Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is now available for £59, a £20 saving off the full retail price. Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 provides users with the widest selection of photo editing features ranging from automatic tools for quick fixes to precision controls for fine-tuning. This special one week only offer expires at Midnight on January 22nd.

Website: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

FotoNation’s new SmileCheck technology detects smiles in portrait photos taken by digital cameras and camera phones. An extension of Fotonation’s FaceTracker product line, the camera’s shutter is not engaged until smiles are detected on all faces within the frame. With two out of every three digital cameras sold today containing FotoNation’s embedded Technology, expect to see SmileCheck appearing in a lot of 2008 cameras.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac will be demoed at Macworld this week and is now available for pre-order. “Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh allows people to organise and find photos quickly, unleash powerful editing tricks without any heavy lifting, and creatively share photos that give them all the bragging rights.” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac will cost £55 in the UK and will be available in early Q2 2008.

NTI Dragon Suite is a complete solution for CD/DVD Burning, DVD compression and personal backup for the Mac. The new software suite includes three Mac applications - NTI Dragon Burn, Dragon FliX and NTI Shadow. NTI Dragon Suite can be used with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later operating systems and Power PC G3 Processor or later systems and costs $79.99.

NTI Shadow 3, an award-winning backup software application, maintains real-time, continuous backup of all changed files. The new version of NTI Shadow adds support for optical media though NTI’s new Dragon Disc technology, which includes backup to any optical media including Blu-ray. NTI Shadow v3 now includes custom file filtering for specific file types (audio, picture, video, and document) as well as custom file type filtering. NTI Shadow 3 is available now for $29.99.

VideoSpin from Pinnacle Systems is a new, free video editing application aimed at users who don’t want to spend much time creating movies. With VideoSpin, users can create entertaining movies in minutes simply by dragging and dropping their videos, pictures and music from their PC’s hard drive. “In developing VideoSpin, we focused on putting the fun in video editing for consumers with all levels of experience by making it faster and easier than any other product on the market,” said Tanguy Leborgne, Pinnacle Systems Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. The VideoSpin application will be available for free download by the end of January 2008.

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is an Outlook add-in designed to help photographers keep track of their stuff. Pro Photo Shoot allows you to bring up a dialog box with a list of the equipment you own and check off what you want to bring with you to the shoot. The list is stored in the body of the appointment so when you print the appointment record the list is right there with all the other details.  It’s a quick, easy way to stay organized and on-track as you’re running out the door. Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot supports Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007 running on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Website: Download Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot

NTI Media Maker 8 is a low-cost solution for recording data, Blu-ray data, audio, photos and video on CD and DVD discs. “Media Maker 8 has so many new features, it’s really a whole new product that deserves its new name and new packaging,” said Bill Yao, NTI President and CEO.  “It’s the perfect blend of power and simplicity because all the advanced features demanded by power users have been fit seamlessly into NTI’s EasySteps® interface to make them easy for novices to use.” NTI Media Maker 8 has a suggested retail price of US$79.99.

Image Trends has announced new versions of SensorKleen Pro, PearlyWhites and ShineOff at Imaging USA. The SensorKleen Pro standalone application has been updated to support camera RAW file formats. Both the ShineOff and PearlyWhites Plug Ins are upgraded with a new user interface. All three product upgrades are available at no charge to existing customers.

The latest version of the award-winning Backup Now 5 backup and recovery software is now shipping. Available in four different versions - Standard, Shadow, Image and Advanced - individual, mobile and networked users can buy the features they need now and move up to the next tier as their needs change. NTI’s trademarked Easy Steps interface makes backups recovery and migration a simple three-step process. “Consumers who have been looking for a solution that takes the confusion and complexity out of data protection will find that the fifth generation of Backup Now is truly effortless,” said Yao.  “And with four editions to choose from, they don’t have to buy more features than they need.  Their investment is future-proofed because they can add features when they’re ready.” Pricing is US$49.99 for the Standard Edition, US$69.99 for the Shadow and Image Editions and US$99.99 for the Advanced Edition.

Olympus have released a new program which imports and displays RAW files in Windows Vista. The RAW codec works with the following Olympus cameras:

E-1, E-3*, E-300, E-330, E-400, E-410, E-500 , E-510 , E-10, E-20, C-70 ZOOM, C-5050ZOOM, C-5060 Wide Zoom, C-7070 Wide Zoom, C-8080 Wide Zoom, SP-310, SP-320, SP-350, SP-500UZ, SP-510UZ, SP-550UZ, SP-560UZ
*A part of the parameter does not apply to RAW developing of images.

Olympus RAW codec for Windows Vista

Capture One 4, the next generation of Phase One’s RAW workflow software, is now available. A newly designed user interface offers high fidelity color and detail reproduction, plus new timesaving workflow features. “Capture One excels at RAW workflow,” said Jan H. Christiansen, marketing director for Phase One. “Today, it is no less an art to develop digital images than to process film in the darkroom. Ours is not an ‘end-to-end’ solution, but devoted to helping photographers achieve the highest quality from the images they have captured.” Capture One 4 is available now for $129 USD / 99 EUR. Existing Capture One customers can upgrade to Capture One 4 at no extra cost.

A free Linux version of the award-winning LightZone photo-editing software has just been released. LightZone is the first and only application of its kind spanning all three major platforms. The new Linux version has been internally tested on such popular distributions as Ubuntu, Red Hat and Debian, with others planned. “The Linux release is our latest initiative to make LightZone available to as many users on as many operating systems as possible. Light Crafts serves a diverse Linux community consisting of many creative individuals who want the same high quality, robustness and powerful commercial photo-editing tools that are available for Windows and Mac users,” said Fabio Riccardi, CEO, Light Crafts.

All of the latest versions of onOne Software’s products are now compatible with Apple’s Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) operating system. “We are pleased to be able to provide these updates to our users for Mac OS X Leopard so quickly,” said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. “We appreciate the loyal support of our customers within the Mac community and we’re delighted that they will be able to benefit from the creative features of our imaging software products on the new Mac OS X Leopard operating system.”

An english language version of PhotoPerfect 2.85 photo editing software has just been released. “PhotoPerfect is a sophisticated tool designed specifically for photographers” said Ralf Hauser, CEO of Arcadia Software. “Equipped with every feature a photographer needs, the software offers a refined functionality to assist you in mastering your professional image-editing techniques, while achieving a new level of results.” The suggested retail price of PhotoPerfect is $79.99 and a free trial version is available.

The RAW converter software SILKYPIX Developer Studio 3.0 has just been introduced in the USA and Canada. SILKYPIX is specifically developed for enthusiastic photographers and professional users. The program supports over 120 cameras and works on both Windows and MAC platforms. SILKYPIX Developer Studio 3.0 costs $149.00 and a free trial version is available.

Bibble Pro 4.9.9 adds support for the Nikon D300, Nikon D3, Canon 1Ds Mark 3, Canon G9, Olympus E-3 and Sony A700 cameras. This release also adds tethered shooting support for all Nikon SLR’s on Intel Macs. Bibble 4 is available in both “Pro” ($129.95) and “Lite” ($69.95) versions for Windows, Macintosh (PPC/Intel as a Universal Binary) and Linux.  The Bibble 4.9.9 update is free for all current Bibble 4 customers, and new customers will also receive a free upgrade to Bibble 5, when available.

AKVIS Frame Suite 2.6, a program that applies frames and edge effects to pictures, now includes new Christmas decorations in the Pattern Library. You can now decorate a personalized Christmas greeting card. It’s also possible to generate a unique frame out of your own samples. Just save a square or rectangular pattern as a graphic file and use it to generate an original photo frame. AKVIS Frame Suite 2.6 costs $49 USD and a free 10-day trial version is available.

The Microsoft HD Photo Plug-In allows you to open and save any HD Photo file (.wdp or possibly .hdp) in Adobe Photoshop. The HD Photo plug-in supports a wide range of pixel formats (including high dynamic range, wide gamut formats) and numerous advanced HD Photo features. HD Photo is also known as Windows Media Photo. This plug-in is designed for use with the CS2 or CS3 versions of Adobe Photoshop software running under Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista or Mac OS X.

Website: Download Microsoft HD Photo Plug-In for Adobe Photoshop (Windows)

Website: Download Microsoft HD Photo Plug-In for Adobe Photoshop (MAC)

Sigma Photo Pro 2.3 includes new image processing code, which provides better auto white balance performance. Sigma Photo Pro is an exclusive software package for displaying and manipulating your Sigma digital camera images on your computer. Sigma plan to release Photo Pro 3.1 for Windows and Macintosh soon, which also provides the better Auto White Balance algorithm. Until then, they recommend that you use Sigma Photo Pro 2.3 for optimum image quality. Available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, Sigma Photo Pro 2.3 is available for download now.

Website: Download Sigma Photo Pro 2.3