New - Photo & Video OS X App - Poster

Reinvented Software released Poster 1.1 for Mac OS X today. Poster is an application for posting photos and videos to the web. Version 1.1 adds support for posting to SmugMug, posting videos to Facebook, improves the app's plug-ins for iPhoto and Aperture, people tagging and more.

Poster is a Mac OS X application for uploading photos and videos to multiple sites and accounts with a sleek design that makes posting photos and videos a truly enjoyable experience. In version 1.1, it's now possible to post photos and videos to SmugMug. Poster 1.1 also adds videos to its existing support for posting photos to Facebook.

For each site, Poster takes a tailored approach that makes the most of each site's unique features. Poster can post both photos and HD videos with captions and keywords to SmugMug, create new public, unlisted or password-protected galleries or post to any existing galleries.

When posting to Flickr, Poster can upload both photos and videos, auto-complete tags, create and use existing sets, submit photos to groups, tag people and choose moderation settings all within the app.

For Facebook, Poster can not only post photos and videos to personal profiles, but also post photos to any Facebook pages that you administer, making it ideal for anyone whose business, band or cause takes advantage of Facebook's massive user community.

Poster includes export plug-ins are provided for iPhoto and Aperture to launch Poster with the exported files, including any titles and keywords set in those apps, but as a standalone app can works with all photo editing and management applications. Poster can even perform some tricks of its own, such as rotating and resizing photos before uploading.

The best part of Poster is that it is a pleasure to use. Packed with thoughtful touches, its understated design and tasteful animations are both intuitive and easy on the eye and its support for multitouch gestures and full keyboard navigation help make posting your photos and videos as enjoyable an experience as taking them.

System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.6 or later
* 3.1 MB

 

Pricing And Availability

Poster 1.1 is $9.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide through the App Store in the Photography category or via the Reinvented Software website.

$9.99/Download

Digital Anarchy out Beauty Box skin retouching plug-in for Aperture

Press release:

San Francisco, CA — March 16, 2011 — Digital Anarchy, a leading provider of cost-effective software for photographers and digital artists, today announced the availability of their Beauty Box skin retouching software for Apple’s Aperture. The plugin provides an automatic, easy and inexpensive way of smoothing skin and removing blemishes in photographs. Beauty Box Aperture 1.0 is fully compatible with Aperture 2 and Aperture 3 and works terrifically with processing large groups of images.

”The Beauty Box technology has won a number of awards,” said Jim Tierney, President of Digital Anarchy. “We’re very excited to bring this product to Aperture users and see how this tool enhances their productivity and portrait work.”

Beauty Box Aperture performs fast, automatic skin retouching and smoothing. The software automatically identifies skin tones and creates an intelligent mask that limits the smoothing effect to skin areas while keeping facial details razor-sharp. This process requires minimal input from the user and in many cases is fully automatic. Beauty Box Aperture gets its render speed from new technology from Toonamation, Inc. and takes advantage of GPU speed and nVidia’s CUDA. Whether it is used for a glamour shoot, senior portraits or just a personal photo, Beauty Box achieves a consistently professional result.

The practical features of Beauty Box Aperture include:

* Automatic Mask: Beauty Box uses face detection to identify the skin tones and create an automatic mask in just those areas.
* Smart Skin Smoothing: Smoothing controls like Amount and Radius intelligently adjust the skin smoothing.
* Batch Processing: Automatically smooth the skin in hundreds of images by tying Beauty Box into a batch operation.  
* Control Over Mask: Advanced Mask tools are available to make changes to the mask
* Sharpen Details: Use fine-tuning controls like Preserve Edges to preserve important details like hair, eyelashes and jewelry. 
* Add Skin Texture: Bring back skin texture, like pore structure, that can be lost because of the smoothing.  
* Fast Processing: Beauty Box uses GPU speed and nVidia’s CUDA to increase render performance.

 

Pricing and Availability

Beauty Box Aperture is regularly priced at USD $99. The product is on sale for $69 through April 15th, 2011. The skin retouching software works in Aperture 2 and 3. On Macintosh, the product runs on OS 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. On Windows, the product supports Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, Vista 32-bit, Vista 64-bit and Windows 7. Demo filters and samples are available here.

GeoLogTag Apple iPhone App review

We're great fans of GeoLog Tag here at the Digital Journal of Photography and also at our sister site, The App Whisperer , we have reviewed it in the past and always been impressed. This review concentrates on the latest updated version 3.3 that now includes support for geotagging Samsung RAW (SRW) photos, a fix for Mac geotagging when traveling through different timezones and a fix for Mac geotagging on an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network.
We put this app through its paces as the competition is heating up in the Apple app store of this style of app. Read our extensive review here...

Accidental Photographer - Francis Hills - The Tour Begins Today - September 28, 2010

Francis Hills is known as the Accidental Photographer, and for a compelling reason: seven years ago, after losing his job during the dot.com bust, he picked up a point-and-shoot and discovered his true passion. Today, Francis shoots celebrity, fashion and beauty from his New York Studio. A digital photography evangelist, he's worked closely with Hasselblad and Hewlett Packard, giving presentations about his photographic journey and demonstrating high-end digital photography, worldwide. His work is primarily shot on high resolution digital using medium format backs. Francis has appeared numerous times as photographer and judge on Scandinavia's Top Model, Norway's Top Model, Sweden's Top Model (as resident photographer) and TLC's Covershot TV shows. In 2007 Francis had the rare opportunity to fly to Africa and France to take portraits of the enigmatic French Foreign Legion, documenting first hand the Legionnaires for a book and exhibition. His work has appeared in numerous magazines world wide including: Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Essence, Gotham, GQ, Las Vegas, LA Confidential, Ocean Drive, Oprah, Time and Zink.

First Stop - Seattle

Join renowned celebrity photographer Francis Hills for a 3-hour photographer's workshop where he will demonstrate the digital photo workflow he uses to create iconic images of today's most interesting and influential personalities. In addition to an intimate look at how Hills achieves his unique photographic style, you will learn image capture with SanDisk memory, how to edit, showcase and manage your images with Aperture, and create gallery-quality prints with large format photo printers.

Francis Hills' workshop will demonstrate his photo digital workflow using products from Apple, HP, and SanDisk.

Learn How To:

1. Capture with SanDisk imaging memory cards & readers
2. Refine and manage massive libraries with Aperture.
3. Print with HP DesignJet Large Format printer.

Schedule

Tuesday, September 28, 2010 from 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM (PT)

Location

REI Seattle
Casey Schwabland Conference Room
222 Yale Ave N
Seattle, WA 98109

Tickets $29.95 - order here

Next Stop - LA

Date:     September 30th, 2010
Time: 10:00-1:00pm
Location:     Samy's Camera Fairfax Classroom
Instructor:     Francis Hills
Fee:     $25 - order here

Next Stop - Gaithersburg

Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2010 -Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Time: 10:00 -1:00 pm
Location:    Mac Business Solutions , 9057 Gaither Rd., Gaithersburg MD 20877 (US).
Fee: Free - book place here

Next Stop - New York

Session 1

Date: Monday, October 11, 2010
Time: 10:00 - 1:00 pm
Location: B&H Super Store, 420 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10001
Fee: Free - book place here

Session 2

Date: Monday, October 11, 2010
Time: 3:00 - 6:00 pm
Location: B&H Super Store, 420 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10001
Fee: Free - book place here

Next Stop - New York City

Date: To be determined
Time: As above
Location: Adorama, 42 West 18th Street, New York City, NY 10011
Fee: $25

Apple updates camera RAW compatibility v3.3

Apple has released Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.3
This update extends RAW image format compatibility to Aperture 3 and iPhoto '09 for the following cameras:

Canon PowerShot SX1 IS
Olympus E-PL1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10
Samsung NX10
Sony Alpha DSLR-A390
Sony Alpha NEX-3
Sony Alpha NEX-5

The new update is available from the Software Update...option, and is also available directly from Apple's site here.

For more information on supported RAW formats, see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3825le.com/kb/HT3825

Thinking of moving from iPhoto to Aperture?

In this feature we'll show you how to improve your image editing experience by upgrading from iPhoto to Apple's pro-level photography image editor, Aperture 3.

Apple ships iPhoto with every new Mac and is a great way to organize all your photos. It also has a handy set of editing tools, not to mention the other features to help you share your pictures online with Flickr, MobileMe and Facebook. You can use iPhoto to print your snaps in books and calendars as well as traditional lab-quality photos from online vendors or by using your own photo-printer.

However, while there’s a raft of benefits to using iPhoto, upgrading to Aperture 3 is the next step if you want to get more from your photography, and a logical move if you've upgraded from a digital compact camera to a DSLR. We'll show you some of the most obvious benefits, as well as reveal some of the more obscure, though no less compelling, reasons for upgrading to Apple's pro-photography image editor.

Compatibility

Before that though, it's as well to check and see that your Mac is compatible. While iPhoto '09 will run on anything, just about, Aperture 3 is a little more demanding. Aperture runs on any current Mac although any Intel Mac running OSX 10.5.8 or higher with 1GB, preferably 2GB or more, will do.

Exporting iPhoto's Library

Moving your images to Aperture 3.0 couldn't be easier and all your previous organization structure (events, albums, books etc), ratings, keywords, adjustments, places and faces are maintained. Simply install Aperture 3.0 then you can either import your iPhoto Library from a dialog that appears or, later on, from the File menu. Select iPhoto Library (File > Import > iPhoto Library). You'll have to decide if you want leave the images where they are (as referenced files), or import them into Aperture's Library (as managed files). As the latter duplicates the images, I would strongly recommend the former.

If you want to experiment first, you can import a few photos, or a whole event, or album, from the iPhoto Browser. Simply select File > Import > Show iPhoto Browser. Drag the images, or album, from the browser to Aperture's Library Inspector and Aperture will import the photos into an Untitled Project.

And, don't forget there are other benefits too. When you edit an image in iPhoto the picture file is duplicated. In Aperture, any changes, or versions (duplicates with edits for example), are stored in a single file, saving hard drive space. These variations and versions are managed by Aperture, so you don't have to take any additional steps to keep track of the changes. It's all done for you.

Like iPhoto, you don't have to have your photos stored on your computer's hard drive. If you have thousands of images you may want to store them on an external drive to save space on your start-up disk. Indeed, Aperture can reference these (without importing them into the Library on your computer’s hard drive) or you could set up a number of additional Libraries on the external disk.

This is much like the functionality of iPhoto only with the added benefit that Aperture can back-up this Library in the form of a Vault. As you’re trying to protect your library from failure, make sure a Vault is set-up on a second hard disk. There’s little point having one on the same drive.

Tip: If you lack spare computer ports, simply daisy-chain a second drive off the first using FireWire.

Adjustments and Effects

In use, you'll find iPhoto's simplicity extends to Aperture 3. As well as a raft of image enhancement options, Aperture 3 has a number of automatic adjustment presets to help you on your way.

There are quick-fixes for exposure, revealing detail in shadows and holding highlights, an excellent auto-enhance (great for beginners and pros alike) and there are a wide range of B&W options too. The real power with these quick-fixes though, is that you can fine-tune them to your liking and then save them as additional presets. After that, you can apply your custom presets to single images or whole albums at a time. It’s an immensely powerful feature that will save you time in front of your computer screen.

There are way too many features to talk through in-depth, and for tips and tutorials I would obviously recommend keeping this site bookmarked for those. However, there are plenty of Auto options for beginners, including a new Auto Curves feature, as well as the familiar adjustment sliders that work globally, like those in iPhoto.

Selective Editing

Aperture 3 also adds the option to paint (brush) on these enhancements locally. This local adjustment technique is often referred to as selective editing. For example, you could Intensify Contrast and add Sharpening to the eyes in a portrait leaving the rest untouched. In time, more advanced editing may include several areas of color balancing and adjustment using Curves. Sounds much more complicated than it really is.

Quick Brushes offers additional effects to the Adjustment Brushes and include Skin Smoothing, Dodge (lighten) and Burn (darken) as well as more specific, individual adjustment of Contrast, Saturation, Vibrancy and others. And, with an edge-detection option available for some, you don’t need to be an experienced retoucher to get the results you want from either of these brush tool options.

Because Aperture 3 works non-destructively, any number of steps can be applied without fear of continual image degradation. And because of that, Aperture 3 lets you experiment easily and grow in confidence in your own pace. Why not try Aperture 3 now, and see for yourself.

For information on how to get the most from Aperture 3, why not bookmark this site?