows systems. AKVIS Frame Suite enables users to apply frames and edge effects to pictures, simplifying the process of creating greeting cards from personal photos. The latest revision adds new Christmas decorations to the pattern library, joining the 12 edge effects to provide a vast number of photo frame possibilities. AKVIS Frame Suite 2.6 is available for $50, and requires a G3 or better Mac. The software is also compatible with Mac OS X Leopard.
Thousands of consumers hoping to enjoy music, photos, and movies with Apple gadgets they receive this holiday season may need to learn some basic skills before diving right into the devices. Dave Taylor, a SupportSpace Committee member specializing in Mac as well as handheld technologies says the jump is even more difficult for most PC users. "Apple's iPhone and the latest generation of iPods have delivered enormous power and simplicity to the average consumer, but the technology is still complicated and usability is not 100% intuitive, especially for Windows users," he said.
Lasting Impressions for Paper recently unveiled MemoryMixer 2, an update to its user-friendly scrapbook software. Designed with novice users in mind, MemoryMixer 2 introduces a number of new features, such as cropping and zooming, as well as visual effects like sepia toning. The update includes over 400 digital backgrounds in square, portrait, and landscape orientation, with nature, metal, pattern, and texture designs, and comes with more than 1200 embellishments, ranging from ribbons and braids, to definitions and flourishes. Lasting Impressions is selling the software for $80, and is available from many online and retail stores, including the Apple store.
