Yesterday Adobe announced the latest version of Photoshop Elements, their slightly-lighterweight consumer-oriented photo editing application. New features in the Windows release include Photomerge Exposure which combines differently-exposed shots of the same scene to create uniformly-exposed shots (similar to High Dynamic Range photos), improved Online Sharing, and people recognition (much like Picasa).

For Photoshop Elements 8 on the Mac (which ships in October), there's Bridge CS4 for image management, scene cleaning - to remove objects like people or cars across multiple photos - and TouchUp brushes to easily improve your snaps.

Photoshop Elements costs US$99 for the Mac or Windows edition - and Windows users can also pick up Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8 in a bundle for US$149. Windows users can also download a trial version of Photoshop Elements from the Adobe website.

If you're not convinced by Elements, we've covered a few alternatives recently on Download Squad: Paint.NET and GIMP 2.8 for Windows, and Pixelmator and Acorn for Mac OS X.

The widely acclaimed image editor Paint.NET has been updated to version 3.5 Beta 1.

The Windows application, developed using version 3.5 of the .net framework, was originally developed by a Microsoft-mentored student as a replacement for the basic Microsoft Paint application that ships with Windows. Since it's inception it has grown hugely in features to the extent that many now consider it a viable free alternative to applications such as Photoshop and The GIMP.

Paint.NET includes powerful features including layers, unlimited undo, numerous filters, magic wand, cloning and also offers a plugin architecture for third party extensibility.

The new 3.5 Beta 1 release - the first to require version 3.5 of the .net framework - adds a refreshed UI designed to look great on Windows Vista and Windows 7 Aero / Glass together with new filters, initial Windows 7 taskbar integration (recent items are listed in the jumplist), reduced memory usage and a host of fixes and updates.

If you are already a Paint.NET user you can download the updated release from within the application itself using the update feature, or the release can be downloaded directly from GetPaint.

Many people of course will be sceptical as to whether Paint.NET can genuinely offer a Photoshop alternative for $0 - are you already a satisfied user? Share your thoughts on the application in the comments!

Hot on the heels of stylish Mac OS X image editor Pixelmator hitting version 1.5, Acorn - the simple (yet powerful) image editor from Flying Meat software has reached version 2.0.

This all-new release is one of the first applications we've seen to require Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and comes a tonne of new features including: layer-based screenshot capture; RAW image support; layer groups; perspective transform; Dodge Burn, Clone, and Smudge tools; and much more.

Those looking to script Acorn can now also script the application via Javascript (using JSTalk) - and the trial of Acorn no-longer expires. Instead of locking itself down after the trial period ends, Acorn simply limits certain features until you purchase a copy - a nice change from
If you're an existing customers with a Acorn 1.0 licence you can upgrade for $20, and a new licence costs just $49.95.

We've covered slick Mac OS X Photoshop chaser Pixelmator here before at Download Squad, and earlier in the week version 1.5 of the application shipped.

There's plenty of new changes in this update, however some of my favourites include an all-new (and long-overdue) Save for Web option, a slicing tool for creating images for Web sites, Send to iPhoto and Mail options, and all-important Mac OS X Snow Leopard compatibility.

The 1.5 update is free to existing customers, and if you're tempted to pick up a copy, a new licence will set you back just $59 - ideal if you only occasionally need the Photoshop feature-set and balk at the price of the Adobe behemoth.

[Via TUAW]

There are plenty of online image editors out there, but it can be tough to find the right one. If you're looking for a few filters, a bit of layer support, and a decent range of tools, Pixlr might be the one you want. You'll be familiar with its tools from using desktop apps like Photoshop and The Gimp, but it's rare to see so many advances options in a web app.

Some of the Pixlr perks that surprised me: opacity sliders! Layers and transparency! The collection of filters includes halftones, scanlines and pixelation. Common (but useful) features like hue/saturation, resizing, and brightness/contrast are also intact. Next time you find yourself on a computer without Photoshop, you might also find you don't need it.

If you need a quick way to round the corners of an image but hate messing with a full-blown image editor, then make sure you bookmark RoundMyCorners. Similar to other apps like this we've covered before, it's a very basic online tool but it works exactly as promised.

Simply select an image from your computer then choose your options. Corners can be rounded from 1 to 10 pixels and customized with just about any color you can think of. Decide if you want a reflection included, what format you want the image saved as (PNG, JPEG, or GIF), then let RoundMyCorners do its thing. The final image will download automatically to your desktop, with "rounded" thoughtfully provided in the file name.

This is a fantastically handy tool, but there are a couple of small improvements I'd like to see. A preview function would be terrific, as would the ability to name the file before it's downloaded. The developer says additional functionality is on the way, so let's hope these are two features that make the cut.

There's nothing flashy or fancy about this Web site, but RoundMyCorners a great tool to get the job done.

Launching a full-blown application to perform quick image manipulation tasks - like format conversion and scaling - can be a time consuming pain in the butt. The XnView shell extension makes short work of those chores, adding graphical manipulation goodness to your Windows explorer right-click menu.

As pictured, the shell extension appears in your context menu, though you can choose to have it displayed as a sub-menu. It'll give you a brief heads up about your image, including a thumbnail, dimensions, and file size.

Single click conversion supports most common image types, including PNG, JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PCX, and TGA. Execute "convert into" and your new image appears almost instantly.

Using the "Convert..." option gives you more complete control, offering just about any graphic format you'd ever want to use, quality tuning, resizing, and the ability to choose a destination folder.

Web based image editors have been popping up for some time now. Even the de facto image editor Photoshop couldn't resist setting up shop. But sometimes you just want to simply resize or crop a photo and not be inadated with a multitude of tools and swatches. Enter picjuice, an online image editor with simplicity in mind.

As soon as you pull up the site it's clear that "ease of use" was the main objective here. The only tools available are Crop, Resize, Flip, Rotate and Adjust.

The controls for each tools are simple as well, depending on the tool selected you either get an A or B option, a slider or in the case of the Crop tool, a cross hair to select the area you want to use. These simple controls will aid in a shorter learning curve over the more feature rich sites.

In our testing we actually found the resizing tool here better than the one available from Photoshop Express. In Express, the resized image looked jagged but not in picjuice . However, the site seemed to be only compatible with JPG or PNG files as when we tried a GIF file picjuice would hang when we tried to edit the image.

Currently in beta, picjuice joins the already crowded online imaging arena. Hopefully, its limited get down to business attitude will help to differentiate itself from the competition.

Adobe is showing off a sneak peek of its upcoming Photoshop Express online image editing application. There's not a lot of information available, but with a new online image editing site popping up nearly every other day, it makes a lot of sense for Adobe to get into this space.

Photoshop Express won't be a Photoshop replacement, or even clone. Rather, it will have some of the basic functionality of Adobe's flagship image editor in an accessible online package.

Details, and this screenshot came out of this week's Photoshop World expo. There's also a higher resolution version available

There's a really cool video that's been making the rounds on the interwebs for the past week or so. It shows a next generation image resizing method that lets you stretch or shrink a picture without greatly altering its composition.



One of the guys behind this technology is Shai Avidan, a former staff member of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. Adobe's John Nack writes that the company has hired Avidan, which we hope means we'll be seeing this sort of image resizing in Photoshop and other consumer applications soon.

We're pretty certain that if Adobe hadn't snatched up Avidan, Match.com would have done so. Just imagine the potential for tweaking profile pictures in personal ads. A little too short, or a little too round in the belly? Go ahead and make yourself thinner and taller with just a click of the mouse.

[via TechCrunch]

Got a few hundred digital photos lying in a folder on your desktop because you haven't had time to crop, resize, and sort them? JPEGCrops make tackling that job a little less daunting.

As you can probably guess from the title, JPEGCrops lets you crop images. JPEG imags to be specific. Who would have thunk?

You can open a bunch of pictures at once, set a directory to save the files, and enter names for each image. Then you can select the portion of the picture that you want to keep. JPEGCrops will create a lossless copy of the cropped image in your folder of choice.

The author has pretty much abandoned the program in favor of a new Java-based version called RoboCrop, but JPEGCrops should still meet most of your basic image cropping needs.

[via Brent Evans]

PikiFX is the latest in a long line of online image editors. We're not sure why so many companies are producing online image editing applications instead of downloadable versions, but it probably has something to do with the fact that users are looking for ways to share their images online. When you're done editing an image in PikiFX you can download it or use a code to to embed the image on a blog or website, even if you haven't signed up for a free account.

PikiFX has all the basic tools you would expect. You can crop, resize, or add borders to your picture. You can also use a variety of effects to alter colors, make an image blurry, or add text. If PikiFX were the only such app on the market, it'd be a great tool. But it has some serious competition from services like Picnik, SnipShot and Fixr.

[via Mashable]