Canon Europe has acquired Kite.ly, a London-based mobile e-commerce platform specialising in personalised print. Alberto Spinelli, Senior Director of Digital Services at Canon Europe, says: “Bringing Kite.ly into the Canon group of companies is our latest move to expand Canon’s digital services offering, by making mobile printing ubiquitous. There is a fast-growing trend of consumers who want to shop for customised products and do it in an easy way from their mobile devices. The combination of Canon’s high quality printing technologies and Kite.ly’s easy-to-use solutions will create an unrivalled portfolio of print products, accessible to customers everywhere through existing and new imaging apps.” Kite.ly is joining Canon’s group of companies and brands that offer complementary digital services, including Lifecake and irista.

Ricoh Innovations today launched Keenai, a smart photo management service that keeps digital memories safe and organised. Available immediately in eight languages on Android, iOS, macOS, Windows and Windows Phone, Keenai is billed as the only photo service that connects all your devices and cameras, and unifies all your photos and videos for viewing and sharing on any device. Offering automatic cloud backup of unlimited, original-resolution photos and videos, Keenai enables sharing of stories as gorgeous albums that combine photos, videos and even 360° images. Albums can be privately shared with friends and family via email or shared links, and accessed via any web browser. “Consumers are struggling to keep track of all the photos and videos they capture using the different devices they own,” said Toshinori Arita, senior vice president, Ricoh Innovations. “Keenai provides a smart solution to this problem, and is designed so that non-technical people can gain control of all their photos, share them with friends and family, and feel confident that their memories are safe.” Members start with a free trial of 30 days. Thereafter, membership costs $4.99/month or $49.99/year.

UK Optics have announced the launch of a new website dedicated to their Novo brand. "All the products on this site are home grown and tweaked and developed by ourselves," says Tony Edwards, UK & European Sales Manager for UK Optics. These include hard cases, shoulder bags, backpacks, rolling bags, tripods, monopods, camera L-plates and a range of tripods heads comprising the Novo LGH 25 (£49.90), Novo LGH 30 (£104.90), Novo LGH 40 (£144.90), Novo LGH 55 (£199.90, pictured) and Novo CBH 40 (£84.90) ballheads

Aimed at both hobby and pro photographers and videographers in the UK, Lens Lab is primarily an equipment hire business - with a twist. Photographers can hire equipment for 1 day or 1 year to complete a paid photography assignment or just to have some fun. The twist is that the company also offers events such as meet-ups, photo walks and equipment tryout opportunities. Additionally, photographers can sell their gear or lend their gear out through the website. As part of their launch programme, Lens Lab is running a competition to give away £2000 of equipment.

Nikon has released a new version of its photo sharing service, Nikon Image Space. The company has added three new modes that allow users to enjoy photos from a variety of angles. The "View" mode supports intuitive browsing of photos, and the new "Report" mode enables analysis of aspects such as photographic tendencies from shooting information for uploaded photos and feedback on shared photos. The "Organise" mode (computer version only) has been improved to enable easier photo organisation with a left-and-right pane layout.

Adobe has announced the addition of 100,000 native 4K video assets to Adobe Stock. Available for licensing on stock.adobe.com, these videos can also be searched and purchased directly from the Creative Cloud Libraries panel in Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC and from there dragged directly into an open project. These new 4K assets are available today for $199.99. HD versions of the 4K clips are available for $79.99.

Photocrowd is an online community that's on a mission to rethink the humble photo contest and turn it into a truly rewarding experience. Founded by professional photographers Mike Betts and Liam Bailey, Photocrowd offers a novel approach to rating images, and a variety of "challenges" that harness the power and opinion of the crowd. As well as the crowd ratings, challenges are judged separately by an expert chosen from their panel of over 100 distinguished professionals, including well-known names such as Matt Kloskowski, Jack Hollingsworth and Robert Caplin. The expert also writes a series of informative image reviews, which are devoured by the site’s users who enjoy the insight into how professionals’ brains work. Winners get exposure that can’t be bought, on sites such as The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and The Daily Mail Online, and prizes come from photography brands like Lowepro, Alamy, B+H, Manfrotto and Peak Design.

The GoPro Awards is an ongoing programme that rewards the GoPro community for sharing their best GoPro photos and videos. GoPro encourages all GoPro customers, be they enthusiasts or production professionals, to participate by pursuing their interests, capturing their experiences with a GoPro and submitting their most compelling moments tothe awards website. GoPro Awards will be given for memorable photos ($500), raw video clips ($1000), and video edits ($5000) in a variety of genres including Action, Adventure, Animals, Family, Motorsports, Music, Sports, Science + How-To and Travel.

Zeiss have unveiled their new online platform, Lenspire. The website's content is grouped into six categories; Photographic Genres, Spotlight, Ambassadors, Gear, Know-How and Live. "With Lenspire, we are pursuing an educational approach by emphasising professional dialogue and direct contact between Zeiss experts and the user as well as between the users themselves," says Nicole Balle, the Marketing Manager for the Americas at Zeiss. "It's important to us to not only explain different applications, but also to present our ambassadors as mentors and to help users take advantage of their expertise."

Less than a year after its UK launch, calendar publishing platform Calvendo has reached the 1000-user milestone. As a professional publishing platform for wall calendars, Calvendo offers a unique service: creative users can design their own calendars online, and sell them on Amazon and other retail platforms. Before release, each calendar goes through a quality assessment process to ensure that products are fit to go to market. The service is free of charge, and Calvendo self-publishers get royalties for each calendar copy sold. The company’s UK division now has almost 1100 registered users and around 4500 calendars. “We’re very happy that so many English-language photographers and artists are already creating and publishing calendars with us, “ says Calvendo Managing Director Hans-Joachim Jauch. “We see a similarly successful development as when we initially launched in Germany in 2012 and are excited about our platform’s development for the upcoming calendar season.”

Pixbuf has just launched into public beta, and introduced photographer's analytics. Creating a platform for aggregating data from all available services, Pixbuf gives photographers an idea of who likes their pictures and what communities they are from. Acting as a photographer’s hub for automated sharing on various services, Pixhub enables you to easily upload your pictures, set up sharing and head out to take more pictures. “We want to give photographers back the time for photography,” says Filip Molcan, founder of Pixbuf. “Making an exceptional picture is very difficult today. Standing out from the crowd on the Internet is even harder and that’s where we want to help.” Pixbuf is available for free at the website below.

Google Chrome version 43.02357, which came out in May, proved to be a nightmare for photography enthusiasts. Most - albeit not all - photos viewed in this version of the popular Web browser suffered from a serious colour burning/clipping issue with abrupt tonal transitions in the shadows. (The more technically inclined among you might like to check out this discussion thread on the Chromium Project website.) Needless to say, this was a potentially huge problem for any photographer displaying and selling their work online. Version 44.0.2403 - now available on all platforms - comes with a fix and appears to display all images properly, so if you happen to have stopped using Chrome for this particular reason, you may want to consider giving it another chance.

Comparison image sourced from the Chromium website. Original photograph taken by Mikael Järnåsen.

PhotoShelter's Pro plan now allows for unlimited file storage. This means that pro members are no longer restricted to 1TB, having the freedom to upload as many images as they like; at no extra cost. "As a PhotoShelter Pro, you'll have full control over what, when, and how you choose to store with us," the company says. "Upload any file format or size, with as many images as you like -- as often as you like -- and rest easy knowing your original files can be accessed anywhere, anytime." The subscription fee is $49.99 / month.

Flickr have just unveiled their new Pro membership plan. Available to both existing and new members, this subscription offers improved stats, a discount on Adobe software and more. Flickr members who do not currently have Flickr Pro can purchase it for $5.99/month or $49.99/year. Flickr members who have existing Pro accounts will automatically be upgraded to the new Pro membership will automatically be upgraded to the new Pro membership while being able to keep theirexisting pricing and unlimited space. Existing Flickr Ad-Free account holders will be automatically upgraded to the new Flickr Pro with no change in price or renewal date.

GoPro have just launched a premium content licensing portal for global advertising brands and agencies to license GoPro footage and imagery. According to the company, the portal "eliminates the pain points creative professionals have when sourcing content by helping them clear copyrights and likeness rights, easy access to creators’ content and organised, efficient, time-saving tools to search, download and preview content to license for use in advertising, news and other media and entertainment."

Adobe today launched Adobe Stock, which is billed as "the industry’s first stock content service to be integrated directly into the content creation process and the tools creatives use every day." Available through Adobe Creative Cloud, this new service is a curated collection of 40 million images, which is deeply integrated into the latest releases of Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC. Designers can launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software, add watermarked images to their Creative Cloud Libraries, and then access and work with images across multiple desktop tools. When they are ready to license the image for finished work, they can do it directly within the desktop software they are working in. Thanks to Creative Cloud’s CreativeSync technology, all edits made on a watermarked image are automatically applied to the newly licensed image, saving hours of potential rework. Pricing for Creative Cloud individual and team customers is £7.19 incl VAT for a single image; £23.99 per month for 10 images monthly (with rollover of unused images); and £143.99 incl VAT per month for 750 images monthly. Separate pricing is available for Adobe Stock customers who are not Creative Cloud members. Adobe also announced it will offer industry-leading rates, to photographers and designers contributing content to Adobe Stock.

Google have introduced Google Photos — a new service that promises to give you "a home for all your photos and videos." The free service incorporates a standalone app for both Android and iOS, a web-based interface, unlimited photo-video hosting, automated syncing and backups. The original resolution is maintained for up to 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for movies, and your works are automatically organised by people, places and other parameters. The new Google Photos Assistant creates animations, collages and videos from your still images. Pictures, movies and entire photo sets can be shared easily via social networks.

Website: Google Photos

Photography magazine InMyBag has launched what it calls the World's only searchable database of photographers and their gear. “We want to be able to pull out fascinating observations about photographers, for example, how little gear woman photographers tend to use compared to the male counterparts, to the most popular lens for portrait photographers and how it varies by country,” said Simon Ellingworth, Editor of InMyBag. “What’s interesting about this project is it has an open door policy and so embraces photographers of any skill, level, genre, or location. It doesn’t matter if you use an iPhone, GoPro, video or traditional film – everybody’s welcome.” To encourage photographers to submit their images, this InMyBag have teamed up with Elinchrom and are offering the chance to win £3,000 ($4,400 USD) worth of gear.

Amazon has announced unlimited cloud storage with Amazon Cloud Drive. The Unlimited Photos Plan (free 3-month trial, then $11.99 per year) allows users to store an infinite number of photos in Cloud Drive without worrying about taking up space on phones, cameras, or other devices. Customers can upload existing collections and store all future photos taken. This plan also includes 5 GB of additional storage for videos or other documents and files. The Unlimited Everything Plan (free 3-month trial, then $59.99 per year) eanbles anyone to stoe an infinite number of new and existing photos, videos, files, documents, movies, and music in Cloud Drive.

Showfy is an online media sharing service from Magix which allows users to upload and view pictures and videos from practically anywhere. Media uploaded to showfy are saved to so-called streams (galleries in the cloud). Users can be create and manage streams, and add them to a multitude of devices and operating systems. "Whether on your PC, smartphone, tablet or television, showfy supports more devices and platforms than any other sharing program," the company claims. "The showfy apps are available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and showfy supports the latest devices from LG, Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic and Samsung. Users can also easily share vacation and wedding albums with friends and family in their own living rooms via the smart TV app and Google Chromecast." Showfy users can grant access to anyone by sending invitations via email. Magix guarantees that only the people they invite — and no one else — can view their favourite photos and videos. The basic showfy account is free, and offers every user 2GB of storage space for their media. Users that require more space can upgrade to showfy Premium for $1.99/month to increase their cloud storage to 25GB.