Picaboo today announced a Professional Wedding Photographer Program offering special pricing, priority support, and early access to new features. The free Picaboo software turns photos into photo books and greeting cards. Wedding photographers can easily and affordably move beyond offering old-fashioned photo albums and into the new world of artistic, story-rich photo books. Pricing starts at just $9.99 for an 8x6” 20-page soft cover photo book, and spans to $49.99 for an 8.5x11” 20-page hard cover padded leather photo book.

Retrevo is the first ever matchmaking service between consumers and electronics, using artificial intelligence to find the perfect product match. Retrevo provides real-time, impartial recommendations on which products offer the best value, combined with both user input and expert reviews. “Americans will spend upwards of $48 billion on consumer electronics this holiday season—but not without first getting overwhelmed by the vast range of products with far too many complex features,” said Vipin Jain, Retrevo’s president and CEO. “Retrevo cuts through that clutter to help you find the right match for your needs. Up-to-the-minute independent information is amassed and translated into unbiased answers that can be easily understood by all consumers, technically savvy or not.”

Following discussions with the Stock Artists Alliance, Getty Images has announced significant changes to its $49 “web-resolution” license. The major changes include a three month term limit, maximum usage size of 180x150 pixels and limits on distribution. SAA Executive Director Betsy Reid says the organization’s leaders are pleased the direct dialog led to “an improved license product that resolves many of the concerns raised by photographers and our coalition. It expands new licensing opportunities in a growing market for very small digital uses where this type of product makes sense.”

The PhotoShelter Collection, a new edited stock image library for professionals and amateurs, has just opened its virtual doors. The PhotoShelter Collection offers the widest and most eclectic array of commercial imagery that is quality-sorted, keyworded, priced, licensed and ready for instant purchasing. Photographers keep 70% of all transactions and set their own prices. Since an initial launch to photographers on September 15th, over 5,000 photographers have uploaded more than 225,000 images to The PhotoShelter Collection in the first eight weeks.

The international photo sharing website Woophy are running a yearly photo competition with an Olympus E-410 DSLR camera up for grabs. The theme of the contest is ‘What is your news’. Select your competing news photo and enter it into one of the three categories: Below the Surface, Big World Events and Raging Reporter. You can sumbit more than one photo in any of the categories. The closing date for entries is December 31st 2007. Enter now at http://www.woophy.com/contest/ .

JAlbum users in the USA and Canada can now create, publish, share, market, and sell bookstore-quality photo books from Blurb. Blurb’s software lets anyone create bookstore-quality books by dragging and dropping images and adding text into hundreds of professionally-designed page layouts. “The JAlbum community is passionate about the presentation of their photos. Blurb’s devotion to quality and creative expression in books is therefore a great fit for us. Enabling our users to make real books opens up even more creativity in sharing images,” said David Ekholm, Jalbum’s founder.

Earth Shots is a photo of the day competition celebrating the beauty and diversity of our planet. Anyone can submit their photos and every day Earth Shots selects a winner to feature on the homepage. It is a non-profit website with advertising revenues being used to buy prizes for the winning photographers - if you win photo of the day 3 times you get $50. At the beginning of this month, Earth Shots celebrated their first birthday. A look through their reveals 365 days worth of amazing travel and nature images. The quality is exceptional and the fact that they have maintained such a high standard for an entire year is quite an achievement. Well worth a look!

http://www.earthshots.org/

Now you can look like the airbrushed model on the cover of the latest fashion magazine. Fotofix.com is a new online photo enhancement service which supplies retouched, magazine-quality photos. Fotofix.com provides high-quality digital enhancements like skin smoothing, complexion evening, body slimming, and tooth whitening. A team of professionally trained photographers and artists work on the photos, and the process has a 24-hour turnaround.

Packard Bell will integrate Kodak Gallery into all notebook and desktop computers sold in Western Europe. The partnership will provide Packard Bell computer owners with one click access to Kodak Gallery’s online photo service right from their Start Up screen. “Our partnership with Packard Bell will allow consumers to access their images quickly and easily from log-on – enabling them not only to share but to tell their personal stories with a variety of Kodak products,” said Jonathan Wisler, Director, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Europe, Africa & Middle East Region.

Clickbooq, an easy-to-use website creation service, are offering $100 off their One-Time or Annual License Fee. Clickbooq allows photographers to create one-of-a-kind websites they can update anytime, without any technical know-how. In honour of the annual PhotoPlus Expo going on in New York right now, use the promo code PPE2007 at sign up and save $100.

Website: Clickbooq

Snapfish is calling on Britons to upload photos of what makes them happy to help raise money for NCH, the children’s charity. For every photo of happiness uploaded to http://www.snapfish.co.uk/snaphappy, £1 will be donated. Independent research has revealed that Britons think that romantic love is the single best way to achieve happiness, and that laughter is best for a happiness quick fix.

Printroom, an online storefront for photographers, has relaunched a new website with with significant new capabilities and membership services. Photographers can now create their own branded dynamic, Flash-driven websites in minutes. “Until now, photographers had to either settle for a very basic web storefront or spend thousands to have specialists build a custom web site,” said Andrew Baum, Printroom vice president of marketing. “Printroom effectively shortens the distance between the shutter and profits by enabling photographers to have their own compelling Flash website, complete with Printroom’s highly regarded lab services and fulfillment, for just $99 per year.” Printroom has immediately begun offering this new service.

Blurb Community Books is the first ever hybrid client/web service to enable groups of people to make books together. Community Books opens up a new way for socially connected groups of consumers and professionals to stay connected and create together. They can be shared, marketed, and sold at cost or for profit in the free Blurb Bookstore. Blurb’s new Community Book capability enables connected creatives to easily make group-contributed books that capture and reinforce their shared experiences and passions,” said Eileen Gittins, Blurb’s founder and CEO.

The Inside Digital Photo radio show have interviewed Scott Kelby, author of a string of bestselling Photoshop books. Kelby talks about his new book and soon to be patented training methodology “The Photoshop 7 Point System”. Scott Kelby realized that there are many photographers do not work in Photoshop every day and even though they may have taken a course or experienced it, without repetition and practice getting around this often complex application is not always easy to navigate. He promises, with his new methodology anyone can. Known as a Nikon shooter, Kelby also discusses his experiences using Canon gear.

Website: Inside Digital Photo - Scott Kelby Interview

Reviews aggregator website Wize has released its list of the top 5 digital cameras. Wize compiles user and expert reviews to deliver definitive ratings for consumer products through its propriety Wize Rank, a product ranking scoring system. The Canon PowerShot SD750 / IXUS 75 (pictured) came out on top of the pile, followed by the Casio Exilim EXZ75, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55, Canon PowerShot SD850 IS and Olympus Stylus 770 SW.

myPhotopipe.com is providing a “print-your-image” option on the popular stock imagery and video website iStockphoto. Members will be able to order prints of any image on the site that is made available for Prints by the artist. In most cases, prints offered through iStockphoto will be available at prices approximately 20 percent below the pricing for comparable products at professional labs. “iStockphoto wanted to provide its customers with access to the very best digital print product available. We wanted iStockphoto’s razor-sharp pricing. And we both wanted a great online experience. I believe we have accomplished all three of these objectives in this relationship.” stated L. Douglas Keeney, chief executive officer of myPhotopipe.com, Inc.

One True Media takes photo and video editing and sharing to the next level, with new sophisticated editing and social media posting capabilities. You can combine photos, video, music and special effects in completely new ways to create amazing video montages. “We are very excited about our new QuickStyle content additions and the new look and feel of our website.  Now our customers can let their imaginations run wild and build extremely creative montages they can easily share in more ways than ever,” said Mark Moore, CEO, One True Media.

UK at Home invites you to document through digital photography the incredible range of places you call home. From 24-30th September 2007, you can submit a a digital photograph relating to a single announced theme. Throughout the week participants are also invited to take general shots of what makes their home special. Fifty of the world’s leading photographers will also be taking part. “We want to capture the emotions of being home,” says John Easterby, the photography director of UK at Home.  “The word ‘home’ itself means something very special to us Brits; yet at the same time, it also evokes different things for each of us.  Our goal is to capture those commonalities – and those differences.” The best pictures, as chosen by a team of leading picture editors, will be published in a book in February 2008

The PhotoShelter Collection is the first edited stock image library that delivers the diversity of photography on the Internet with the resources of a high-end agency. Submission is free; all interested photographers are then invited to fill out an application and submit images for PhotoShelter’s team of commercial photo editors to review. “I was approached by a photo buyer who found one of my images on Flickr,” said photographer Chris Cho. “He offered me $100 to license an image with unlimited rights. I’m not a professional, so I didn’t initially realize that this offer was far below the going rate for this type of use. It’s really great to see PhotoShelter develop a platform that allows me to license my images properly, through a system I can trust.” PhotoShelter will spend $1 Million in 2008 marketing this new collection to commercial buyers. The existing PhotoShelter that has been online since 2005 will be now known as the PhotoShelter Personal Archive.

Getty Images has announced its new £39 web resolution images, available across virtually all editorial and creative collections. Usage rights of the new web-resolution product, an image file size of 500 KB 72 dpi, will vary according to the license model. “Customers who once considered alternative sources of imagery for use in their online media and advertising campaigns, no longer need to sacrifice the quality of imagery. We anticipate that customers will enthusiastically embrace this product,” said Jonathan Klein, CEO and co-founder of Getty Images.