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NewsGoogle Reaffirms Its Commitment to Linux with the Launch of Picasa 3

Posted 10/05/08 at 12:02:13 AM by Justin Kerr

Many Windows users have been running Picasa 3 for the past several weeks now, but Picasa development for Linux has always seemly lagged behind. This all changed on Thursday with a public beta release of Picasa 3 with support for all the major Linux distributions. According to the feature overview, the new version includes many of the new editing and retouching features missing in the previous version as well as a tighter integration with Picasa Web. For Linux users looking to further automate the process of importing photos you will also appreciate the auto detect feature that runs each time you plug in your camera. In a blog post by Google Software Engineer Lei Zhang he reminds the Linux community of Google’s commitment to their platform. Some of its largest contributions have been in the form of patches for the open source WINE project with over 2700 fixes. WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is an application for Linux which allows users to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Want to learn more? Check out the November print edition of Maximum PC on sale now for an excellent how to guide on using WINE for gaming in Linux.

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TAGS: Google, download, linux, picasa, digital photography, photo editor, photo editing, Picasa 3.0, wine

NewsWindows Live's Third Wave Now Ready to Try

Posted 09/19/08 at 04:06:05 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Windows Live wave 3 betas now ready to download

Windows Live has come a long way since it was first introduced as a Microsoft brand in 2006. The first wave bolted Hotmail, Messenger, and Spaces into a single download. In last year's second wave, tools like SkyDrive, Events, Photo Gallery, LiveWriter, Calendar, and Family Safety joined the family, along with support for mobile devices. This week, Microsoft rolled out its third wave, adding a new member to the Windows Live family (Movie Maker) and new features to several existing programs (Messenger, Photo Gallery, Writer, Toolbar, and more). We've already told you about the new features in Hotmail, so join us after the jump to find out what's new and improved.

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TAGS: windows, microsoft, Security, email, utilities, IM, web 2.0, Windows Live, imaging, video editing, blogging, photo editing

NewsPicasa 3.0 Beta: More Speed, Better Photo Repairs and Better RAW Support

Posted 09/05/08 at 10:44:07 PM by Mark Edward Soper

This week, Google unveiled a public beta of its Picasa 3.0 photo-sharing software. Picasa 3.0 offers a huge number of new and improved features that will appeal to both point and shoot and DSLR users. I was particularly impressed by the following:

A new photo viewer that integrates with Windows Explorer and supports PNG, TGA and RAW formats as well as JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF. The preview window displays thumbnails of other photos in the folder for faster navigation and offers one-click editing in Picasa, one-click uploading, or a one-click slideshow. Even on my less than swift single-core laptop, it displays Canon CR2 RAW files much faster than Windows Live Photo Gallery does. Google tested Picasa 3.0 on systems with up to 1 million photos, and it shows.
The ability to display image metadata for RAW files from within Picasa.
The enhanced photo collage creator with six preset designs along with easy drag and drop repositioning and image rotation. It's so good that I wonder if Microsoft Research's new AutoCollage 2008 (which costs $19.95) can compete.
Improved photo editing tools such as the retouching tool (good for removing scratches and dust) and the tuning tool, which features highlight, shadow, fill light, color picker, and color temperature controls. If you don't want to learn (or pay for) Adobe Photoshop Elements, you can do quite well in fixing less-than-perfect photos.

To see the photo viewer in action, and to find out where to learn more (or just get your hands on Picasa 3.0), join us after the jump.

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TAGS: Google, download, picasa, digital photography, photo editor, photo editing, Picasa 3.0

NewsAdobe Lightroom 2 Adds 64-Bit Support, Better Interface, and More

Posted 07/30/08 at 09:18:56 AM by Mark Edward Soper

Adobe has released Lightroom 2. Lightroom enables users to view large numbers of RAW or other format photos at a time and to work with photos in groups for editing, tagging, printing, or exporting.

What's New in Lightroom 2

Lightroom 2 adds the following features to the original Lightroom, according to CNet:

Panorama creation and merge to HDR when used on a system that also runs Photoshop CS3
New metadata API that permits third-party applications like Flickr to work with Lightroom metadata
Styles to create JPEG-like images from RAW files
Dual-monitor support
Metadata filtering to help find photos faster
Improved image-sharpening technology licensed from PhotoKit that improves picture quality for printing
Smart Collections uses tags to create photos by rating and tags

Additional new and enhanced features listed on the Adobe Lightroom 2 website include:

New local adjustment brush (touch up specific areas of a photo)
New extensible architecture through plugins
New volume management enables you to work with high-resolution previews even when the original images are offline
New print package support
Enhanced nondestructive photo editing and batch processing

However, the biggest news is 64-bit Windows Vista and MacOS X support.

To learn more about Lightroom 2 and how it relates to other Adobe software, see the Lightroom FAQ page.

Cha-Ching! How Much to Buy (and Try) Lightroom 2

First-time buyers will pay $299 for Lightroom 2. Upgrading from Lightroom 1.x is $99. A free 30-day trial is also available.