Adobe?has announced the availability of Photoshop Lightroom 3 as a free download for photographers to try.?

The new application, which allows photographers to catalogue their photo collections as well as perform basic editing processes to their pictures will add a host of new features according to Adobe.

“While we’re still hard at work on Lightroom 3, we recognise the value our customers bring to the development process and want their input so we can deliver the best final product possible", said Kevin Connor, vice president of product management for Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe justifying the move.

Supposedly completely redesigned under the hood to be faster, a bug bear of the Lightroom 2, the new software promises better handling of "image libraries and improved responsiveness with a higher-quality processing engine".

In the Library module, Adobe is promising a rebuilt import system bringing photos into the software more intuitive as well as allowing users to "easily specify the source and destination of their images, and save common processing, metadata or destination settings as easy-to-reuse presets".

In the Develop module, an overhauled processing engine allows users to create the highest quality images. Improved "Capture Sharpening" and "Colour Noise Reduction" tools apparently provide decent results while still preserving an image’s edge detail and contrast. A new Grain tool adds a film-style grain to images, and two new Vignette modes help photographers get a more natural look.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta is available as a free download to anyone on both Macintosh and Windows platforms. Adobe has yet to announce when a full version of the software will be available and how much it will cost.

?

Read

Tags: Software PC software Mac software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Photoshop Lightroom 2 Photo editing software Cameras

Adobe Lightroom 3 beta released originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:36:10 +0100

Adobe has posted a video revealing what features future versions of its Photoshop software might offer.

Revealed online for those that could not make it to Photoshop World, Adobe says it's a "sneak peek of technologies we're working on in the Photoshop Labs".

Hit play on the 5-minute video above to see wet paint effects for better blending, new brush prototypes, and warping and distorting functionality that looks almost too advanced to be possible.

Read

Tags: Software Adobe Adobe Photoshop Video Concepts Photo editing software

VIDEO: Sneak peak into the future of Adobe Photoshop originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:36:33 +0100

A group of Chinese students have created a remarkably impressive bit of technology which takes an annotated hand-drawn sketch, finds photos on the web, and then stitches it all together automatically. It's called Photosketch.

Hit play on the video above to find out how it works, and see what it can do. Both the technique and the results are remarkably impressive. The software is available for download, though the site is offline at the time of writing due to the weight of traffic. In case you can't get there, the project's abstract says:

"We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet".

"Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images".

"We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition. Each blending result is given a numeric score, allowing us to find an optimal combination of discovered images. Experimental results show the method is very successful; we also evaluate our system using the results from two user studies".

It'll be interesting to see how the students propose to employ the technology.

Read

Related links:

• News - Microsoft announces Photosynth software
• Link - Photosketch Source Code

Tags: Software Photo editing software PhotoSketch Online Video

Chinese students create Photosketch software originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:21:23 +0100