Just a quickie - if anyone uses the Olympus Studio viewer software they have released a series of updates.

The updates improve functionality and removes some software bugs.

Olympus Studio for Windows Update

Olympus Studio for Mac Update

Olympus Viewer for Windows Update

Olympus Viewer for Macintosh Update

YoPhoto is a UK site designed for the easy creation of high quality photo books.

You download the software and then design the book by selecting different layouts, background colours and optional captions. There are four sizes to select and come bound in a hard cover. Available in 'opulent bonded real leather' or contemporary linen with a choice of fourteen colours from classic British Racing Green, Ivory and Nero to a striking Shanghai Red, pretty Dianthus Pink or Tiger Lily. Prices range from £12.99 to £30.99 depending on the size of the book you order.

The actual software download is free, it is the printed book itself you have to pay for. Calendars also available (£12.99/£15.99). You design the book using the simple options and upload the final product for printing. There is also a burn to cd option if you wish to send the product through the post.

[Order a a Yophotobook before August 2006 will be entered into a draw to win a Canon EOS 350D digital camera. Click here for details]

IView recently received an update to version 3.1 News just released states the company has been purchased by Microsoft.

Yan Calotychos, founder of iView Multimedia has posted details on their website and mentions that "In my view, this Microsoft acquisition affords us an unprecedented opportunity to be even more responsive to a thriving market and ensure that iView MediaPro continues to perform to its full potential. Our engineering and marketing team here at iView are energized and excited to be joining the Microsoft team, and I personally will continue to be involved in the evolution of the product for years to come." Super.

He continues "What this acquisition will mean for you, our customers, is that together we face a bigger and brighter future in managing your creative workflow. The product that was born on the Mac will remain on the Mac as well as on the Windows operating system. All iView products will continue to be sold on the iView website and through our partners and channel. Bottom line: You all can continue to use and buy iView products knowing that they will be fully supported as Microsoft evolves the products in the future on both the Windows and Mac platforms."

Which is nice to know but some voices are wondering if the MAC version will fade away under pressure from Adobe's Lightroom.  The name will obviously change - can't have Microsoft managing an 'i' project now!

Photo Mechanic is an image browser tool for the MAC - a fast and easy-to-use image browser. 

Facilities include batch captioning, renaming, speedy browsing, and Photoshop connectivity features. Images are displayed as thumbnails of photos on a camera disk or folder where you can easily rotate, preview, copy, delete, tag, rename, and add caption / keyword information to photos both individually and in batches.

Meta-data is used extensivly - standard image capture data like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length can be accessed through "variables" and tucked-away in any IPTC field such as the caption. You can also use variables representing the current or capture time, date, or frame number, for example, for file renaming purposes. One variable - the sequence variable - can be used for sequential naming or to serialize certain IPTC fields.

The program has been updated to version 4.4.3.1.  What I can't find though is a list of improvements over previous versions...

1. During the months of July and August anyone visiting the the London Eye will also have the opportunity to look at the winning entries from the 2005 International Travel Photographer of the Year competition.
2. Google is currently testing a new version of its photo-management app Picasa in private beta that will let users post photo albums on the web via an integrated, Google-hosted service. You can learn some more about the service or put yourself on the beta waiting list at the Picasa Web site. See DownLoad Squad for details.
3. Wired News is running an interesting piece about Flickr's policy which excludes images from being displayed in public areas of the site or global search results if more than half of the uploader's images are "non-photographic images." The rationale seems to be that when people come to Flickr they're looking for photos, not screenshots or other images. (also via Download Squad)
4. Flock is now in beta mode. Lots of new features for photo management, feed-reading, search, favorites, and blogging. Take a look at the Flock blog for lots of juicy details, or hit the download site to grab Flock for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
5. Superb stop-motion tour of the Pyrimids over on Yakkr.com. (found via Gadling)
6. Don't know quite why you would want to but the Digital Photography School shows how to get your images to look like Lomo photos. A Lomo is a Russian manufactured camera. It is poorly made and known for its less than perfect image quality.

Picture from the Digital Photograhy Flickr Group Electirc Scream by CyberGus.

Lots of activity around the blogosphere regarding Lightroom 3 - all comments seem positive. I use a PC so I can't comment personally as this version is not yet available, but we have Jeremey who feels "It looks good... still rough around the edges in areas, but much improved in others."

His blog post goes into more details on one of the more negative points "The flash gallery looks nice but the images are washed out. They look like they haven't been converted to sRGB, even though they are sporting sRGB profiles. Either that or the flash renderer fails to handle profiles correctly. Something's not right, but it could be that I forgot to check some box (like the "do the right thing" box). But given that Lightroom should just manage color correctly and not bother me about it, it's a little disappointing. "

Photoshop News has plenty of screen-shots. They conclude that "Lightroom Beta 3 has come a long way since the release of Beta 1 last January 9th at MacWorld, but we're probably only about the mid point through the beta process. Critical functionality such as syncing between a laptop and a workstation is being worked on even as I write. Being able to maintain multiple processing settings per file is also yet to come-but it will. We hope that other cool new functionality will be added."

A new version of IView for both the MAC and for Windows machines is available. iView MediaPro 3.1 is an upgrade of the 'cross-platform digital asset management application'.

There appear to be just two major changes -

1 - Notepad Tool - this allows communication between a MediaPro user and his/her client. The client simply drags and drops selected catalog items onto the Notepad palette, adds comments and then e-mails the Notepad file. This Notepad file imports easily into the creative professional's original catalog where he or she can view the client's feedback and execute the appropriate actions.

2 - Improved Catalog Reader - this is a utility that allows MediaPro users to distribute and share iView catalogs with anyone using a Windows or Macintosh machine. They have added 'table light, that allows users to view up to 6 imgaes on screen and mark the pictures with comments and rating; a way to aid the image selection process.

A handful of minor changes - Enhanced slide show support for more than 32,000 items, Import/export of color label metadata in XML files and toolbar text searches are now asynchronous - search results are displayed as they are found. 

This upgrade is free for  existing users. A new copy would set you back £129.

AmphiSoft Photo Sharpen is a Photoshop plug-in for advanced photo sharpening without forming halos. (I mentioned another site offering tips on halo removal the other day) It provides object edge sharpen and general sharpen algorithms.

AmphiSoft is fully compatible with various image editors, like Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, JASC, Corel and Ulead image editors, and numerous freeware like IrfanView and XnView. The plug-in works with 8bit per channel and 16bit per channel RGB images.

The latest version 1.1 has improved rendering and a scaleable dialog window. It costs US$29.

Pixel Genius, makers of PhotoKit Color have released version 2.0. It is a Photoshop Automate Plug-in that allows the application of precise color corrections, automatic color balancing plus various creative colouring effects.

New additions to PhotoKit Color 2.0 include a preview display and new effects in the Dodge and Burn filter sets. For those who enjoy tinkering with weird effects should enjoy the new infrared,  sunshine filters and colour transfer effects. Under Film Effects there are some interesting simulation filters offering several generic chrome film emulsions. Like its predecessor, PhotoKit Color, includes a suite of effects that let you recreate black and white split toning (12 effects) and cross processing (14 types). You can enhance specific colors in your photographs such as making skin tones less red or lighter or darken a sky. PhotoKit Color 2.0 provides the following effect modules:

Costing US$99.95 (with upgrade prices at $29.98) it is available for Photoshop CS and  Photoshop CS2 for both Macintosh and Windows.

The next version of Apple's Aperture (1.1) to be released sometime this month will offer more than supporting Intel based Macs. At the PMA 2006 trade show they demonstrated numerous refinements -

• improved RAW handling
• greater control over contrast, sharpening and noise reduction
• Support for Nikon D200 Nefs
• improved functioning of Lift and Stamp tool and adjustment sliders
• Export settings to include a DPI setting
• Viewer thumbnail size increased from 256 to 512 pixels
• Improved clarity during magnification
• reliability and performance improvements to the histogram, soft-proofing, cropping and printing areas