Michael Freeman’s international bestseller The Photographer’s Eye is now available as an iPad app. This digital version of the bestselling book features a video introduction, interactive elements including diagrams, and numerous recordings of the author. The Photographer’s Eye app is available now for $24.99.

Picfx 1.2 is an app for adding textures/frames/styles to photos. With picfx you can take a regular photo and apply 27 textures and frames with 13 styles to create a fantastic, unique looking picture. Picfx is available now for $1.99.

Rebit 5 is a new easy-to-use backup program that provides automatic, transparent and continuous backup for multimedia content including photos, videos and music. The new version of the Rebit software features anew user interface that provides backup and recovery status at a glance, concurrent support for both DAS and NAS, on-demand recovery point creation and USB 3.0 support for fast data transfer.Rebit 5 software is available in single and three-PC licenses at SRP £24.99 and £49.99 from Amazon UK.

Adobe has just posted the new Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 6.4 and Photoshop Lightroom 3.4 Release Candidates. Both updates fix a few bugs and includes support for many new cameras, including the Canon EOS 600D and EOS 1100D (pictured), the Hasselblad H4D-40, the Olympus E-PL1s, E-PL2 and XZ-1, plus the Samsung NX11. They also add support for 4 Canon EF, 3 Leica S and 6 Nikon F mount lenses.

Website: Adobe Camera Raw 6.4 RC
Website: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4 RC

iQuikDoF is an iPhone app that can emulate a number of special effects that normally require the use of specialised optics such as selective focus and tilt lenses. The app fully supports the Retina display of the iPhone 4 and offers an easy-to-use interface to adjust the level of blur around the sweet spot of sharpness. iQuikDoF 1.0 is available as a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Aptogo has updated its iPhone app Showtime to Version 2.0. The app allows you to use your iPhone as a remote control as you display your photos on any browser-based device on your wifi network: a computer, internet TV or games console. Version 2.0 adds support for more devices including the Nintendo Wii, and allows users to download full-length videos over WiFi to their computer, upload photos to their device’s camera roll, and view EXIF data and a mini map in a floating panel.

Website: Showtime

Global Delight’s Camera Plus Pro app has been updated to Version 3.3. This latest update allows users to add attractive borders such as stamp, polaroid, torn, grainy and more to their collection of photos, and adds 18 new photo effects for iPhone 3G users. And the app now also supports gestures such as pinch, pan and swipe while editing for better viewing of the applied effects on your iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and iPod touch. Camera Plus Pro 3.3 is $1.99 in the App Store.

Phase One and Profoto today announced the availability of a unique image capture and light control solution that allows photographers to capture images and to control lighting from within Capture One Pro 6, when using Profoto lighting equipment. The new light control solution requires installation of Capture One Pro 6, a Profoto Studio plugin, and the Profoto Air USB transceiver to wirelessly control the Profoto lighting equipment. “Prior to this solution, photographers would have to either switch between Capture One and Profoto Studio to get the optimal light on their set or they had to adjust the light manually,” said Carsten H. Olsen, senior product manager, Phase One. “Now photographers can stay focused on the scene and get their desired captures much faster.“ The solution is currently available on the Mac platform only.

Wignut has announced the immediate availability of Lo-Fi, a retro photo effect application for MacOS and Windows. The application allows users to mix a wide range of effects from the film world, such as grain, cross-processing, lens blur, light leaks, and frames. The program sells for $29.

DxO Labs have released DxO Optics Pro 6.5.5 for MacOS and Windows. The new version of the software adds support for the Sony A33 and Nikon Coolpix P7000 digital cameras in both its Standard and Elite editions. Furthermore, this release includes 50 new DxO Optics Modules, supporting lenses from Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, and Sony for numerous Canon, Nikon, and Sony camera bodies.

Website: DxO Labs

Pixolution GmbH has released visolu 1.2.1 for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app offers unique photo searching, sorting and finding technology that gives users an easy way to very quickly locate specific photos in their albums. Users are, with the mere tap of a button, able to view thousands of photos simultaneously in a wrapped map, grid or columned list view. Visolu 1.2.1 costs $0.99 and is available now on the App Store.

Nikon has posted an update to its View NX software. Version 2.1.1 fixes a bug that prevented display of images scanned in NEF format with the Nikon Coolscan V film scanner (pictured), and resolves a couple of further issues with the Windows and Mac versions of the software. View NX 2.1.1 can be downloaded from the website below.

Website: Nikon View NX

MacPhun has released a free update to its FX Photo Studio HD iPad app. The update adds 53 new photo processing effects and a completely customisable interface that allows users to label their most often used effects as favourites, save combinations of effects into presets, and share images and presets via social networking sites and e-mail.  Individual effects themselves can also be adjusted for deeper customisation. The update is free to existing users, while the app itself is $2.99 on the App Store.

Appsmaker has just released DataRescuePro. The program scans through the file system of all Windows-readable storage media to allow users ton restore accidently deleted or lost files. The comprehensive search function directly accesses the storage medium and searches for entries that are marked as deleted, whilst the sophisticated analysis functions ensure that these entries are scanned completely as possible and found. Memory areas that have been used by the deleted files are indentified, extracted and saved in a new file. DataRescuePro is available at RRP £39.99 from Amazon UK.

Nik Software today begun to ship Silver Efex Pro 2, a major upgrade to its black-and-white Silver Efex Pro software. Announced last month, Silver Efex Pro 2 includes new features such as the History Browser, Dynamic Brightness, Amplify Blacks, Amplify Whites, Soft Contrast, Fine Structure, Image Borders, and selective colourisation, as well as a variety of speed and quality improvements. Nik Software has worked closely with NVIDIA Corporation and has incorporated GPU-based image rendering to offer the fastest, most efficient processing on systems equipped with dedicated GPU processors, the company says. The suggested retail price of Silver Efex Pro 2 is €199.95. Note that Silver Efex Pro 2 installs as a 32-bit and 64-bit plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS4, Lightroom 2.6 or Apple Aperture 2.1.4 or later.

Hasselblad introduces the Phocus family of software products - Phocus 2.6, Phocus Quick and Phocus Mobile. Phocus 2.6 is Hasselblad’s powerful, easy-to-use imaging software. Phocus Quick offers a semi-automated solution to importing and processing raw files. Phocus Mobile is a free imaging app for iPads and iPhones.

Juicy Bits today Halftone 1.0, their new vintage effects app for iOS devices. The new application aged halftone-style printing effect to photos to give them a unique, vintage look. With nine paper styles, nine built-in layouts, two caption styles, and the ability to choose a font, photos can be customised, then saved to the photo album, sent via e-mail, and shared with friends on Facebook. Halftone is available on the App Store for $0.99.

Corel has just released Corel VideoStudio Pro X4. This latest version offers new time-lapse tools and new capabilities that make it easy to create a 3D look from your 2D videos. In addition, VideoStudio Pro X4 is optimised for second-genration Intel Core and AMD Fusion processors, while offering the unique Smart Proxy feature for users who may not have the latest hardware as well as support for CUDA, GPU acceleration to provide quick and responsive editing. Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 is available now in English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Russian at the SRP of £79.99 including VAT.

AKVIS has launched ArtWork 5.0, a program that transforms photos into paintings using various techniques. Version 5.0 introduces the Watercolour style, which allows you to convert any image in a watercolour painting.Also new to Version 5.0 are the Post Processing Tools (Smudge and Blur), which are available under the Business and Deluxe licenses. These tools help users improve the results obtained in the Oil and Watercolour styles. Additionally, photos are processed into oil paintings more quicky, and the resulting images are even closer to oil painting than in previous versions.

PSKiss has released a set of cross-camera colour DNG profiles that allows ACR and Lightroom users to apply a colour profile developed for one camera to raw files produced by a different one. For example, you can take a raw file from a Nikon D300 and apply a Leica M8 DNG profile to it for a ‘Leica look’. “Camera makers invest quite a lot of effort to produce pleasing colours for their cameras”, says Max Penson, Co-owner of PSKiss and chief of product development. “For instance, when you buy a Nikon camera you receive a number of colour ‘schemes’ (or colour profiles). Each colour profile is a result of their in interpretation for how colour should appear. With PSKiss Cross Camera Colour DNG Profiles, photographers can apply other camera brand ‘look’ to their RAW images”. Cross Camera Colour DNG Profiles are offered for 9.90$ per camera.