HDRtist is a new, free and easy-to-use HDR generator and tone mapper from Ohanaware. It creates a high-dynamic-range image from multiple exposures, and tone maps it in a single step. HDRtist features 4 different tone mapping techniques, and an intuitive method of switching between them. And, while HDRtist was designed for the creation of HDR images, you can use it on a single photo and it will still produce some great results. Basically you are just applying the Tone Mapping part in this case. Users of the company’s Funtastic Photos software can also export their HDR images to Funtastic Photos for further editing if they wish.

Website: HDRtist

Aurora Quick Fix is a free photo editing, sharing and publishing software application. In just a few clicks, Aurora users can Relight, Retouch, add Punch for color contrast, adjust color strength and warmth, tint, crop, straighten, zoom and adjust red-eye in a simple, intuitive and visual way. Aurora also includes sophisticated tools for organizing, publishing and sharing photos. The software is non-destructive as edited images are saved as a new file. Edited photos are saved at their original size and resolution. Aurora Quick Fix is available immediately at www.lightcrafts.com and is free to download for Mac and PC.

Adobe has released Adobe Camera Raw 5.5. The newst version of the ACR plug-in adds support for the Nikon D300s, the Nikon D3000, the Olympus E-P1, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 digital cameras. Please bear in mind that ACR 5.5 is not compatible with Photoshop versions earlier than CS4 or versions of Photoshop Elements earlier than Elements 6.0.

Website: Adobe Camera Raw 5.5 for Windows
Website: Adobe Camera Raw 5.5 for Macintosh

Adobe has issued a new update to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Version 2.5 adds support to several new digital cameras, including the Nikon D3000 and the Olympus E-P1, and fixes a few bugs introduced by previous Lightroom 2 releases. Note to existing users of earlier versions: Lightroom 2.5 will automatically remove the Lightroom 2.0, 2.1, 2,2, 2,3 or 2.4 executable and replace the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom folder with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 folder.

Website: Adobe Lightroom 2.5 for Windows
Website: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 for Macintosh

Digieffects has announced that Camera Mapper, a plugin for Adobe After Effects, allows you to simulate a 3D scene from 2D stills or footage, is available for purchase. It allows you to isolate one or several objects in your footage, project these objects on a separate layer and pull that layer out of the background, creating the visual illusion of the object floating in front of the original footage. The Camera Mapper plugin, which is compatible with Adobe After Effects 7, CS3 and CS4, sells for $79. Camera Maker is also available in a $229 bundle with PlaneSpace, a program developed by Red Giant Software for arranging and animating 3D layers easily.

Hamrick Software, the developer of VueScan, has released its latest version 8.5.26. The company has also announced that its customer base now stands at more than 200,000. VueScan 0.1 was first released in 1998 with support for a single scanner on Windows only. Within 5 years VueScan supported more than 400 scanners, and had acquired a good reputation through word of mouth. After a further 10 years of development, VueScan now supports over 1200 scanners on 3 operating systems, has been downloaded more than 5 million times, and is the scanning program of choice for more than 200,000 customers in over 150 different countries. Version 8.5.26 adds enhanced OCR support using Google’s Tesseract OCR code. Future plans include adding more advanced scanning features, such as scanning multiple photos placed randomly on a scanner (auto image segmentation). VueScan is available in two editions, Standard Edition ($39.95 USD) and Professional Edition ($79.95). The Professional Edition adds unlimited free upgrades, advanced IT8 color calibration and support for raw scan files.

FixerLabs has just released the Picturefxr iPhone App that automatically enhances and enlarges photos. The Picturefxr App sends photos from an iPhone to external servers, where they are enhanced and enlarged. The results are stored on each user’s private photo gallery and immediately returned by email. The results are claimed to be sharper, brighter, clearer, color accurate; and if requested, can have twice or four times the number of pixels than the original (in other words, Picturefxr can interpolate your photos for you if intending to print them big). The Picturefxr iPhone App is available now on the Apple iTunes Store.

Website: Picturefxr iPhone App

MotionDSP Inc. announced the release of version 1.1 of its vReveal video enhancement software for Windows users. vReveal 1.1 delivers several new features including even more powerful video stabilisation, support for uploads to YouTube in HD, the first integrated Facebook video uploader in a desktop application of this kind, and DivX output support. And using an optional CUDA-enabled NVIDIA graphics processor (GPU), vReveal can process videos up to five times faster, compared to using just a CPU. Examples of how vReveal’s enhancement features improve the appearance of digital videos are available at the vReveal website.

Website: vReveal

NVIDIA has announced that CyberLink MediaShow 5, a new program that organises digital photos based on who is in them, is utilising the CUDA parallel processing power of NVIDIA GeForce graphics processing units (GPUs) to search and sort photo libraries. CyberLink MediaShow 5 searches and organises your photo collection using a sophisticated face recognition algorithm. By utilising co-processing – which leverages the parallel processing power of NVIDIA GeForce GPUs in tandem with the computer’s central processing unit (CPU) – CyberLink MediaShow 5 provides up to a 70% improvement in application speed so you can find the photos you want faster.

CyberLink has released CyberLink MediaShow 5, a program that provides a fast and easy way to organise, fix, and share videos and photos. MediaShow 5’s face recognition technology and smart tagging feature provides a speedy way to tag faces in large photo collections, while one-clink fixes allow consumers to quickly enhance videos taken in less-than-ideal situations. Additionally, the optimisation for CPU and GPU hardware acceleration enables fast conversion of videos for enjoyment on a range of portable media devices, including iPod, iPhone, PSP, PS3, Xbox and Zune. MediaShow 5 retails for $49.95, while upgrades are available starting at $24.95.

AKVIS Software has released AKVIS ArtWork 3.0, a program that lets you apply different painting techniques to digital pictures. Version 3.0 offers a new painting style – Pen & Ink, as well as the possibility of converting photos into Oil Paintings and Comics.The program combines advanced painting techniques with a touch of an artistic approach to ordinary digital snapshots, making your digital pictures look as if they were real oil paintings. The program lays brush strokes naturally using the original photo as a reference, allowing creative persons to touch-up the painting by selectively changing the direction of the strokes. Available in Mac and PC versions as a stand-alone or a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, AKVIS ArtWork Home License sells for $72 USD, downloadable from http://akvis.com.

DxO Labs have announced the immediate availability of version 5.3.5 of its DxO Optics Pro software, which adds support to the new Sony A850. Another feature is better noise control for images taken at high ISO with the Sony Alpha 900. Plus, there are 85 new DxO Optics Modules that cover fisheye lenses, wide-angles, and prime lenses as well as many zooms such as the 15x Tamron AF18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di-II VC LD Aspherical (IF) Macro - a lens type for which DxO Optic Pro’s optical corrections are particularly efficient along its entire focal range, the company says. DxO Optics Pro v5.3.5 and upgrades are available immediately for Mac and Windows platforms from the DxO Labs e store (www.dxo.com) and from quality resellers. All customers who purchased DxO Optics Pro since August 1, 2007 are entitled to a free upgrade to version 5.3.5.

NewTech Infosystems (NTI) announced Media Maker 8, an all-in-one digital creativity suite that simplifies and complements today’s digital lifestyles by providing a single, low-cost solution for recording data, Blu-ray data, audio, photos and video on CD and DVD discs. For added value, NTI Media Maker includes a Video Converter to convert videos for playback on an iPod, PSP, Zune and other portable video players. With Video_TS split, the software can be used to create DVDs from the video collection stored on the user’s hard drive on one or more DVDs without losing any image quality. Media Maker also includes NTI Photo Maker which enables users to quickly import, edit and share their digital photos and slideshows. NTI Media Maker 8 can be used with Windows 2000/XP/Vista systems. Available at leading authorised NTI retailers worldwide as well as major online retailers and NTI’s online store at www.NTIus.com, Media Maker 8 has a suggested retail price of US$79.99.

Corel Digital Studio 2010 makes it fast and fun to enjoy and share your favorite photos and videos. “With its simple, elegant design and intuitive, all-in-one approach, Corel Digital Studio removes barriers, inspires creativity and gives everyone the ability to create and share something memorable in just minutes.” commented Nick Davies, Corel’s Senior Vice President, Product Management and Product Marketing. In the US and Canada, Corel Digital Studio 2010 is available now for $99.99. Corel Digital Studio 2010 will be available globally starting in mid-September 2009.

Imagenomic has announced the release of Portraiture 2 for Adobe Lightroom. This latest Portraiture 2 product edition from Imagenomic delivers all of the productivity benefits of fast and accurate skin retouching to the Lightroom user community, and complements earlier introductions of Portraiture 2 for Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture. Portraiture 2 versions for Lightroom include native 32 and 64-bit support for Windows Vista, and support for the latest Mac Intel platforms and OSX releases for Apple computers. All of the familiar features and controls that have made Portraiture 2 popular with Photoshop and Aperture users are now available in the new Lightroom edition. Lightroom users also benefit from two Portraiture workflow usage modes, using both the Edit In and Export techniques for individual and batch image editing and processing. For new customers, the Lightroom edition is available for purchase at $199.95.  For registered users of Portraiture 2 for Photoshop or Aperture, the Lightroom edition is available at the discounted price of $99.95.

Photodex announces the availability of Albums & Collages, the all-new ProShow MediaSource title for enhancing family, portrait and vacation slide shows. Designed to work with Photodex’s award winning ProShow Gold and ProShow Producer (pictured) slide show authoring tools, ProShow MediaSource allegedly provides everything needed to create a professional-looking slide show. Using the new Albums & Collages collection, ordinary slide shows are transformed into fun craft projects with everything from photo borders and show templates to embellishments and audio tracks. All content is royalty-free and comes in both 16:9 and 4:3 sizes for widescreen and normal size slide shows. Albums & Collages can be purchased for $24.95 on the Photodex website. All additional titles are $24.95 each.

Website: Jon Canfield’s Photodex ProShow: Visual QuickStart Guide on Amazon

Tiffen has announced Version 2.0 of its popular Tiffen Photo fx creative effects software, for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The included set of digital optical filters features simulations of many of the popular award-winning Tiffen glass filters. Tiffen Photo fx 2.0 saves the new images for display later without overwriting the original image, to email friends, family and business associates. The software is available on the Apple iTunes app store for $2.99 and features 61 filters organised into 8 different filter groups and 615 presets.

Designed to “make up for your iPhone’s lack of camera flash”, Flash for Free is an iPhone app that brightens up underexposed photos taken with the onboard camera of the Apple iPhone. The app is OS 3.0 compatible, and allows you to choose from nine different “fill flash levels”. Needless to say, you should expect an apparent increase in visible noise at the higher levels. Flash for Free is available as a free download from the iPhone App Store and the app’s official Web site.

Via iPhonehírek | Thanks to our reader Tibor for tipping us on the news!

Apple has issued an update to the Apple iPhoto application. Version 8.1 adds several new print product options to iPhoto ‘09. These include three new photo book themes with travel-oriented designs: Tropical, Asian and Old World; and a avariety of new holiday greeting cards themes. Additionally, hardcover books can be ordered in a new extra-large (13” x 10”) size. The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto ‘09.

Website: Apple iPhoto 8.1

Simplify Media has launched a new application on the App Store called Simplify Photos. Essentially, the application connects to your home computer and syncs batches of photos over to your iPhone, so you can view the photos on the go. In order to get the photos over, you need to have both Simplify Photos running on your computer, and your iPhone/iPod Touch, and the syncing process will begin. The photos are never stored on the iPhone/iPod Touch, and this brings a big advantage of the application — this frees up gigabytes of space on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Simplify Photos lets users browse photos by folder and timeline, or GPS location on a map, view thumbnails, individual photos or slideshow, access iPhoto albums, events, faces and places, search by tags, comments, title or description. Simplify Photos is $0.99 and available from the App Store today.