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Kodak sells its imaging patents for $525M

Eastman Kodak has a buyer -- or better said, buyers -- for its coveted treasure trove of digital imaging patents.

Under the agreements announced today, Kodak is selling the bundle for approximately $525 million, part of which will be paid by 12 intellectual property licensees organized by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp. Each licensee will receive rights to the patent portfolio and certain other Kodak patents. Another portion of the money will be paid by Intellectual Ventures, which is acquiring the digital imaging patent portfolio subject to these new licenses, as well as previously existing licenses, Kodak said.

The deal … Read more

Capture still and moving images with Snapz Pro X for Mac

Snapz Pro X for Mac is a capture utility for Mac OS X. It is available from several download sites, but with a purchase price of $69 if you want to upgrade after using the free trial. Snapz Pro X for Mac installs cleanly and quickly.

More than a simple screenshot utility, Snapz Pro X for Mac lets you capture anything that appears on your screen either a still images or as a movie in QuickTime format. Snapz Pro X for Mac can capture full-screen or a smaller portion, and provides a simple way to make product demos, tutorial videos, … Read more

Adobe Lightroom 4.3 brings Retina display support

Adobe Systems released Lightroom 4.3 today, adding support for MacBook Pros' high-resolution Retina displays and for raw images from 20 new cameras.

The list of supported cameras includes three higher-end compact PowerShot models from Canon, the small S110, the more flexible G15, and the ultrazoom SX50 HS; the new Nikon 1 V2 compact interchangeable-lens model and lower-priced full-frame Nikon D600 SLR; and competing models from Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, and Pentax. However, the D600 support is only preliminary, according to a blog post by Sharad Mangalick.

The Retina support, available only in Lightroom's library and develop modules, means that … Read more

Members get first dibs on latest Photoshop updates

Adobe's first major Creative Cloud-driven update to Photoshop CS6, as well as an important update the to the lesser-known CC-only Muse Web design tool, tosses out just enough capabilities to keep things interesting. Along with HiDPI -- i.e., Retina Display -- support for Photoshop and Illustrator, which rolled out to Creative Cloud subscribers all users last night (and which should be available to the rest of the nonsubscription folks by the end of the year), Photoshop actually reverts some changes to the crop tool, modestly fixes the text styles implementation, updates 3D text handling, finally admits that Actions … Read more

New profile pages coming to all Twitter users Dec. 12

Just a few months ago, Twitter announced a new look for its profile pages in a bid to mimic some of the visual allure of Facebook's Timeline cover photos -- though the update was only available to a subset of users.

Now the microblogging service is finally rolling out the redesign to all users. On December 12, everyone will be able to update their Twitter profiles to include a large header image across the top of the page with a smaller profile image in the center (see image above).

And no, users really don't have a choice about … Read more

Turn pictures into a PDF with Image to PDF Converter

Looking at multiple image files at once can tax your system's resources and be downright confusing. Image to PDF converter will turn a batch of image files into a scrollable PDF so you can see them all in one window. It converts quickly, but its boring layout and limited features will make you wonder if it was really worth downloading.

This software organizes the pictures you add in a spreadsheet for easy sorting, but it's definitely an eyesore. The overly simplistic interface makes the program's lack of features painfully obvious too. When you're adding 10 or … Read more

Edit scanned documents with FreeOCR

No matter how big of a scanned or PDF file you have, this program can handle it. Free OCR will read an otherwise uneditable document and churn out copyable text you can manipulate however you like.

With support for more than 10 different languages, this software impresses with both its accuracy and speed. It churns out an editable version of a small section of text in seconds, but only takes a minute or two to read documents with tiny text or bizarre formatting. You can even crop out sections of the document you don't need to shave seconds off … Read more

Take control of your CDs and DVDs with Ashampoo Burning Studio

In addition to being tucked into a very user-friendly package, this full software suite comes without a price tag. Though many of Ashampoo Burning Studio's features are related, it's still absurd to think about doing this much in one program. Just about anything you could want to do with or to a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray is possible.

Ashampoo Burning Studio welcomed us with a nice interface. Burning, ripping and every other feature this program has to offer are well organized in a helpful menu. Simply choose the feature you want and Ashampoo Burning Studio walks you right … Read more

Instagram, Twitter lob grenades in war over value of photos

You've heard it said countless times: A picture's worth a thousand words.

If you think that's not at least as true online as it is offline, you haven't been paying attention to the explosive machinations in the war for digital real estate going on in Silicon Valley over the last year or so.

Today, the tech world is all worked up over the latest in the slow-moving war of attrition between Instagram and Twitter. By cutting off Twitter Card integration, Instagram is hoping to wean its users off Twitter.

This is a seismic event, especially with … Read more