Photo - Blog
Some news from the site and from the digital photography world.
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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ACD Systems has released version 3 of ACDSee Pro image processing and browsing software.
Main improvements regard: the user interface, new editing mode that combines non-destructive (i.e. reversible) and pixel-level treatments, image publishing features, a vibrance control, improved noise reduction and color correction. Supported file formats are more than 100 (including archive formats like zip, rar).
The new version costs $169.99 on ACDSee website.
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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Adobe yesterday has admitted a bug in the recent RAW engine for Photoshop (Adobe Camera RAW 5.5) and Lightroom 2.5 for Mac users with a PowerPC and with specific cameras (Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony and some medium format).
This bug produces artifacts in highlights and has been introduced with the demosaic tuning in the last release. While Adobe is preparing the fix, affected users should downgrade to previous version.
Official announcement availabe at this link.
- Referenced brands in this article: Adobe
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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Adobe Systems Inc. has announced a new release of the popular consumer imaging application: Photoshop Elements 8.
Most important new features:
- Referenced brands in this article: Adobe
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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X-Rite has announced a new product for color calibration: ColorChecker Passport.
It is a plastic and protective case (against color change due to ultraviolet light) that contains three ColorChecker targets: White Balance, Classic and Creative Enhancement.
A software application is included both as a standalone version and as a Lightroom plugin: it allows creation of DNG profiles to be used with Photoshop and Lightroom.
Price will be around 100 $.
Detailed info available at this link.
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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Pentax has announced an upper-entry level DSLR: K-x. It is derived from the K2000 (also called "K-m" outside the United States) but with a lot of additions and improvements also taken from bigger brother K-7.
The most notable ones are:
- a new 12.4 megapixels CMOS sensor
- a 11-points autofocus system with face detection up to 16 faces (in case you have many friends...),
- HD video recording (not full HD though) up to 24 fps and with an internal microphone;
- HDR mode to take multiple shots with different exposure and combine them to get a high dynamic range image;
- ISO up to 6400;
- shutter speed up to 1/6000th second;
- 4 new digital filters (post-processing effects).
Interestingly, this model will be shipped in 4 colors: the classic black and the the original white, red and navy blue (the last two in limited numbers).
The new model should be available from October 2009 at an Initial price around 650 $ with kit lens that is a 18-55 mm DA-L (note that "L" in Pentax indicates an economic version of the lens not like in Canon that indicates a pro lens).
- Referenced brands in this article: Pentax
- Written by: Giuseppe Covino
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SanDisk today has announced new CompactFlash - CF cards offering the fastest performance so far: Extreme Pro, able of up to 97MB/s read speeds (about 647x) in Rob Galbraith tests. Sizes will be 16, 32 and 64 GB.
Also Transcend has announced new CF cards with 8 GB size and 600x speed (about 90 MB/s).
Lastly, also PhotoFast (a not worldwide known manufacturer based in Taipei -Taiwan-) has announced 2 new CF cards with 533x speed.
The pixel race pumps up this faster and faster cards.