The Plugin Site Press Release 05/01/04

January 5, 2004 - The Plugin Site (http://www.thepluginsite.com) is pleased to announce Version 1.02 of FocalBlade, a Photoshop-compatible plugin for sharpening your photos for screen display and printing as well as for producing great looking blur, soft focus and glow effects on 8bit and 16bit images. FocalBlade lets you sharpen photos without amplifying noise or artifacts and produces impressive sharpening results even on low quality images. FocalBlade is the second product in our new PhotoWiz product line, which sets a new standard for photo correction tools. It can be used with a wide range of graphics applications, e.g. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, PhotoImpact and Fireworks.

New in Version 1.02
FocalBlade 1.02 makes stronger sharpening possible by extending the range of the Sharpen sliders to 1000% and in the Deblur Modes even to 2000%. The FocalBlade window and preview are resizable now and even supports a minimum screen resolution of 640x480 pixel. Other highlights in this release are the new Antialias feature for reducing artifacts and grain as well as a memory usage optimization that allows a 100% preview for images of any size without using any additional RAM. 15 new preset files for creating artistic effects have been included and Cloak Mode has been improved considerably for batch processing.

Digital Outback Photo have reviewed PowerRetouche Black & White Studio, a plugin for PC and Mac which works in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. As the name suggests, this pulgin allows you to convert colour images to black and white.

“Different B&W films have different spectral sensitivities. B&W studio lets you select from some presets and then even let you control the seven sliders yourself. We use TriX most of the time. But in some cases we like to show e.g. blue darken then we change the values. All settings in B&W studio can be saved and loaded back.”

Website: Digital Outback Photo - PowerRetouche Black & White Studio Review

Website: PowerRetouche

Roger Cavanagh and Paul Jaruszewski are working on an interesting set of JavaScript programmes called the Variations Suite. Apparently each script in the suite will display up to eight previews of your image with different processing treatments applied. The first component to be released will be Velvia Variations, followed by B+W Variations and Toning Variations. Variations Suite scripts will work on both 8-bit and 16-bit images, and will use the colour space of the active image when creating the previews. The scripts in the Variations Suite are compatible with Photoshop CS and will not run in other versions of Photoshop. One to keep an eye on…

Website: The Variations Suite

Paul Caldwell has reviewed yet another product that offers a way to sharpen your images. Noel Carboni’s Fractal Sharpening actions use a version of Genuine Fractals to achieve the sharpening effect:

“I have to say; yes I am very impressed with Fractal Sharpening. If you own Genuine Fractals, it’s a no brainer, here, go to Noel’s site and buy this tool, since at 15.00 dollars it’s a deal. If you don’t own Genuine Fractals, I would strongly recommend that you go out and purchase it just so you can use this action, it’s that good.”

Website: Paul Caldwell - Fractal Sharpening Review

Picasa Press Release 23/12/03

WHO: The procrastinators who need the perfect gift for the digital camera enthusiast.

WHAT: Picasa, a photo organizer that can be used by photographers of all skill levels to easily categorize their digital photo libraries, fills a common problem faced by anyone who saves digital photos to the PC. Picasa is the most efficient and easy-to-use way to organize new and old Holiday photographs, memories and events from your life. Picasa users do not have to manually organize their digital photos; all images on the hard drive are added upon installation and new images are automatically added as they are saved.

WHY: Upon installation, all images on the hard drive are automatically organized into albums, and new images are automatically added as they are saved to a user’s hard drive. Picasa allows its users to browse quickly through the entire collection of photos on their PC by displaying thumbnails of each image. The thumbnail system removes the need to search for digital pictures using original file names, which makes it difficult for most digital camera owners to find the photo they need. Advanced features include: cropping, rotation, red-eye removal, keyword search, slideshow (with music), movie support and photo timeline display.

WHERE: Consumers can purchase Picasa for $29.00 or download a free 15-day trial at: www.picasa.net.

PMA Newsline International Release 19/12/03

ACDSee 6.0, ACDSee 6.0 PowerPack released in French, Italian, German, Spanish

ACD Systems International Inc., Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, released ACDSee 6.0 and ACDSee 6.0 PowerPack in the French, Italian, German and Spanish (FIGS) languages. ACDSee is known for its image management capabilities and ability to work with digital image collections of all sizes. Retail versions of ACDSee 6.0 and ACDSee 6.0 PowerPack FIGS will also be made available in the European marketplace.

ACDSee 6.0 - is the newest version of ACD Systems’ digital imaging software program. New features include the ability to rate images, burn photos to CD/DVDs and quickly view and locate photos from different folders and categories with the Easy Select and Selective Browsing features. ACDSee 6.0 PowerPack includes ACDSee 6.0. It also includes ACD FotoCanvas 3.0, which allows users to make quick edits to their digital photos and create simple web graphics, and ACD FotoSlate 3.0, which is the new version of the company’s photo printing program.

The French, Italian, German and Spanish versions of ACDSee 6.0 are available for US$59.99. The ACDSee 6.0 PowerPack versions are available for US$89.99. Upgrade pricing is also available. For more information, visit www.ACDSYSTEMS.com.

www.ACDSYSTEMS.com

Phase One have released a new version of their popular RAW conversion software, Capture One. The new Special Edition is available now for purchase for $199 (after Dec 31 - $249) at www.pictureflow.com. This includes a free camera profile from Etcetera.cc (by Magne Nilsen). Capture One SE is positioned between Capture One LE (Light Edition) and Capture One, which is the full version.

Website: www.pictureflow.com

Phase One Press Release 19/12/03
New C1 “Special Edition” RAW conversion software breaks price barrier for high-end digital SLR shooters for Mac and Windows

- New C1 SE RAW Workflow software announced at $249 with full “Pro” camera support; special introductory pricing now available on C1 SE for $199 until end of year -

NORTHPORT, NY, December 19, 2003 - Phase One, the world leader in professional digital imaging camera backs and software, is pleased to announce C1 Special Edition (SE) RAW Workflow software, the latest version in the C1 DSLR line of RAW Workflow Solutions which is being rolled-out today.

The extensive feature set of the new C1 SE RAW Workflow software is based on the C1 LE (Limited Edition) version, with the exception of the RAW conversion simultaneous batch limit being raised to 100 images (from 20 in LE) and the addition of the full camera support previously available only in the C1 PRO version. On the Mac platform, RAW conversion support is provided for the full line of Canon digital SLR?s (1Ds, 1D, 10D, 300D, D30 and D60). On the Windows platform, the Nikon D1X and D100 are also supported, in addition to the full Canon DSLR lineup. All C1 versions, including the new C1 SE, provide unlimited batch processing by using the Quick Proof Export function which converts RAW files into high-quality proofs in approximately three (3) seconds each (depending on computer configuration).

To celebrate the release of C1 SE, special pre-release pricing of $199 is now available from the three authorized C1 web sites: www.c1dslr.com, www.pictureflow.com (US) and www.pixource.com (Asia).

Version 3.3. of Pixory has just been released. This software program allows you to store your photos on your own PC but to access, compose into albums, and share them anywhere on the internet. It’s your personal online photo sharing service, running on your computer using your broadband internet connection. Pixory is a client and a server, a lightweight web application for browsing photo collections on your hardrive; an album server to your friends and family or anyone on the internet. It simplifies accessing and organizing photo collections on your home network. Pixory is free for non-commercial use.

Website: http://www.pixory.org

Brilliant Labs Press Release 16/12/03

December 16, 2003 03:05 PM London Timezone

BrilliantPhoto Brings Order to Digital Photo Collections; New Full-featured Photo Manager Takes a Fresh Approach to Organizing Large Collections of Digital Photos

MT. PLEASANT, S.C.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 16, 2003—Brilliant Labs today announced the release of BrilliantPhoto, a new software tool for managing, sharing and editing digital photographs. Developed by Jim Lamb, former director of product development for Intuit Inc. and architect for Symantec Corporation’s Consumer Products Division, BrilliantPhoto is a feature-rich product that simplifies importing, organizing, editing, and sharing digital photos.
Lamb designed the software to meet his own needs as a digital photography buff who has taken thousands of digital photos of his two young children. “As we took more and more pictures with the digital camera, it became increasingly difficult to manage our photo collection. I designed BrilliantPhoto to organize my photos automatically, let me add descriptive information quickly, and make it easier to share photos by e-mail.”

DataRescue Press Release 15/12/03

PhotoRescue 2.0 for Mac OS X and Windows Released

New versions of popular digital image recovery software

Liege, Belgium (15/12/2003) - DataRescue sa/nv, the developer of the innovative and popular digital photo recovery software, today announced the release of PhotoRescue 2.0.

The new versions, available on both the Mac and PC platform, build on PhotoRescue’s widely acclaimed “what you see is what you get” digital image recovery engine to deliver a faster, more efficient solution for digital photographers.

Version 2.0 recovers more images, from bigger storage devices, up to ten times faster than its predecessor whose recovery engine already outperformed the competition in each and every data-recovery test run by Personal Computer Magazine (Issue 5, May 2003).

These astounding recovery rates are obtained through a proprietary data-recovery engine that dynamically switches between up to twelve data-recovery algorithms to
apply a case-by-case optimised recovery strategy. True “What You See is What You Get” performance is achieved by on-the-fly rendering of picture thumbnails; the only technique that accurately reflects the content of a damaged media.

“I was able to recover 97% of the photos that were on the card and all critical photos using your software.  It was extraordinary how well PhotoRescue works and how quickly. It really saved a lot of memories we’d not have had without the product’s effectiveness.” said Douglas Brown from California.

PhotoRescue 2.0 is available today in a simplified Wizard version, and a more advanced Expert version for the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, including the latest Panther release. Both versions, available in most languages, can be freely evaluated and are available for download at www.datarescue.com/photorescue/download.htm.

DataRescue has also upgraded its reseller offering by including both its PC Expert and Mac OS X Expert version in a single package priced at $39.

About DataRescue:
DataRescue Inc is a privately owned company located in Liege, Belgium.
Its flagship product, the IDA Pro Disassembler was a PC Magazine Award for Technical Excellence finalist in 2001 and is used by governmental agencies and major IT security developers worldwide.

A new version of BreezeBrowser, the popular browser for viewing and manipulating digital images, has recently been released. BreezeBrowser v2.8 now includes Canon Digital Rebel/300D support with raw conversion, focus point overlay display and full shooting data display.

Also new in this release:

- New ‘film strip’ view
- Displays Nikon D2H, Pentax *ist D, Olympus E1 and Minolta A1 raw files complete with shooting data
- Reads Adobe XMP shooting data when EXIF shooting data isn’t available
- Now reads and writes thumbnail data to JPEG and TIFF images for faster display of thumbnails

BreezeBrowser v2.8 is a free upgrade for all registered users.

Website: Breeze Systems

About.com have posted a review of the Canvas 9 Professional Edition, an all-in-one graphics suite from ACD Systems.

“Canvas offers a unified creative environment for intermediate to advanced graphics software users on the Macintosh or Windows platform. Priced at $399 US for new users and $299 US for competitive upgrades, this all-in-one graphics suite is an exceptional value. The product is well documented, stable, and backed by 18 years of development experience.”

Website: About.com - Canvas 9 Professional Edition Review

Fred Miranda has completed updating his popular range of Photoshop plugins so that they are all compatible with Photoshop CS in 16-bit mode. He has also announced a brand-new plugin called DRI Pro which increases dynamic range:

“All FM Plugins (PC and Mac) are now compatible with Photoshop CS in 16-bit mode. This includes, ISOx Pro, SI Pro, WP Pro, SR Pro, Intellisharpen Pro and all of the CSpro custom made sharpening plugins. The CSpro series offers solutions to many digital SLRs and includes the 10D CSpro, D60 CSpro, 300D CSpro, 1D CSpro, 1Ds CSpro, and Nikon CSpro plugins.

In addition, I just released the PC and Mac versions of the new DRI Pro Plugin (Dynamic Range Increase). This professional tool offers an easy and efficient solution to increase dynamic range by blending two images shot at different exposures. One exposed for shadow detail and the other for the highlights. Result: You end up with the best of both. DRI Pro works with all digital camera files or scanned film.”

Website: Fred Miranda

An update to the popular printing software program Qimage has just been released. Qimage v2004.110 has two powerful new features called “Selective color filter” and “Print filters”:

Selective color filter: Take control of every aspect of color in your images with the ability to apply color tweaks to specific areas of the color spectrum independently! Now you can correct those reds that look orange, blues that look too purple, or even remove a color cast from grays without affecting other (non-neutral) colors.

Print filters: Any filter that you design with Qimage’s batch filter can now be associated with your printer! This powerful feature combined with the selective color filter allow you to take control of printed color like never before. Tired of having your images look great on screen only to print with a magenta color cast when you print on your favorite paper? You can now create an associative filter that eliminates that magenta color cast (and can fix nearly any issue related to printed color) and associate that filter with your printer. Just create your filter, save the filter, and activate it by checking “P.Filter” on the bottom right of the main window and all prints sent to the printer will pass through your filter as a last step! The new P.Filter selection is even saved with “Save Printer Setup” and “Load Printer Setup” so that you can place a filter on your printer and load that setup and filter at any time.

Website: Qimage

The Norwegian website Akamera.no have published a brief review of the digital video software program, Magix Movies on CD & DVD. This program allows you to import videos from DV/Hi8-Camcorder, VHS, TV, Internet, etc and automatically transfer them onto (S)Video CD or DVD.

Website: Akamera.no - Magix Movies on CD and DVD Review

Website: Magix Movies on CD and DVD

Electric Shoebox from Constant Time Software lets you organize, edit, and instantly share your photos. Photo tagging allows you to quickly organize and search through thousands of photos. Built-in photo editing includes auto-image enhancement, red-eye removal, cropping, and color adjustment. Electric Shoebox’s sharing functionality lets you share your photos with friends and family via the web without having to use an online service, like Ofoto or Yahoo! Photos. Electric Shoebox uses your own computer to serve shared photos to others. To view shared albums, people just point their web browser at your computer. A personalized domain name is provided for free. Installation is easy, with no need to setup a web server or other software. Also, since Electric Shoebox is running locally on your computer, there are no restrictions on disk space and no long photo upload times as there are with the online services.

Electric Shoebox is for Windows XP and is available for $29 from http://photos.constanttime.com.

DigitalSecrets.Net will release Version 6.0 of the Nikon eBook, “Mastering Nikon? Compact Digital Cameras” on December 4, 2003.

Winning Camera, Championship Optics.

Too small, right? That little 5400 can’t be all Nikon claims it to be, right? It couldn’t possibly do all that iNova says it can do, right? Guess again, shutter finger, this camera packs more into a small place than you (or I) ever believed could be accomplished.

The Version 6.0 Nikon eBook tells all. And reveals the secrets, special techniques, hidden values and extra credit this small, wide angle Coolpix has to offer. New interactive elements add to the spirit of discovery. Roll your mouse over an image and find what lies beneath. Or click on it and reveal even more.

Version 6.0—over 500 pages deep! With new iNovaFX Photoshop Actions to improve, enhance, correct and refine your images—nearly 400 in all, including the new iFish series, iVignette series, iDots graphic series and of course new iBC5.4K barrel correction Actions for the CP5400 plus iCC5.4k color correction actions that whisk away your most egregious color white balance errors.

Website: Nikon eBook Version 6.0

File Viewer Utility Updaters for Windows and Macintosh
Canon is releasing updaters for File Viewer Utility, the latest version of RAW image conversion software for PowerShot and EOS DIGITAL cameras.

File Viewer Utility allows you to process RAW images into 16-bit TIFF files, 8-bit TIFF files or JPEGs. In addition, the File Viewer Utility can be used for image file management and a broad range of RAW file adjustments, including image processing parameters (digital exposure compensation, white balance and color matrix settings, custom tone curves, subject pattern sharpness and edge enhancement), as well as detailed IPTC captioning and even the application of up to 26 different Personal Functions to the EOS-1D and EOS-1Ds. Check the Camera Users Guide to see if your camera supports shooting RAW files.

Notice: The RAW image processing options will change depending on the camera model the RAW images were taken with.

http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/customer/fvu-e.html

Swich Press Release 09/12/03

—SWiSHpix HAS ARRIVED—

SWiSHpix lets you create animated Flash photo albums from your favorite digital photos. Simply select your photos, edit or crop to make them perfect, choose one of the presentation themes, add music, callouts or clipart (WMF, EMF, SWI, GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG) and you’ll have a stunning photo album in minutes. You can burn to an auto play CD ROM, create files ready to upload to the web (HTML etc.) as well as publish as a standalone EXE file or a self-installing screen saver, which you can email to your friends. You can make your own themes, or edit the themes we offer to truly personalize your album. You can also incorporate SWiSHpix’s Flash photo albums into your existing Flash web site - the possibilities are endless!

Download the 15 day free trial here:
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=downloads&tab=downloads&product=pix

—SWiSHpix $10 DISCOUNT SPECIAL—

To celebrate the release of SWiSHpix and help you get those festive season snaps on the web, we’re offering $10 off SWiSHpix until January 30th!

At only $19.95 that’s a 33% discount on the RRP of US$29.95. This offer ends January 30th, so get in quick!

Purchase SWiSHpix here:
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=purchase&product=pix

The Plugin Site Press Release 04/12/03

December 4, 2003 - The Plugin Site (www.ThePluginSite.com) is pleased to announce Version 1.0 of PhotoFreebies, the third product in its popular PhotoWiz product series. PhotoFreebies is a collection of 10 Photoshop-compatible plugins for performing useful photo manipulations and effects. They can be used with dozens of different image editing applications e.g. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, PhotoImpact and many others.

Background
To celebrate the success of our PhotoWiz product series we decided to release the free PhotoFreebies. Our intention was to create small and easy-to-use utilities for image manipulation. The PhotoFreebies produce general effects that are needed from time to time and are only inconveniently reproducible in common graphics tools. Additionally you can also find some features of our other PhotoWiz products in a more simplified form in the PhotoFreebies collection. The PhotoFreebies collection will be expanded with even more attractive plugins in future.

Features
The PhotoFreebies collections contains sepia effects, saturation gradients, b/w conversion, color space transformations and many more. All plugins can be used on 8bit and 16bit RGB images, except the Histo Fix plugin which only works on 8bit images. The Remove Transparency plugin on the other hand works in almost all image modes that are provided by Photoshop. Some of the plugins have a dialog with a zoomable preview and adjustable controls whereas others are applied instantly without displaying a dialog.

Plugin Descriptions
The Sepia plugin from PhotoFreebies lets you apply five sepia effects with the help of a combo box, a color slider and a Contrast Fix check box. The Desaturation Gradient plugin gradually desaturates the image in four possible directions. Luma Negative turns the image into a negative without changing the colors whereas the B/W plugin converts the image into a grayscale version, that comes closer to the original than currently provided methods. Histo Fix fixes the chopped histogram of a repeatedly filtered image by interpolating lost image information. It offers an option to regain 1/2 bit, 1 bit or 2 bit of information. The Remove Transparency plugin makes a transparent layer fully opaque again. Last, but not least there are also four plugins that transform RGB values into HSL or YCC values and back again without leaving RGB mode. That allows you to manipulate the images in color spaces that aren’t provided by most image applications.

Availability & System Requirements
PhotoFreebies is currently only available for Windows. A Macintosh version is planned. PhotoFreebies is freeware and can be downloaded from
http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/. The two other PhotoWiz products called ColorWasher and FocalBlade are commercial.

Company Info
The Plugin Site is located in Nuremberg, Germany, and develops graphics, video and web software. We also created the Plugin Galaxy, Plugin Commander, HyperTyle, Edge & Frame Galaxy, HTML Shrinker, Harry’s Filters and Photo Galaxy products. We co-produced Alpha Magic with Hollywood FX and Pinnacle and also co-develop the FilterMeister plugin development environment with AFH Systems.