Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

raw posts

Filed under: Photo, Windows, Freeware

How to add Mac-like RAW image support to Windows 7, Vista, XP

Well, not natively, but with the free FastPictureViewer codec pack you can now view your camera's high-resolution files within Windows 7's Explorer. All in all this codec pack has almost every camera type covered, from Canon's CR2 to Sony's SRF and Nikon's NRW -- and many others.

But how will this help me...? Well, if you're not a photographer, this is utterly insignificant. If you are a photographer though -- and I'd hazard a guess that most or all of us here have a digital camera -- it means that you no longer need to rely on manufacturer's own-brand image browser, or Adobe's Lightroom or Photoshop. You could now, in theory, manage your photography portfolio through Windows -- you can already tag and star-rate images, but with this codec pack there's absolutely no reason to use other tools.

And best of all it's free and devoid of any malware. It installs into the background and you'll never hear from it again. It's yet another good reason to install Windows 7...

P.S. Taken a little wind out of your sails, eh, Apple-centric photographers?

Filed under: Design, Developer, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Microsoft

HD Photo support for Photoshop

photoshop hd supportWhats next for Microsoft? Well, at least one of its eyes is focused on the HD Photo format, once called Windows Media Photo. This is reportedly a better alternative to the standard JPEG format, and of course, it's built into Windows Vista. The new format features multiple color formats for display or print, high dynamic range image encoding, lossless compression, and efficient decoding for multiple resolutions.

Adobe has adopted the technology by enabling Photoshop to read and write images that are stored in Microsoft's HD Photo format. There is a plug-in download ready for Windows users on Microsoft's website. A PowerPC and Intel based Mac download will be ready in two weeks, and a final plug-in release is due for April. This new plug-in allows for Photoshop users to save raw images taken directly from a digital cameras image sensor, as an HD Photo image. This plug-in will work with CS2 and the upcoming CS3.

Microsoft has also announced that many companies will be adopting the raw uncompressed photo type format and digital cameras with HD capabilities are scheduled to arrive on shelves in 12-18 months.

Filed under: Photo, Macintosh, Apple, Commercial

Aperture 1.5

Aperture 1.5
Big day for photographers today. The news at todays' Apple Photokina event was, as expected, the release of Aperture 1.5. Whether Adobe timed their Lightroom announcement to coincide or Apple set the event to coincide with the Lightroom announcement is anybody's guess. Regardless, the new Aperture will be available to current users as a downloadable upgrade sometime this week, and should hit the shelves almost immediately as well. the major new features are:
  • Loupe with adjustible controls
  • Flexible Library locations with support for any disk location, attached RAID, and even indexed removable media
  • Metadata presets
  • Advanced color controls
  • Improved sharpening algorithms
  • iWork '06 and iLife '06 integration
[Via TUAW]

Filed under: Photo, News, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Commercial

Lightroom beta 4 released

Adobe lightroomThis morning, Adobe announce the latest beta of their Adobe Lightroom RAW workflow software. Top on the list of improvements is feature parity between OS X and Windows versions. Windows users are no doubt saying "it's about time." Other enhancements include improved curves algorithms and controls, a "more streamlined and elegant" GUI, customizable UI, precision white balance, ability to easily convert files to DNG after import, closer mapping between the Lightroom library and the FS, performance enhancements for the Web module, and other user requested enhancements, particularly from the Pixmantec crowd. I can only imagine what they had to say. Granted, most people are nicer than I am, but if I were a RAWShooter user, I would have had trouble not taking a little aggression out on the Lightroom team, whether they deserved it or not.

I haven't had a chance to play around with all the new features yet, but the updated GUI is certainly an improvement, as is the option to hide the toolbar by clicking 't'.

Adobe Lightroom Screencap
New main Develop screen

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Windows

Google Picasa updates and moves out of beta

google picasa

On Wednesday, Google pushed its digital photo application Picasa out of beta, with many new updates. The Picasa Build 32.91 updates include:
  • Sharing photos online though Picasa web albums
  • Choose how folders are displayed in Picasa, though a nested folder view, or date view.
  • Importing photos into an existing folder.
  • Choose between four presentation views for screensavers.
  • Tell Picasa where you shot each photo, and geotagging ads some nice integration with Google Earth. KMZ files can be exported and shared with others.
  • Thumbnails appear larger and clearer.
  • RAW formats and more camera models are supported.
  • Caption editing has been updated.
  • Starred photos get organized into a special album.
  • Buttons can be configured to the user's specifications.
Google has also added a Tools > Experimental menu where users can test out features that Google is working to develop. Sorry, but Picasa is currently only available for PC and Linux downloads at the moment.

I love Picasa, and use it daily to organize, view and store my digital photos. Over the past few months I have been experimenting with the Picasa Web feature, and I have to say, it's a great tool to use to send digital pictures to family and friends for viewing anywhere, and display them in a nice online gallery.

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio