The Photoshop Express public beta launched about six weeks ago and other than some early concerns about the ToS, we continue to be impressed with the service. Today, Adobe has added a number of new features to the service, including support for Flickr.
At the conference call in March, we asked Adobe about their plans for integrating Photoshop Express with other web services and they assured us Flickr support was on the way. It's available now and we think it adds a lot of value to both services. Now you can download your Flickr photos directly into Photoshop Express for cropping, color correction, digital effects, etc. Photos edited with Photoshop Express can be immediately re-exported/uploaded to Flickr all in one seamless step.
Additionally, Adobe has added a new "Save As" feature so that you can save multiple versions of a photo in addition to the original image. Adobe has also introduced a new embeddable media player for photo slideshows that can be used with Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites.
Photo management software for Windows makes us weep. For most people, photo management consists of loading the software (and drivers) that came from the camera manufacturer. So you've got a Nikon camera, and the photo management software is really different from your significant other's Kodak software.
It looks different. It acts different. It's easier to set up some ways, or more inflexible in others. It might even be installing extraneous applications on your machine you weren't expecting.
Linux, as you've probably guessed, handles cameras a little differently. Camera drivers -- many different camera drivers -- are handled by gphoto2 and its libraries. Your pictures are downloaded and organized through photo management software, which runs on top of the gphoto2 drivers. (As a side note, gphoto2 can also be used to download pictures from the command line.)
Your Nikon, your mom's Kodak, and your brother's Sony will all use the same photo management program on your Linux machine. Now that's a little less complicated.
Today we're taking a look at the F-Spot photo manager.
Aviary is an ambitious suite of web based image editing apps created to enable collaboration among artists of all genres and to provide artists a direct distribution channel to the marketplace. If you're already discounting online flash applications as a plausible alternative to desktop apps like Adobe Illustrator, Gimp, Photoshop, etc., Aviary agrees with you to a certain extent.
What Aviary is offering, make that "soon to offer" is a score of online tools that integrate with one another in one package. The idea is to provide online collaboration capabilities to artists, especially hobbyists and budding artists. The tools are especially useful for quick collaboration, mock ups, and initial team feedback, in ways where file sharing from desktop apps just aren't. And that's Aviary's niche.
Aviary's tools aren't your typical crop, resize, take out red eye kind of tools. Think 3D modeler, vector editor, Flex based pattern generator, color swatch generator, video and sound editors, desktop publishing, and the list goes on and on.
It turns out that Madonna had it wrong: instead of living in a material world, we are increasingly moving to a digital one. One arena in which that is particularly true is photography: digital cameras have slowly replaced traditional cameras, digital images replaced real prints, and digital manipulation has replaced traditional editing means.
Today we're going to look at six programs for the Mac, all designed to help you edit and manipulate your digital images. These programs vary widely in price, skill level, and features. Know this: whether you simply want to remove red-eye without having to pull out that felt-tip pen (we're not the only ones who did that, right?), or would like to insert Bigfoot into a picture of scenery, we've got you covered.
It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon, out here on the edge of the prairie. Oh, wait, that's Garrison Keillor, not us. Regardless, here's some stuff that happened this week on Download Squad.
Has Facebook's Beacon caused your blood pressure to rise as your level of web privacy has fallen to a new low? Fear not. Dolores Parker shows us how to block that pesky Beacon and take back your life.
We love Flickr but, until now it's been strictly info-in, info-out. Editing your photos was something you did before you uploaded to Flickr, not after. Flickr's new partnership with Picnik means now you can crop, resize, adjust exposure, contract, color saturation and other aspects of your images with just a few clicks. Sweet!
If you're one of the lucky ducks participating in the beta release of Skitch, the super-cool "anyone can be an artist" photo editing tool, then be sure to download the newest update by firing up the app and choosing "check for updates" from the Skitch menu.
Released today, Skitch Beta 4 now:
supports TIFF files
sports improved help windows
offers better snap crosshair visibility on dark backgrounds
ensures images taken with Cam Snap are now automatically flipped to compensate for mirroring
allows users to adjust arrow heads in the preference pane (yay!)
has an improved launch screen
offers a whole lot of other fixes, tweaks, and great things.
Not a Skitch user yet? Don't worry, it will be out, um, well, the team isn't really sure yet. But trust us, it's worth the wait.
If you ever find yourself working on a computer where you don't have the world's number one professional photo editing software, Photoshop, or just don't feel like spending the pile of cash that it demands, smaller online solutions might be for you. In my quest to locate a great photo editing tool that makes editing photos easy for everyone, I have come across Picnik. Picnik has powerful online photo editing tools that you can use through your browser. Registration is free, and pictures can be uploaded from Flickr, your computer, directly from a website link, Yahoo search, Flickr search, or from a webcam. Picnik's list of editing tools include auto fix, rotate, crop, exposure, colors, sharpen, and red-eye reduction. There are five special creative tools one can use, but only one is currently active. This is the special effect set, where users can easily change photos to black & white, sepia, boost colors, matte picture with soft edges, vignette, and soften. When photo editing is complete, photos can than be uploaded to your Flickr account, email the photo directly to an email address in small, medium, large, or full mode, save it to your computer, or create a Flickr slideshow. Users can also choose to email photos to websites including Photobucket, Costco, Snapfish, Kodak and Photolog where they can be printed and ordered online. There is also another option where you can print photos directly from Picnik onto your home printer if you choose. The interface is easy to navigate, and it's a joy to use. If you prefer to work full screen with no browser borders, simply click on the Picnik logo.
Corel has decided to give away some of its software as free and instantly downloadable. The software package available is Corel Snapfire, a photo organizing tool that shares, edits, prints, and creates slide shows and montages. Corel does offer an upgraded to Snapfire called Snapfire Plus, for $39.99. Snapfire Plus adds more movie effect and editing tools into the mix. Snapfire is similar to Google's photo organization tool Picasa.
You're on vacation, you snap some pics of a nice monument and building, and some snaps of your family in front of the monument and building. When you arrive home to download the pics, you notice to your dismay that there are a bunch of people in your picture. Just standing beside your family. What do you do?
Get SnapMedia's Tourist Remover, that's what you do! The trick is: you are required to take a bunch of pictures of the background location of where you are shooting. The less going on in the picture the better. So try to get it with as few people as possible. Try to keep the lighting the same as well. All you have to get started is sign up, and upload your images. SnapMedia's system will handle the image manipulation.
I have yet to try this app out, but it sounds pretty cool if it really says what it does. If anyone has any experience with SnapMedia's Tourist Remover, drop a line in the comments and let us know if it really works.
The Photoshop Express public beta launched about six weeks ago and other than some early concerns about the ToS, we continue to be impressed with the service. Today, Adobe has added a number of new features to the service, including support for Flickr.
Photo management software for Windows makes us weep. For most people, photo management consists of loading the software (and drivers) that came from the camera manufacturer. So you've got a Nikon camera, and the photo management software is really different from your significant other's Kodak software.
It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon, out here on the edge of the prairie. Oh, wait, that's Garrison Keillor, not us. Regardless, here's some stuff that happened this week on Download Squad. 
