ACDSee 7 (Build 61) Update Notes

This free update includes various bug fixes and the following new features:

Save and edit slide show and screen saver projects with the Create Slide Show Wizard. 
Automatically rotate JPEG and TIFF images (based on their EXIF data) when displayed in ACDSee.
Map multiple EXIF and database fields with the Copy EXIF Information Wizard.
To use this update, you must have ACDSee 7 (Build 43 or 47) installed on your computer.

To check the ACDSee 7 build number:
In ACDSee, click Help | About ACDSee.

Note:  When updating your software, please make sure you select the correct update. For example, if you purchased ACDSee 7 PowerPack, you must select the update for ACDSee 7 PowerPack.

If you have ACDSee 7 PowerPack installed, and select the update for ACDSee 7, you will receive an error informing you that the software is not installed.

http://www.acdsystems.com/english/Support/Downloads/Updates/ACDSee/70

Alien Skin Software Press Release 07/12/04

Raleigh, NC (December 7, 2004) — Alien Skin Software today announced the release of Eye Candy® 5: Nature (Nature), a set of 10 plug-in filters for Adobe® Photoshop®, Adobe Photoshop Elements®, Jasc® Paint Shop Pro™ and Macromedia® Fireworks®. Nature simulates a variety of phenomena, including fire, smoke, rust, snow, ice and more. The second of a three-part upgrade to Eye Candy 4000, Nature features four all-new filters and six reincarnated Eye Candy classics. Graphic designers, digital photographers and Web or multimedia content creators will appreciate Nature’s versatile and beautifully rendered effects.

Digital Outback Photo have just reviewed Extensis Portfolio 7:

“Extensis Portfolio 7 is a very capable program for cataloguing your images and subsequently finding them again, even if the media where they are stored is offline. The free add-on browser program is a very cool feature that in itself might be worth the cost of the software. At $199, it’s not inexpensive, but the ease of use to build and search catalogues, the browser add on and the portability of all catalogues make it definitely worth the money. I can highly recommend it.”

Website: Digital Outback Photo - Extensis Portfolio 7 Review

Shuttertalk have taken a look at Focal Blade, a PC-only sharpening plugin for Photoshop:

“FocalBlade has been around since 2003, and met with favorable reviews early on. As I was quite satisfied with my sharpening workflow at the time, I was hesitant to pay for yet another program claiming to be the holy grail of digital image sharpening. Having already tried Nik Sharpener, modifications of Fred Miranda?s old EdgeSharpen action, and numerous other techniques, I wasn?t fully satisfied with any of them and expected FocalBlade to also disappoint. Now that I?ve gotten my hands on a review copy, I?ve decided to put it to the test.”

Website: Shuttertalk - FocalBlade Review

Corel Press Release

Corel Spreads Good Cheer with New Holiday Promotions-Seasonal Bundles Combine Industry’s Best Software, Hardware and Training Resources

OTTAWA—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 6, 2004—Just in time for the holidays, Corel today announced a series of exciting new promotions giving customers access to some of the industry’s best software, hardware and training resources, free of charge(i). Working closely with its partners, Corel has assembled a collection of special offers that provide exceptional variety, value and choice to holiday shoppers:

Print Holiday Photos Instantly with Free Lexmark Color Jetprinter(TM)
Beginning today and for a limited time this holiday season, customers who purchase either CorelDRAW(R) Graphics Suite 12 or WordPerfect(R) Office 12 will be eligible to receive a free Lexmark Z715 Color Jetprinter, the ideal companion for fast, easy, and professional quality printing of business reports, school projects or favorite holiday photos. To receive their free Lexmark Color Jetprinter, customers must complete and submit the mail-in rebate available at participating Corel retailers. Some participating retailers include CompUSA, PC Mall, Office Depot and Future Shop. This offer runs until January 31, 2005 or while quantities last.

Breeze Systems Press Release 06/12/04

6th December, 2004 : Breeze Systems today announced BreezeBrowser Pro, new version of their well known image browser, raw conversion, and web page generation software. 

Company Founder and Director Chris Breeze said “Professionals love the speed and simplicity with which they can review images using BreezeBrowser. The new BreezeBrowser Pro introduces a unique combined conversion facility, outstandingly fast image browsing and side by side image comparison.”

BreezeBrowser Pro gives photographers the toolset they need to:

Convert, resize, sharpen and level raw images for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta and Olympus cameras
Enhance recovered highlight colors with BreezeBrowser Pro?s unique combined raw conversion for Canon cameras including EOS-1Ds MkII, 20D, 1D MkII and Pro1.
Browse images incredibly quickly in several modes
Display most major image formats including raw, JPEG, TIFF and Adobe DNG.
Extensive handling of EXIF shooting and IPTC data plus raw+JPEG handling
Rotate JPEGS losslessly
Generate attractive web pages simply and quickly
Caption, watermark and include online ordering on web pages
Print contact sheets or output them to file
Batch process images and galleries

Digital Outback Photo have written a tutorial about tonality tuning and also offer their first commercial plugin/action tuning toolkit.

“Most of us have the desire to get the final image from the raw converter and we probably can get close. But once you start printing and want to get optimal quality you will start tuning. This article will deal only with the aspect of tonality tuning. In principle it all comes down to some sort of subtle dodge & burn. But with many images it can get very tedious if done only manually. Fortunately Photoshop provides powerful tools to streamline this process. The whole process is based on layers in Photoshop. If you want to learn more to understand layers for the use in photography then have a look at our e-books.”

Website: Digital Outback Photo - Tonality Tuning

Bibble Labs Press Release 02/12/04

Bibble Labs announces competitive upgrade program for C1 users.

Discounted price upgrade to Bibble 4.1 with Canon EOS 1ds Mark 2 Support and Hihglight recovery.

Austin Texas (December 2nd, 2004) - Bibble Labs today announced the availability of limited time special upgrade pricing for existing licensees of Phase One’s C1 product who wish to acquire the latest version of Bibble Pro 4.1

Through December 20th, 2004 existing C1 users will be able to purchase Bibble Pro 4.1 for the special price of $99 by providing qualifying proof of purchase for any version of C1. For more details on the program, please visit us on the web at http://www.bibblelabs.com/c1.html.

Phase One Press Release 01/12/04

Phase One is very pleased to announce its latest version of the popular C1 RAW workflow software. C1 3.6 for Mac OSX includes many new exciting features as well as improved functionalities.

Before & after preview
Before/after preview allows you to conveniently verify your image corrections while you carry them out. Before/after is easy to use and saves you time in the retouching process.

Export image index
C1 3.6 provides you with the ability to export your thumbnail previews as HTML. One click and the entire image collection or selected files are exported into an HTML file. The file then can be accessed and approved by your clients.

Improved 2 up and 4 up comparison
The 2 up/4 up preview functionality has become more intuitive to use. You can do multiple selections of the thumbnails you wish to preview. You can assign one of the 2 up or 4 up preview windows to work as a thumbnail browser. The left arrow key and the up key can be used as browsing hot keys. 

ProFotoSoftware Ltd Press Release 02/12/04

December 2nd, 2004 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ProFotoSoftware have today released patch #1 for PFS Image Darkroom V1.10

This corrects a fault with the installation file that affected the development of EOS 20D and 1Ds MKII images.

The patch can be downloaded from: http://www.profotosoftware.com/eos_raw.php

DxO Press Release 30/11/04

We’re delighted to announce that DxO Optics Pro 2.0 and DxO Raw Engine both now support the brand new Canon EOS 20D.

DxO Raw Engine from now on also supports the Canon EOS Digital Rebel/ 300D.
An innovative solution making it possible to achieve optimum image quality, DxO Optics Pro with DxO Raw Engine have won many accolades from the specialist press and experts. Three examples: 

Keith Cooper professional photographer with a deep digtal experience did a very interesting review of DxO Optics Pro 2.0 and DxO Raw Engine which you can read here.
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/dxo_raw1.html

ProFotoSoftware Ltd Press Release 30/11/04
 
ProFotoSoftware have today released version 1.10 of PFS Image Darkroom for Windows,a program for converting Canon RAW images from EOS Digital SLRs into 16 bit and 8 bit TIF files as well as 8 bit JPEG files.

This new release adds support for the 20D and 1Ds Mark II EOS Digital SLRs, as well as improving the Raw Preview facility.

PFS Image Darkroom improves digital photographer’s workflow by removing the frustrating delays associated with Raw image processing. The software remains fully operational during Raw processing, enabling users to prepare the next image or set of images for processing instead of pausing whilst the processing is performed.

Fred Miranda has released Canon 20D CSpro, a new sharpening Photoshop plug-infor the Canon EOS 20D DSLR.

The Canon 20D CSpro plugin is a new sharpening technology specific designed to accommodate Canon 20D SLR files. This plugin is compatible with JPEG files straight from the camera or TIFF/JPEG files converted from RAW files.

lthough the Canon 20D CSpro’s interface appears simple and intuitive, complexity makes this plugin very smart: It provides everything from haloless sharpening, edge-sharpening, luminance sharpening, mode sharpening, and more with just the press of a button. With this plugin you can also choose from low or high ISO settings.

Other options allow you to sharpen fine detail. There are pre-designed intensity levels, and options to reduce color noise from high ISO files. You can even create your own sharpening settings, preview settings and tweak intensity results.

Website: Fred Miranda

A new version of Qimage, which is designed to make image printing easy, has just been released.

Qimage v2005.100 (11/30/04):

New Features:

Improved performance: v2005.100 may look the same on the outside, but a major redesign of the internal image processing algorithms has put a brand new powerplant under the hood! v2005.100 is both faster and less memory intensive than prior versions. You’ll see a performance increase of about 30% or better on many operations such as printing and will see some operations finish up to 5 times faster than before, all while using less memory (RAM and hard drive scratch space) than ever before!

Improved stability: The reduced memory footprint of v2005.100 leads to greater overall stability when performing time and memory intensive operations and will assist in getting the job through on those older, slower, and less capable machines.

Olympus Press Release

Olympus Studio - Advanced RAW Image Photofinishing and Camera Control, Now with Powerful Support for the E-300
 
Olympus Imaging Corporation (President: Hiroshi Komiya) is pleased to announce the “Olympus Studio 1.2” software package. In addition to the features of the “Olympus Studio” package, which provides powerful digital work-flow support for digital single-lens reflex users, including professional photographers, the new package provides advanced RAW photofinishing and camera control functions. It also supports the “E-300” entry-level single-lens reflex camera.

Designer-Info.com have recently published their review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0.

“What can I say? I?ve been arguing for years that the vast majority of digital camera users have been badly served by their photo editing software. Adobe has clearly seen the light, gone back to the drawing board and come up with a near ideal solution (assuming your system meets its requirements). Photoshop Elements 3 is the program your digital camera has been crying out for.”

Website: Designer-Info.com - Photoshop Elements 3 Review

Check the Latest Prices for Adobe Photoshop Elements 3

graphicxtras.com Press Release 25/11/04

4000 powerful style effects for use in Photoshop (r) CS 7 6 and Photoshop Elements. OSX/Mac and PC - ‘styles collection 2’ from graphicxtras.com

4000 styles for use in Photoshop over 40 themed style sets. A wide range of exciting dynamic styles / layer effects for instant use and effect in Photoshop. The set consists of plastics, metals, glows, wood grains, buttons, shimmers, weird and wonderful and surreal as well as utility.

The set is for Photoshop CS as well as earlier + Photoshop Elements. Also available, earlier volume of 2000 styles.

USD $19,99   Euros 17,99 GBP ?13.99 download only
http://www.graphicxtras.com/products/psstyles2.htm
Photoshop is registered trademark of Adobe

Canon USA have released new versions of three of their software programs - Digital Photo Professional, EOS Viewer Utility and EOS Capture (full details over at Rob Galbraith). DPP 1.5 is available for Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE and Mac OS X Version 10.2 or higher. EVU 1.2.1 and EOS Capture are available for Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE and Mac OS 9 as well as Mac OS X Version 10.2 or higher.

Thanks to Sailesh Panchal for letting me know :-)

Website: Canon USA Downloads

Website: Rob Galbraith - Canon DPP 1.5, EVU 1.2.1 and EOS Capture 1.2 now available

Nikon have released a new version of their PictureProject software which ships with most Nikon digital cameras. Version 1.1 adds a long list of improvements and changes which are documented at the website below.

Website: Nikon PictureProject Version 1.1 - Windows

This looks like an unmissable offer for Canon and Nikon owners who live in the USA. Upgrade from Photoshop Elements to Photoshop CS for just $299, a saving of $350! (found via DigiCamera.net).

Website: Adobe - Canon Offer

Website: Adobe - Nikon Offer