onOne Software Announces Availability of Essentials 2 Imaging Software for iPhoto
iPhoto version features four easy-to-use tools for color correction, creative image blurring, frame and border effects and resizing for high quality large prints

Portland, OR - May 12, 2008 - onOne Software, Inc., announces today the availability of Essentials 2 software for iPhoto users. Essentials 2 for iPhoto is a collection of four easy-to-use software tools to help correct color, creatively blur a photo for dramatic visual impact, add creative borders and resize digital images for high quality large prints. The software tools included within Essentials 2 for iPhoto are based on technology used in the professional level onOne Software Photoshop plug-ins PhotoTune 2.2, FocalPoint 1.0, PhotoFrame 3.1 and Genuine Fractals 5.

The Essentials 2 for iPhoto software suite provides users of the popular iPhoto image editing and organizing software with four important plug-in solutions to solve common digital imaging problems. With Essentials for iPhoto, users can easily correct the color of their photos using technology from PhotoTune, simulate the effect of selective focus or tilt-shift lenses, helping photographers selectively blur and/or vignette an image to focus the viewers attention using technology from FocalPoint 1.0, add unique borders and edges around their photos using technology from PhotoFrame and increase the size and resolution of their photos to get larger print sizes by using technology from Genuine Fractals, the industry standard for resizing digital photos.

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Nik Software Ships Viveza Plug-in for Aperture

San Diego, CA - May 7, 2008 - Nik Software today released the Viveza plug-in for Aperture 2.1, Apple’s groundbreaking photo editing and management software. The Viveza plug-in allows Aperture users to selectively control light and color in photographic images without ever having to leave Aperture.

“With the power and popularity of Aperture, we want our customers to decide how and where they edit their digital photos,” said Michael J. Slater president and CEO of Nik Software. “The continued enthusiasm around Viveza and U Point technology has been extraordinary and we worked closely with Apple to bring our tools to Aperture. Their new image editing SDK made it easy for us to bring our world-class solution directly into Aperture.”

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Apple Releases Aperture 2.1 with Powerful Image Editing Plug-In Architecture

CUPERTINO, California—March 28, 2008— Apple today released Aperture 2.1, which introduces an open plug-in architecture that makes it easy for photographers to use specialized third party imaging software right from within Aperture. Available today as a free software update, Aperture 2.1 includes the Apple-developed plug-in, Dodge & Burn, which adds brush-based tools for dodge (lighten), burn (darken), contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur. Over the coming months, third party software developers will deliver image editing plug-ins for localized editing, filters and effects, noise analysis and reduction, fisheye lens correction and more.

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New vignetter/de-vignette tools as well as a vibrancy adjustment are amongst many tools allowing more creative options without needing to move to an external editor and prevent wasting HD space on a duplicate file. Right image is the master file, left image is the adjusted version.

Seven days ago, Apple released Aperture 2.0. Over the same seven days I have put several projects through it, timed it, and tried to grasp its new features and changes.

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Apple Releases Aperture 2
Major Upgrade Features Improved Interface, Faster Browsing & Enhanced Image Processing

CUPERTINO, California—February 12, 2008—Apple today introduced Aperture 2, the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery* for viewing on the web, iPhone, iPod touch and Apple TV. At a new low price of $199, anyone can easily organize, edit and publish photos like a pro.

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Came in to work to be greeted by my copy of Leopard laying on my chair. Over the course of the day I will post my impressions of the upgrade, in particular how some of the new features help with photography.

Step One: Backup your entire system with something that creates bootable archives, like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. This way if anything goes wrong you lose the least possible amount of time before you’re functional again.

Be back in a bit…

Alright, after getting some real work done and waiting for the backup to finish I began the install. From beginning to end it took 1 hour and 41 minutes, including the checking of the DVD before the installation on my 1.33 12″ PowerBook with 1.25Gb RAM.

Now I’m waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing my drive before I really start messing with some of the new features. The system is surprisingly responsive even though it’s indexing, even in CoverFlow.

UPDATE - 11/1/2007

After several days with Leopard, here are my thoughts, in no particular order.

QUICK LOOK

By far, this is the single most useful feature for anyone working with images is Quick Look. Select any file and simply hit the spacebar to get an instant preview of the file. The difference between Quick Look and actually opening a preview application is significant. No matter how fast the machine, a preview app takes some time to open and load the file. Not to mention the need to actually have the file associated with Preview to even get it to open in the application. Once an image is processed in Photoshop, for example, double-clicking the file open it in that app. Quick Look makes file association and loading times a moot point, since it literally instantly previews the file and is totally separate from the application association methodology. Its usability doesn’t end at previewing stills either, it plays videos and lets you page through supported multi-page documents. Third-parties are free to add support for their particular formats.

When a file is selected…

…just hit the spacebar to get an instant (even on my PowerBook) preview.

COVER FLOW

Cover Flow is one of the more debated additions to the latest OS X release. But for anyone that works with images, it can be quite useful. Once again, the performance even on a lower-spec machine like my laptop is impressive. As soon as a folder opens the thumbnails begin to load at a pace that does not compromise the ability to use the feature right away. This, and the fact that it’s always available instantly, make it a very valid alternative to image browsers. I use it often to very quickly get a feel for the files contained in a folder. Its usefulness is limited, but the fact that it’s instantly accessible and very good at its intended purpose more than make up for it.

That being said, it is possible to get ahead of the caching and end up staring at the generic placeholder until the computer catches up. This happens much less on the iMac than on the PowerBook for obvious reasons, but luckily on neither do you have to wait too long for it to catch up. It helps that the caching favors the file you currently have selected so that it’s the first to get the updated preview.

SPACES

If you often find yourself switching applications then Spaces might be helpful to you. Essentially it allows you to switch between up to 16 virtual desktops at whim. This method for organizing applications and windows has been around for a long time in pretty much every OS, but Apple has taken it and refined it. For one, the feature uses a zooming effect for the different desktops in the same vein as Exposé, just clicking on one of the spaces switches to it. A key combo can be used to switch as well. Windows can be reorganized by dragging them from desktop to desktop while zoomed out, or by dragging them to a screen edge and waiting for a brief moment. Some more powerful features include the ability to define the space in which a particular application should open as well as tying the trigger to keyboard shortcuts of mouse buttons.

Notice how multiple monitors are represented:

One other feature I get a big kick out of that is far from useful is the new “Mosaic” photo screensaver view. It goes through your image databases (iPhoto and Aperture) and makes an index of the tonal qualities of your images. It then uses this info to create a screensaver that starts with one image, zooms out and uses all the other images to render a mosaic of some other randomly picked photo. It’s totally useless, but a blast to watch. It does hammer the system, as the whine of spinning fans will testify, but it can be worth it.

TIME MACHINE

I can’t stress enough how important backing up is. I personally use and will continue to use SuperDuper! for backups, but the fact that Time Machine is built-in and works so seamlessly makes it so there’s no more excuse. Beyond simple backup, Time Machine allows you to go back and restore files at several different points in time since it backs up many different versions.

Quick summaries of other features that will also benefit us in the long term:

64-bit: OS X is the first mainstream OS to switch entirely to 64-bit. For us, this means access to much more accessible RAM and some other benefits that over the next few years will start being used by software developers. This change will be the least noticeable over time, but also has the most potential for the future.

16-bit printing: What used to be provided by custom software by printer manufacturers now is supported system-wide.

Spotlight: Improvements in speed and usability make it a much more effective search tool. Notable additions are searching by phrase and the ability to search system files. I use it to quickly find images by cutline when I don’t want to open Aperture.

Back to my Mac: .Mac subscribers have the ability to access their machines from anywhere. Working on your laptop and need to get a file from your desktop? Connect over the internet and browse your desktop, copy what you need. This does get blocked by some firewalls and might require changing some settings in your router, but when it works it works very well.

Software compatibility:

Photoshop CS - Opens and runs fine, have not tested all filters and adjustments. (I mainly use levels and curves) Did have a weird problem with not being able to paste from Illustrator CS. Adobe has stated that CS3 should be compatible and that any issues will be fixed in updates. Those of us that stick with the older versions are officially out of luck if there are any problems.

Aperture - Minor issues were fixed in the 1.5.6 update that came out the day of the Leopard release. It also brought significant speed improvements to the app.

Gretag Macbeth (now X-Rite) Eye-One Match software and Eye-One Display 2 Calibration hardware - both work as expected.

Missing Sync - Sadly Mark/Space Missing Sync products are not Leopard compatible yet, so Treo/Blackberry/WM users have no ability to keep their PDAs synced with their Macs for the time being. Mark/Space expects updates within 90 days.

That’s it for now, will update once I learn more. In the meantime, if there’s any doubt, this upgrade is well worth it.

I don’t usually post news, but this is big. If this is for real, then many of us can easily use up that stash of Ilford we have squirreled away behind our frozen fish sticks.

On September 18th, Grubba Software released TrueGrain, a stand-alone software product that reproduces the look and feel of several different B&W film stocks. Beyond using the sampled grain patterns, it also adjusts tonal response to match that of the selected film. I downloaded the demo and plan on playing with it over the next week to see how this really holds up in real-world use. Conveniently, I am shooting a wedding this weekend, so I’ll have a fresh sample to play with. In the meantime, I encourage you to download the demo and give it a spin.

The software’s adjustable settings are:

Spectral Response
Grain Scaling & Intensity
Dynamic Range

I can’t wait to get my hands all over this.

TrueGrain requires OS X 10.4.9 or higher and costs $300.

UPDATE:

Spent some time with TrueGrain on the plane to and from Ireland.

First, it works pretty much as advertised. The grain is simply impossible to duplicate using any other means, which likely explains the developers choosing to go with scanned images over any algorithmic implementations. The spectral and dynamic range adjustments are replicable using other means, but devising the right combination to match a particular film stock is outside the realm of feasibility in most situations. In the end, this is the ultimate way to recreate the film look without having to deal with the real thing.

Some tips:

Well-exposed, low-ISO images seem to work best. High-ISO images tend to have excessive noise in some channels (mainly blue). This noise is amplified during the spectral response adjustment and the poor quality of some channels can really hurt the image. Detail is lost and noise becomes very objectionable.

Properly exposed images respond best to the dynamic range adjustment. Underexposed images need tweaking to make the contrast appear as expected. I don’t have much experience with overexposed images in this program, so I can’t comment on that.

Now some images.

Let’s face it, getting images to the web is a time-consuming multi-step process. Open the file in an editor, tweak it, resize it, sharpen it, export it, FTP it, test the URL, copy it and finally enter it into the code. Sometimes you just want to get a file up to a location, without waiting for the feature-rich editor to start up and without having to jump through all these hoops. This is where Imagewell comes in.

Like with most Mac programs, it all starts with a drag.

Almost instantly, Imagewell springs open and loads the selected file. Once it does, you are presented with the following screen. Right from here you can:

• Resize
• Compress
• Rename
• Convert to a different format (tiff, jpg, png)
• Send (term for upload/copy)
• Generate a random filename

By accessing the “Watermark” and “More” screens you can:

• Watermark (text or image)
• Automatically copy the URL in several different code syntaxes
• Copy to and paste from the clipboard
• Rotate
• Screengrab (whole or selection)

The way the workflow is set up, “saving” or “exporting” of the file are not necessary, hence no obvious way to perform those functions. Instead, Imagewell uses the metaphor of “sending” a file. You set the options to reflect your desired end product, select a destination for the final file and hit “send.” Valid destinations include volumes, folders as well as several different types of web servers. Your original file is never modified using this method and the acts of sending and editing are combined into one efficient function.

The sending portion relies on “locations” which are defined by the user ahead of time. The Locations dialog is where often-accessed folders or servers are defined to become selectable locations. Once these are setup, they show up in the drop-down next to the Send button on the main interface.

Beyond these core functions Imagewell also supports some simple editing and annotation.

The user can:
• Crop
• Rotate
• Easily add arrows, speech bubbles, frames and boxes

The editing interface is accessed by hitting “Edit” on the main screen, at which point the screen expands. This is a pretty non-standard interface, but works well for the intended purpose once it’s understood.

Imagewell’s interface is not the most intuitive thing at first, but its nonstandard approach really works well for the intended task. After a few rounds with it the workflow becomes natural. Besides the need to learn a new interface, most might be put off by some of its shortcomings. For as many things as it does well, it is missing some key features. The biggest being sharpening. This alone makes it hard to use for uploading photos, as they all need a bit of sharpening before uploading. In addition there is the lack of a target file size dialog, which allows you to enter a target file size for the compressed output and makes the program find the optimal compression settings to reach that size. There are also quality concerns. Imagewell uses OS X’s Quartz engine for image rendering, making the final output lower quality than what other tools are capable of. To their credit, the developers have said that the next version of the program will include its own rendering engine as well as a way to sharpen the images.

Imagewell does an admirable job at streamlining the workflow of those wishing to get images converted and transferred. It comes in two versions, a free and an “Xtra” version costing $15. The Xtra version offers the ability to set often-used settings as presets, batch processing, an expanded shape library, multiple images on the canvas and the ability to resize the canvas. At this point in time, my recommendation is to download the free version and see if it fits your workflow rather than spending money on the Xtra. Right now even the paid version is missing some critical functionality for photographers that might be added in the future version. Personally, I’m taking the wait and see approach before I pay.

Imagewell is made by Xtralean Software and is free for the standard version or $14.95USD for the “Xtra” version. The software download weighs in under 1MB.