Filed under: Software, News

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

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Original post by Andrew Barrow

Filed under: Software, News

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]

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Original post by Andrew Barrow

Filed under: Software, Photo Sharing/Storage

Bellamax has released a new workflow application, UpShot, and they’ve decided to give it away free until July 4th. After that, UpShot will still only be $20, so it’s worth a look even if you have plans this weekend.  UpShot is a combination gallery, image manipulation, and publication tool that integrates directly with several photo sharing sites and on-line printing sites. Flickr, SnapFish, and Blogger are all supported, among others. Supported formats include RAW. The best way I can think to describe it is Picassa on steroids. The included color correction and retouching tools are intuitive and seem effective in most situations–as you’d expect from a leading supplier of professional lab automation products.

This is definitely a product aimed at the casual photographer, though. If you’re getting started with digital photography and don’t feel ready to shell out the cash for something like iView Pro, UpShot is well worth a try. It makes things easy, the interface is friendly, it seems reliable, and the photo sharing/printing integration is a nice touch. If you’re working with substantial numbers of images or large file sizes, though, performance is an issue. A dump of the a 1GBcard of full-size jpegs from a D70s quickly slowed indexing to a crawl, and opening the images in any of the various tools too upwards of a minute on my test computer, which, while not ideal, is no slouch with a 3.2Ghz P4 with 512MB RAM (the minimum requirement). You probably don’t want to run this with less than the recommended 1GB.

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Original post by Jay Savage

Filed under: Software, News, Photo Sharing/Storage

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!

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Original post by Andrew Barrow