Nikon have just updated their Nikon Capture NX digital image editing software to version 1.01.

What’s New:

  * D80 Raw files are supported
  * Batch processes have been improved
  * Gradient tool has been improved
  * Options from the View menu have been improved
  * Soft proofing, printer profiles and color management tools have been improved

Website: Nikon Capture NX 1.01 (Windows)

Website: Nikon Capture NX 1.01 (Mac)

NAPP/Photoshop World Press Release

Adobe Executive to Give Sneak Peek of Upcoming Photoshop Technology During Photoshop World Conference Keynote; Photoshop World Conference & Expo - Sept. 7-9, 2006 - Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino

TAMPA, Fla.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Aug. 29, 2006—Traditionally, Adobe Systems Incorporated has used the opening keynote at the Photoshop World Conference & Expo (produced by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals), as a platform for showcasing new and emerging Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) technologies, and this year’s conference (the largest Photoshop educational event in the world, held Sept 7-9 in Las Vegas) is no exception. John Loiacono, senior vice president of Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business, will take the stage on the morning of September 7 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, to kick off the largest Photoshop World Conference to date. During his presentation, Loiacono will give the thousands of keynote attendees, and media on hand, a sneak peek at some of the new Photoshop technology being developed by Adobe. Loiacono has responsibility for the development, delivery and marketing of Adobe’s entire creative software portfolio.

Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5 Plus will be available in box and electronic versions in retail stores, PC World, Amazon, Dabs etc and at www.ulead.co.uk for £49.99 starting in late August. Users of DVD MovieFactory versions 3 and 4 can upgrade at www.ulead.co.uk

Ulead Systems Press Release

Consumer DVD Authoring Software Now Adds Wide Range Of Disc Burning Function.

Northampton August 24th 2006 - Ulead Systems, Inc., a 16-year industry leader in video, image and DVD software, today announced Ulead DVD MovieFactory® 5 Plus, an enhanced companion to its market-leading DVD MovieFactory 5 standard version.
“When we released DVD MovieFactory 5 in March, it earned high praise for its ease-of-use and intuitive DVD authoring”, said Eldon C. M. Liu, president of Ulead.  “The Plus version offers additional creative content and templates.  Digital media enthusiasts will appreciate the expanded disc burning functionality, multi-format disc copying, support for music DVDs and Blu-ray Direct-to-Disc burning.”

Imatest Press Release

Gamutvision ICC profile visualization/analysis software released

Boulder, Colorado - August 23, 2006 - Imatest LLC announces the release of Gamutvision, a powerful program for visualizing digital color workflows and color management operations. Gamutvision is much more than just a gamut viewer. You can view gamut mappings and rendering intents in depth, and you can preview the effects of workflow settings and materials on your final output.

Nikon Press Release

Send images straight from the camera to friends across the world, with Nikon’s exciting new service.

TOKYO – Nikon Corporation is proud to announce COOLPIX CONNECT – an exciting service that’s entirely new and completely free of charge, it lets users enjoy photo sharing over the Internet, without the need for computer setup. Surprisingly simple and available with the COOLPIX S7c, COOLPIX CONNECT allows anyone to take a picture, then send it to friends across the world in mere seconds!

BenVista Press Release

AMSTERDAM, August 22, 2006—After a long period of research and development, BenVista is proud to launch the official successor of their digital image enlargement software, PhotoZoom Pro. As of today, PhotoZoom Pro 2 is a fact, and available for both Windows and Mac OS X platforms. Over the past years, PhotoZoom Pro has proven itself to be one of the leading products for digital image resizing, renowned for its patented “S-Spline” algorithm. Now, with PhotoZoom Pro 2, BenVista introduces a new and even more efficient technique: “S-Spline XL”.

Pantone Press Release

Pantone showcases innovative products for colour management and large format printing at Photokina 2006

Pantone, Inc., the global authority on colour, will participate at Photokina 2006, running from 26 September to 1 October 2006. This is the first time Pantone will be exhibiting at Photokina and the company will showcase a variety of innovative products for colour management and large format printing. Full information on new PANTONE products will be available during Photokina at Pantone’s booth: No. H050 in hall 04.1. Pantone’s enhanced product portfolio, which will show at Photokina 2006, enables photographers, graphic designers and printers to work more effectively and precisely with colour.

Translate your stock library keywords into different languages with BabelPix, available now for $39.95.

Bedouin Ventures Press Release

(Seattle, WA)  - Bedouin Ventures, LLC, (www.bedouinventures.com) today released BabelPix™, a cross-platform software application that will enable photographers and stock photography agencies to sell to non-English speaking international audiences by translating photo keywords to foreign languages.  The application will also allow foreign photographers and image buyers access to photographs and markets previously only available to English speakers by translating foreign language keywords to English. BabelPix™ (www.babelpix.com) accepts .jpg or .tif image files with embedded keywords and translates those files to foreign languages with a simple, easy-to-use interface.  Bedouin Ventures, LLC, officially released the English-Spanish/Spanish-English version today, but reported that more versions are in the works.  The company plans to offer additional modules in coming months, including Chinese, German, and other languages.

REALVIZ Press Release

Sophia Antipolis, France (August 17, 2006) – REALVIZ, a leading developer of image processing software, announces the availability of ImmerVision’s IVP standard file format within REALVIZ Stitcher Unlimited 5.5 for professional panorama creators. The ImmerVision IVP format allows panoramas to be played on multiple platforms and devices using PURE Player. Furthermore, with the PURE Player for Java and PURE Player PRO for Java viewers, creators can easily load panoramic images onto any computer or website without installing a plug-in.

Photo-i have just reviewed the Nikon Capture NX digital image editing software that was announced back in February at PMA.

“Capture NX is a very mixed bag, bringing us a completely new, totally intuitive and easy to use method of correcting images. On the other hand the UI is far from intuitive and easy to use, dark grey on light grey is not the best choice for readability, the icons used are far from obvious, the palettes are too much and not as brilliant an idea as one would assume.”

Website: Photo-i - Nikon Capture NX Review

Bibble Labs have just released Bibble 4.8.1, which adds support for Nikon’s newest DSLR, the D2Xs. This release also introduces the ability to import settings created in Pixmantec’s Raw Shooter Premium and Raw Shooter Essentials. This upgrade is free for all current Bibble 4 customers.

Website: Bibble 4.8.1

FixerLabs Press Release

FixerLabs, developers of award winning software for digital image enhancement and enlargement, today released a Windows version of their flagship programme for image enlargement - SizeFixer XL. Based on their patented Super-Resolution technology, SizeFixer XL
can enlarge images to 500 MPixels and beyond with unprecedented levels of quality. SizeFixer XL is a stand-alone ‘upsizing’ tool for serious Photographers and Graphic Designers who demand the very best quality.

DxO Labs Press Release

New lens modules for DxO Optics Pro Elite and Standard edition include the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC MACRO and the new Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

New York, NY and Paris, France – August 7, 2006 – DxO Labs announces today availability of 15 new DxO Lens Modules for its DxO Optics Pro software bringing the total now to 365 lens correction modules available to DxO Optics Pro users. In addition, many existing DxO Lens Modules have been extended to more DxO-supported camera bodies. DxO Optics Pro software improves the image quality of Digital Single-Lens Reflex (D-SLR) cameras and advanced digicams. DxO Optics Pro is the award-winning digital image enhancement tool incorporating revolutionary optics, noise and exposure corrections in an easy-to-use, feature rich application for Mac and PC users. “We are constantly extending our library of DxO Lens Modules to offer photographers worldwide the greatest selection of correction capabilities,” said Luc Marin, vice president of the Photography Business Unit at DxO Labs.

PicaJet Press Release

Picajet is proud to announce the release of RoboImport. This is a powerful, but intuitive, solution for digital camera users at all levels from novice to professional. The major problem encountered by anyone who stores their photos on a PC is: How to import and organize a rapidly growing library of photographs in a logical and easy to access manner. Professional photographers will be especially interested in the RoboImport features that streamline and efficiently automate their digital image processing workflow. RoboImport takes an innovative approach to this camera to PC image transfer problem. It automatically starts up, downloads images from the camera, renames them and transfers them to a well organized folder structure according to a preselected naming scheme. When RoboImport file transfer is complete another application, such as the PicaJet Photo Organizer, can be automatically started.

Datacatch Press Release

Extending Search beyond the Desktop and Internet - Datacatch Librarian, Seamlessly Integrated with Microsoft Windows Explorer, Makes Searching Removable Media as Easy as Searching Your Hard Drive or the Internet

PALO ALTO, California — August 2, 2006 — Datacatch Inc., an independent software company based in the U.S. and Australia, today formally launched Datacatch® Librarian®, a new application for managing and organizing information and data that is backed up, stored, or used through removable media.  With the increasing amount of data that is collected on a computer—including critical files, financial records, software programs, family photos, and music files— it is easy to get disorganized. Datacatch Librarian provides the tools necessary to search, retrieve, and manage a collection of removable media including removable hard drives, USB keys, photo memory cards, and optical discs such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. By effectively throwing a net over a computer, Datacatch Librarian recognizes whenever removable media is inserted or connected and in turn, catches and organizes details about the media and the files it contains, including file and folder details, as well as thumbnail images, so the data can be retrieved quickly.

DxO Labs Press Release

DxO Labs Announces Availability of DxO Optics Pro v4 Public Beta Release - Automatic image enhancement software introduces advanced color features, new optical corrections, improved workflow and speed as well as plug-in compatibility with Adobe Photoshop

New York, NY and Paris, France – August 3, 2006 – DxO Labs announces today availability of a free, Windows PC public beta release of DxO Optics Pro v4 for all digital photographers to download from the DxO Labs Web site (www.dxo.com).  DxO Optics Pro software improves the image quality of Digital Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras and advanced digicams. DxO Optics Pro is the award-winning digital image enhancement tool incorporating revolutionary optics, noise and exposure corrections in an easy-to-use, feature rich application for Mac and PC users. “DxO Optics Pro v4 brings a wealth of true innovations including faster throughput and significantly improved control over color and optical performance,” said Luc Marin, vice president of the Photography Business Unit at DxO Labs. “In the eight months since releasing the previous (v3.5) DxO Optics Pro software, our engineers have worked diligently to add the kinds of improvements photographers world wide have been requesting.”

Breeze Systems Press Release

BreezeBrowser Pro v1.5.2.1 adds support for reading and writing Adobe XMP data, new keyword, IPTC scene and subject code editors and picture frames for slideshows and proofs. New in BreezeBrowser Pro v1.5.2.1:

  * Added support for reading and writing Adobe XMP data for raw files (using XMP sidecar files) and JPEG, TIFF, DNG, PSD, PNG and JPEG 2000 image formats
  * Added picture frame from image option to proofs and slideshow
  * Added Adobe Photoshop PSD 8-bit and 16-bit file output options to proofs and raw conversion
  * Added new keyword editor
  * Added new IPTC scene and IPTC subject code editors which use the IPTC’s NewsCode XML topicsets
  * Improved color when converting Nikon D200 raw files

http://www.breezesys.com/index.htm

Nikon have posted four introductory tutorial movies for their new Capture NX image editing software, covering the basic features, U point technology, controlling dynamic range and enhancement tools. Well worth a look if you’re interested in what Capture NX has to offer.

Website: Nikon Capture NX Tutorials

Microsoft have been busy in the realm of photography recently. Not only have they been actively promoting the scRGB colour space and introducing a brand new photo file format, the software giant’s engineers have just unveiled something called Photosynth to the world. Still at the “technology preview” stage (which means that you can’t download/buy it yet), Microsoft Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. In this case images are much better than words, so watch some promotional videos to get a much better idea of what Photosynth actually does. Which I’m sure you will agree looks much more worthwhile than yet another file format…

Update: Channel 9 is a Microsoft site that contains some technical discussion about Photosynth.

Alien Skin Software Press Release

RALEIGH, N.C.–Aug. 1, 2006– Alien Skin Software today released Blow Up, an all-new plug-in for Adobe® Photoshop® and Photoshop Elements. Designed for both photographers and graphic artists, Blow Up offers the highest quality image enlargement available. Blow Up simplifies and improves image enlargement, making it easy to convert web graphics to print and create large format and gallery prints from digital snapshots. Better than Photoshop bicubic and other third party solutions, Blow Up preserves the crisp lines and smooth colors in a source image. Blow Up scales images up to 3600% — 6 times in each dimension — with no stairstep, halo, or fringe artifacts.