Adobe have released Version 9.6.1 of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). This update adds support for raw files generated by the new Fuji X-T2 compact system camera (pictured), and fixes a couple of bugs related to uncompressed DNGs files converted from Fuji X-E2 RAF files and panoramas created from two HDR DNG source images. This version of ACR is available through the update mechanism in Photoshop CC and the Creative Cloud application.

Version 1.6 of slimRAW, a fast CinemaDNG compressor which saves storage space and reduces storage bandwidth requirements for CinemaDNG raw video production, is now available. This update adds a 5:1 constant bit rate CinemaDNG raw compression as well as two modes of variable bit rate lossy CinemaDNG compression in addition to the previously available 3:1 and 4:1 options. There is also a new widely compatible logarithmically encoded lossless compression mode, which offers further space savings while still keeping the original image quality untouched.

Serif have published a sneak peek video detailing what’s new in Affinity Photo v1.5, projected to be available in the Mac App Store in early autumn. New features include andvanced HDR exposure blending, a novel way to edit 360 degree images, an entirely new workspace for tone mapping, batch processing, focus stacking and macros. All these functions will also be included in the Windows version of the software. “This will be the fifth major update we’ve pushed out since the launch of Affinity Photo – all free of charge to people who’ve bought the app,” says Serif Managing Director Ashley Hewson. “We’re committed to continuing to develop features that cement the position of Affinity Photo as the most indispensable image editing tool for pros, whether they’re using Mac or PC.” Click through / scroll down for the sneak preview.

Magix have updated their free Camera MX app to Version 4.0. Now available on the Google Play Store, Magix Camera MX 4.0 features many real-time effects including more than 20 filters and 3 effects packages, such as HDR, Lomo, Mirror, Kaleidoscope, Distortion, Overlays, Textures, and many more. With the revamped Live Shot function, Android users can now take live photos: in addition to a static image, the last moments leading up to the image are saved with a photo. This allows you to go back to your recording and save single images, or see the photo as an animated clip and share it with friends. Camera MX also offers extensive optimisation options to put the final touches to your photos and videos, including cropping, brightness, contrast, saturation, and colour temperature.

Canon today announced its new Canon Connect Station mobile application for the Canon Connect Station CS100 device. The new app makes it easy to connect to the CS100 device from a compatible smartphone or tablet. Users simply connect to the same wireless network and open up the Canon Connect Station app to start browsing, uploading, and downloading images. They can also drag-and-drop images from their computer or select multiple images at a time. The application can save over 1,000 images at one time and easily identifies previously saved and stored photos, helping to eliminate duplicates stored on the Canon Connect Station CS100 device. Additionally, users can now edit album names and add comments using the mobile app. The new Canon Connect Station Mobile Application is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

AKVIS have just released Refocus 6.0, a program for improving the sharpness of out of focus images and adding lens blur effects to your photos. This release brings a time-saving batch processing feature, a modernised graphical user interface with support for Ultra HD displays, advanced print options, and other improvements. The product is available as a standalone application and as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and other image editors.

Ashampoo have released Ashampoo Slideshow Studio HD 4 for Windows. New features and enhancements include several new transition effects; support for Apple, Android, Sony and Microsoft devices; and new output formats including MKV, VP9 and MP4. A new wizard helps beginners create slideshows with ease. Other additions include faster encoding with NVENC and Intel Media support, as well as support for 4K resolutions. The program is available now for $39.99.

Xara has announced a new release of Xara Designer Pro X. Billed as the ultimate all-in-one creative software that provides all the tools for illustration, photo editing, web graphics and desktop publishing; Xara Designer Pro X365 contains major enhancements for both web and graphic design, and a new delivery model that gives access to new updates as they happen in the 365 days after purchase. The photo editing tools have been enhanced with two new W3C standard transparency blend modes and a new ultra-easy way to rotate, scale / pan and crop images. The photo editor provides vector based, editable, non-destructive photo editing so the user can return to the original image at any time. Additinally, there are two new types of photo grids. ‘Static’ Photo Grids are simple, fixed, visually attractive grids of photos onto which users can drag & drop their own photo. ‘Smart’ Photo Grids smartly resize to fill the rectangles as photos are added or deleted, and users can swap the positions of the photos, adjust the number of rows and columns and the border / gap between all the photos.Xara’s new Update Service means that users will no longer have to wait a year between releases to access new features and content. Users will have access to new features and content as Xara develop them, at any time during the year after their purchase. An enhanced Online Content Catalogue will also be included free for one year as part of Xara’s new Update Service. The catalogue will provide access to a new library of over 500,000 quality royalty-free, high quality, high-resolution stock photos, provided under a CC0 license. Xara Designer Pro X365 is available for £219.

Really Nice Images today announced the immediate availability of RNI All Films 4.0, a film simulation package for Adobe Photoshop / Camera Raw and Lightroom. Containing 58 film stocks and over 300 presets organised into 5 categories including Negative, Slide, Instant, BW and Vintage; this completely revised version of RNI All Films features customised camera profiles for a wide range of cameras and a lot of major improvements. RNI All Films 4 is available now in tw versions; Pro ($122) and Light ($59).

The first free beta version of Affinity Designer is now available for Windows. Designed to work on 64-bit Windows 7 and above, Affinity Designer is part of a trio of professional quality design software tools. Affinity Photo launched for Mac last year and will follow for Windows, while Affinity Publisher is expected early in 2017. “The beta launch of Affinity Designer on Windows is a huge step towards that, although it's important to remember that it's not the finished product at this stage,” says Serif Managing Director Ashley Hewson. “Our beta phase for Mac was exceptionally valuable in helping us to refine the software and now we’re excited to work just as a closely with Windows users, to deliver a brilliant end product.” The first full version of Affinity Designer for Windows is likely to go on sale in around three months, for direct download from the Affinity website. People can still sign up for the Windows beta at the website below.

Phase One today released an update to Capture One Pro. Version 9.2 offers a better culling workflow from selections and metadata sources to accelerate the photo editing process; and adds support for half a dozen new cameras including the Pentax K-1, the Nikon D500, the Canon EOS M10, PowerShot G5x, G7x Mark II and G9x.

Sony Japan has issued a warning about the installation of unauthorised camera apps and firmware hacks on their cameras. Although not specified in the statement, these may include the new STGuploader, which enables PMCA (PlayMemories Camera Apps) compatible cameras to upload files to Google Photos directly, without using a computer; and a hack that gets rid of the 30-minute video recording limit imposed on certain Sony camera models. The company calls attention to the fact that by installing any third-party firmware or uncertified apps, users risk voiding their warranty.

Via SAR

As regular readers– and photographers – will be aware, Adobe’s image editor exemplar Photoshop is now only available as part of its Creative Cloud package – and on subscription at that. We’re beyond the days of buying cereal boxes containing CDs and hard copy manuals.

With this in mind ‘new’ versions tend to arrive in the shape of a nip here and a tuck there, rather than a complete under-the-bonnet overhaul. Indeed at the London preview we attended, the ‘new’ version of its desktop and mobile apps for the latter half of 2016 had yet to be given a confirmed name – shown only on the demo slides as ‘CC 2015.5’.

Adobe today launched major updates to their flagship Creative Cloud tools and services. The release includes new features in Photoshop, Adobe Stock, Premiere Pro, as well as After Effects and Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop gets the exciting new Content-Aware Crop tool, which automatically fills in the gaps when you rotate or expand a canvas beyond the original image size; plus Face-Aware Liquify an easy way to create artistic effects with facial features using the Liquify Tool while keeping the face in proportion; Match Font, an innovative font recognition technology that has the ability to recognise and identify licensed fonts and automatically suggest fonts available on your computer system or license through Adobe Typekit; plus a 4x performance improvement when working with fonts and Content-Aware Fill features. Deeper integration of Adobe Stock into the CC experience enables a new One-Click Workflow that lets users select an image or video on the Adobe Stock website and place it on their creative canvas with a single click. “We have two key goals with this release: saving our customers time and helping them jumpstart their creative engines,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “Every creative project starts with a blank page and ends with a vision coming to life.  Today’s release of Creative Cloud will help make that journey as fast and productive as possible.” Updates to CC desktop apps are now available for download by Creative Cloud members as part of their membership at no additional cost.

Totally Rad! has launched PicTapGo Version 3.0. This update will bring new features to the iOS app, including fine-tune adjustments, new social-sharing options, faster speed and a unique filter pack. “We really think this is the best PicTapGo to date,” said Doug Boutwell, CEO and founder of Totally Rad! Inc. “When updating the app, we do our best to make editing and sharing easier, and to continue offering something unlike any other photo editing tool. With the improved functions and capabilities, as well as the new filters, we think existing PicTapGo fans and new users alike will really enjoy 3.0.” The update is free for current PicTapGo users.

JP Distribution have announced the UK availability of several new Westcott Products including the pliable Flex LED light panels (pictured), the modular Scrim Jim Cine frame system and a new iOS app. The light-weight and 1⁄4” thin moldable framework of the dimmable Westcott Flex LED light panels allow you to shape the light in unique ways, delivering up to a 360° spread of light. Available in Daylight (5600K) and Bi­Colour (2800K-6000K) options, and in a range of sizes from 10”x3” to 2’x2’, the Westcott Flex LED panels produce an outstanding, consistent and flicker­-free light that is ideal for filmmakers and photographers. Scrim Jim Cine is an ultralight modular frame system that allows users to shape, block and modify light with more control than ever before. The Westcott Flex LED panel kits, including panel and Scrim Jim Frames, are available from £650­. Finally, the new Westcott App allows Ice Light 2 users to connect their iPhone or iPad to up to 10 individual Ice Lights and control them all via the app.

Phase One has released Media Pro SE (Second Edition), a software application built to manage large photo libraries. This edition adds support for the latest Mac and Windows operating systems and supports adjustments from the latest build of Capture One 9. "Media Pro is a much loved application with special workflow solutions, and it enjoys a large and active customer base," said James Johnson, Software Product Manager, Phase One. "This release incorporates the most recent feedback from those customers." Media Pro SE is available now for $189/€189. Owners of Media Pro 1 may upgrade for $/€39.

The Kodak Professional Film App is now available for both Android and iOS devices. With Kodak Professional  film roll sales growing more than 5% worldwide from 2013-2015, this free app was created to answer the often-asked questions – such as what types of film are suitable for certain environments, where to buy film, and where to develop film, to name a few.  In each section, users will be able to find examples of each type of photography, along with what others have done with Kodak Professional film. For Android users, the app is now available in the Google Play Store. For iOS devices, download the new version for iPad and the updated iPhone version from iTunes.

Intelligent Imaging Solutions have released an update to their piccure+ software, billed as "a revolution in computational photography." Leveraging the processing capabilities of advanced GPUs, Version 3.0 promises an increase in speed of up to 6x compared to version 2.5. Compared to version 2, the increase in speed is 10x faster. Pricing starts at $79.99 for a single license.

DxO have just released DxO OpticsPro 11 for Mac and Windows. Featuring the company's proprietary DxO PRIME 2016 noise reduction, which enables photographers to salvage noisy photos thought previously unusable, DxO OpticsPro 11 preserves smooth transitions, retains more details, and more faithfully preserves colours in dark areas, and it does this all automatically by reading each camera's precise calibration data. Additionally, DxO PRIME 2016 is now able to process RAW files up to 4x faster than before. The ESSENTIAL and ELITE editions of DxO OpticsPro 11 for Mac and Windows are immediately available in the DxO online store and at photo resellers at a special discount through 30 June 2016.