Photography

Easily edit and upload photos to Facebook with Picture Dude

UPDATE October 10, 2011: This offer has now ended.

Whether it's a JPEG, GIF, raw image, or other format, Picture Dude reads your images and optimizes them for Facebook, so you don't have to. Turn sets of images into instant albums, complete with captions. You can use Picture Dude to edit existing albums or create them from scratch. Just upload and you are done!

Picture Dude Image Uploader Plus features:

Images are uploaded quickly because the app optimizes them for Facebook ahead of time. Remove red-eye, change contrast, saturation, crop images, or apply special effects and watermarks, all … Read more

Adobe: We've got the Touch for tablets

After dipping its toes in the water with some limited-scope mobile apps, Adobe Systems is taking the plunge today with six programs for Android Honeycomb tablets, including the company's flagship brand, Photoshop.

The programs, each to debut in November with a $10 introductory price, fall under the new Adobe Touch Apps brand. And they tie in with the new Adobe Creative Cloud, a service for sharing files, finding services, and transferring works from the tablet apps to Adobe's Creative Suite apps running on traditional computers.

Along with Photoshop Touch, the other apps are Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler, and … Read more

Just say "No" to boring slideshows - save over 84% now

UPDATE: This offer has now ended.

Ever spent hours trying to create a slideshow for your wedding, baby shower, or birthdays? I sure have. I specifically remember a time when I was in charge of creating my sister's baby shower slideshow. It started out as a beautiful San Francisco day that soon turned into a night with one too many cups of coffee, I might add, and by the time I was finished, the birds were chirping and it was morning again. I hadn't slept one bit and wondered, how was this possible? I remember trying to match … Read more

Lightroom 3.5 supports high-end compact cameras

Adobe Systems has updated Lightroom and Photoshop to support a number of new small, higher-end cameras from Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, and Pentax.

The software packages handle the raw photos that higher-end cameras can produce, offering higher image quality and better flexibility at the expense of convenience. And as new cameras arrive, Adobe must build support for the new models proprietary formats.

Lightroom 3.5 of and version 6.5 of Photoshop's raw-image plug-in (available on Adobe's download site) now can support a host of new compact interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) that lack the bulk-inducing reflex mirror of SLRs. In addition, it supports high-end medium-format cameras from Hasselblad, Phase One, and Phase One's Leaf subsidiary. The full list: … Read more

Compact new hybrid cameras leave me cold

I really wanted to like the new generation of compact, high-end cameras. Honest.

The hybrid designs promised the best of both worlds: the high image quality and interchangeable lenses of SLRs but the portability of a compact point-and-shoot. Their interchangeable lenses mean versatility, their larger sensors mean higher image quality, and their lack of an SLR's reflex mirror means they're much smaller.

My enthusiasm waned, though, as I saw models from Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, and Pentax arrive. And I'm sorry to report that Nikon's new J1 and V1 compact, mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) models left … Read more

Canon's giant image sensor gets a job

A huge image sensor that Canon showed off last year turns out to have more of a purpose in life than touting the company's manufacturing prowess. It's being used to help a Japanese observatory hunt for meteors.

Canon's 202x205mm sensor dwarfs the 24x36mm "full-frame" sensors that are used commercially in the company's high-end SLR cameras. When Canon touted the giant sensor last year, it said, "Potential applications for the new high-sensitivity CMOS sensor include the video recording of stars in the night sky and nocturnal animal behavior."

Well, it looks like those … Read more

Panasonic shows off 3D Lumix camera prototype

BERLIN--Panasonic has offered high-end 3D videocameras as part of its effort to advance the premium technology, but now it's begun showing off a prototype for a 3D model from its Lumix line of still cameras.

"We are also developing a 3D compact camera for this winter," Takuya Sugita, vice president of Panasonic's AVC Networks Company, said here this week at a press conference at the IFA electronics show, which officially starts today. The company showed two prototypes under glass at the show.

The company has offered a couple tidbits about the coming 3D Lumix camera: it … Read more

Samsung releases best trade show tchotchke ever?

BERLIN--OK, perhaps the headline is a bit of an exaggeration--I've seen companies give away hundreds of $1,000 SLRs at conferences. But I have to hand it to Samsung today at the IFA trade show here.

To show off that it's entering the flash memory card market in the United States, the company created a customized miniature aluminum suitcase. Inside was a foam pad holding an SD card and a MicroSD card. Here's a video showing it all:

The company presumably selected the design to impart a sense of ruggedness: the cards are billed as shockproof and … Read more

Facebook plans artsy photo filters? Groan

I'm probably going against the will of the people here, but I sighed heavily this morning when I read in The New York Times that Facebook plans to release filters to give photos artsy effects.

You know what I'm talking about--the shots with the heavily darkened corners that old cameras produced, the desaturated colors from faded Polaroids, the sepia tones and cyanotype blues from 19th-century photography techniques, the wacky hues when one type of film was processed with another type's chemistry, the smeary Vaseline-on-the-lens look of old portraits.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of … Read more