Digital photography

"Weinergate" reminds us yet again that photos can quickly become embarrassing, and even scandalous.

For this and other reasons, many consider it important to have control over who sees their photos. Facebook may be further pushing users' sense of privacy limits with its latest privacy setting change: it has quietly rolled out a facial-recognition tool that will automate photo tagging and suggest friends to tag in your photos based on what they look like.

According to a report from IT security firm Sophos, the facial-recognition tool previously launched in the United States but is now available in most countries.

According to Facebook, people are adding 100 million photos to Facebook each day. In a blog post, the company said users have called tagging a chore. True, it can certainly feel like it when you have to manually type in who your friend is and tag every picture in the album. Tag suggestions are made when people add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested.

"When we announced this feature last December, we explained that we would test it, listen to feedback, and iterate before rolling it out more broadly," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET in an e-mail today. "We should have been more clear with people during the rollout process when this became available to them. Tag suggestions are now available in most countries and we'll post further updates to our blog over time."

Chester Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at Sophos, isn't surprised by the way Facebook introduced the technology. "This is their standard method. They do it secretly and see if the uproar is loud enough. Previously, they've made addresses and phone numbers available to developers but backed out once people made a ruckus about it. This time, they tested [the facial-recognition feature] out on Americans, who are the least privacy-aware." … Read more

At the Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple announced some enhancements to the camera app as part of iOS 5 as well as its cloud-based tools for photo synching across devices. This was after stressing that the iPhone 4 is growing to overtake the Nikon D90 as the most popular source of uploaded photos on Flickr.

Most interestingly, Apple stole a leaf from Taptaptap's book; you'll be able to use the volume-up button on the iPhone to snap photos, something Apple rejected that developer's VolumeSnap app for doing last August.

iOS 5 will make the camera a lot … Read more

Remember the United States Postal Service? Those people who dress up in blue and visit your house nearly every day? They're feeling a little lonely with the growing domination of e-mail and Facebook. You can brighten up their day a little by reviving the lost art of postcards.

The newly launched Postcardly service bridges the gap between your digital snapshots and the real world by turning your pics into actual postcards that will make your grandmother happy and answer your 12-year-old's question: "Mommy, what's a postcard?"… Read more

Motivated by a very public accidental deletion of a Flickr user's account, and its very protracted restoration, Yahoo's photo-sharing site has added an option to easily reverse an account termination.

"We've now instituted a 90-day delay in deleting the content, including the photos, metadata, comments, and all the bits of an account, after it's deleted," Flickr said in a blog post yesterday.

The new procedure guards against the kind of embarrassment caused by the case of Mirco Wilhelm's Flickr account. Wilhelm had reported another Flickr user for violation of the site's policies, … Read more

You've probably seen some of the video masterpieces filmmakers have created using nothing more than an iPhone. Of course, most of those clips, commercials, and shorts were shot with a single camera. Impressive as the results can be, aspiring videographers would no doubt appreciate the option of multiple cameras shooting at multiple angles.

CollabraCam is a potentially game-changing app that turns your iPhone into a multicamera control center, one that's linked in real-time to as many as four other iOS devices. This is better seen than described, so check out this info vid:

Cool, right? What's really … Read more

For the past couple of years, I have been writing the iPhone apps of the week in this space. But we've decided that instead of the same old app rundown, we're going to do something a little different. Starting this week, we're going to be putting together three apps that fulfill a specific theme. We're going to try to introduce one or two new apps and put them alongside older classics in the category. This way, you will be able to compare new apps with older ones, and also, find out about apps in the category that you may not have seen before.

This week's apps revolve around your iPhone's camera capabilities. The first one is a popular app for snapping old-school photos, the second lets you take photos that make objects appear miniature, and the third is a newer app for chronicling gradual changes in your appearance.

Hipstamatic ($1.99) is an extremely popular app that turns your iPhone's digital camera into an old-school single-shot camera of the past to give your images that grainy, washed-out (in a good way) retro look. The interface is a bit confusing at first, but you'll soon figure out how to switch among different types of retro film, different types of lenses, and even effects for different types of flashes. You can switch between each of the different variables with a swipe of your finger, with dramatically different results depending on the combination you choose before taking your snapshot.… Read more

Apple has updated its popular iPhoto program to version 9.1.3, which addresses a problem where merged photo events could split back up again after being synced to iOS devices. The update is approximately 106MB and requires OS X 10.6.6 or later to install. It should be available through Software Update for those who have iPhoto already installed, but it can also be downloaded and applied manually from the iPhoto 9.1.3 update Web page.

Be sure to back up your iPhoto libraries before applying this update. If you have Time Machine set up, you can … Read more

Opening a few new chapters today, Adobe has begun selling its CS5.5 software suites, releasing a revamped Photoshop CS5 that dovetails with a new collection of iOS apps, and beginning a subscription pricing model.

Adobe's Creative Suite 5.5 products actually consist of a variety of suites emphasizing work such as video production, Flash and Web programming, and design. The Master Collection, which incorporates all of the products, costs $2,599, and at the other end of the scale, CS5.5 Design Standard costs $1,299.

Collectively, the features show that Adobe is turning, though with the nimbleness … Read more

Some of us with a bunch of photos on an iPad would rather add keywords and captions than slap on yet another sepia-tone art filter. Enter C Squared Enterprises' Photosmith.

This $17.99 app, released today, is a companion to Adobe Systems' Lightroom software for editing and cataloging photos. I've been trying beta versions, and I think the app could be a useful addition for some photographers--especially if the software and the iPad's abilities continue to grow beyond today's limitations.

Photosmith can't match what Lightroom proper can do, of course--the iPad's memory, keyboard, and processor … Read more