Underexposed

Tiffen's color-filter plug-in for Aperture in action.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple on Monday released its software developer kit to let programmers write plug-ins for Aperture, the company's high-end image editing and cataloging software.

OK, I recognize it's not the world-changing, paradigm-shifting, heart-stopping iPhone SDK, but it's still important for the "creative professional" market to which Apple has catered for years.

This tool is designed to let others extend the abilities of Aperture, a move that adds some spice to its competition with Adobe Systems' Photoshop Lightroom. Adobe has scads of third-party companies that create plug-ins for regular Photoshop, but Lightroom still lacks the equivalent for important editing functions. However, many have extended Lightroom's abilities with export functions, image-processing presets, and even a geotagging tool.

Among those creating plug-ins for Aperture are Tiffen, Digital Film Tools, Nik Software, Image Trends, and PictureCode, Apple said.

Programmers can download the SDK from the Apple Developer Connection Web site. Some plug-ins are available for download. Find more information at the Aperture Plugged-In Community site.

Even as it released Lightroom 1.4.1, Adobe also is working on a more significant upgrade to its raw-image editing software. The most interesting new capability in a Lightroom 2 beta is localized corrections. This image from an Adobe demonstration shows the control for a brush that can adjust saturation, brightness, exposure, and clarity of the area of the photo you 'paint.'

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

Correction, 5:30 p.m. PDT: This blog initially misstated the day Adobe released Photoshop Lightroom 1.4.1. It is Thursday.

After a debugging session to fix problems with the flawed 1.4.0, Adobe Systems on Thursday released Photoshop Lightroom 1.4.1.

Raw images from higher-end digital cameras have more flexibility and quality than JPEGs, but also require processing in a computer to convert to more useful formats. Lightroom handles that task, along with cataloging and other chores. Adobe also released the corresponding version 4.4.1 of Adobe Camera Raw, the raw-image converter plug-in for regular Photoshop.

Adobe had to recall Lightroom 1.4.0 and Adobe Camera Raw 4.4.0 because of problems the software caused with photo timestamps. It also could render JPEGs wrong from Olympus cameras and, on Windows, cause files stored in Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format to become unreadable. And according to product manager Tom Hogarty, it was slower at importing photos than 1.3.

Compared to 1.3 and 4.3, the new versions add support for several new cameras, including Canon'

The We Demand Donuts group takes a jab at those who objected to Flickr's new video service.

(Credit: Flickr)

First came Flickr video on Tuesday. Then came the anti-Flickr-video outcry on Wednesday. Now there's the anti-anti-Flickr-video outcry.

This last movement takes the highly facetious form of Flickr's new We Demand Donuts group. "If we get 20,000 people to join the group Flickr will be forced to give us free donuts!" the group's manifesto states. "Join the group and invite all your contacts. We will make this the biggest protest group on Flickr and force them to give us free donuts!"

There are some subtleties here, but given the timing, it's pretty clear that this group's raison d'etre can be translated as, "Give us a break, Flickr members who are signing petitions demanding that Flickr scrap its new video service."

More than 550 have joined so far. The No Video on Flickr group has more than 9,700.

Update 8:08 a.m. April 11: Flickr capitulated, at least on a geographically limited basis. "We at FlickrHQ have heard of your noble efforts and seek to answer your cries for justice," said Matthew Rothenberg, a Flickr employee, in the group's discussion board. He promised to buy doughnuts for Flickr members who meet up at a yet-to-be-determined San Francisco shop April 16.

Members of the No Video on Flickr group have posted hundreds of images protesting the photo-sharing site's inclusion of video.

(Credit: Flickr)

Shortly after Flickr added videos to its photo-sharing site, a number of users are up in arms.

The No Video on Flickr group amassed more than 4,000 members just a few hours after the new feature launched.

"I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been," the group description said. "We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that's on there to wind up on here!"

Personally, I find the concerns overblown, though it might have been judicious of Flickr to add an opt-out option for those who don't want video. A lot of people react unfavorably to change--think film buffs who don't care for digital cameras, for one example.

And I suspect video is likely to dilute the great photography that's available on Flickr much less than the vast oceans of mediocre snapshots on the site. The days of Flickr being a haven solely for refined, high-grade photography are long gone if indeed they ever existed. Also, who knows? Maybe the addition of video will help improve Flickr's business so it can be overhauled with a better user interface.

Flickr member Haeretik posted a petition, so far signed by hundreds of members, that states, "We all joined Flickr because of ... Read more

Responding to criticism, Adobe Systems has modified the legal terms for using its online Photoshop Express service, a move the company promised would happen.

"Adobe has retained only those limited rights that allow us to operate the service and to enable you to do all the things the service offers," the company said in a statement. "If you decide to terminate your Photoshop Express account, Adobe's rights also will be terminated."

The earlier Photoshop Express terms of service had raised hackles among those concerned about a clause that gave Adobe sweeping rights to photos stored at the site. Those terms granted Adobe "a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such content and to incorporate such content into other materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

The new terms of service can be read at the company's site.

Adobe Systems has shared the first scrap of information about its next version of Photoshop, CS4, and it's a doozy: there will be a 64-bit version of the photo-editing software, but only for Windows and not for Mac OS X.

Adobe generally keeps features in the Windows and Mac versions at a level of parity, but that wasn't possible this time around because of a change Apple made last year to the Mac's programming underpinnings, John Nack, Adobe's product manager for Photoshop, said in an interview.

"We're not going to ship 64-bit native for Mac with CS4," Nack said. "We respect Apple's need to balance their resources and make decisions right for that platform. But it does have an impact on developers."

(Read the "What derailed the 64-bit train?" section below if you want more details on why Adobe concluded it had to change plans.)

What does 64 bits get you, anyway? Chiefly, an easier way for a processor and software to use more than 4GB of memory. In addition, the 64-bit versions of Intel and AMD x86 chips incorporate more data storage slots called registers that can improve performance.

But Nack took pains to say that moving to 64 bits, while useful, isn't like flipping a switch that doubles performance.

Modest performance improvements
Based on Adobe's preliminary testing, the 64-bit version of Photoshop CS4 will give a performance kick of about 8 percent to 12 percent compared with the 32-bit version, ... Read more

For the first time, iStockphoto has revealed how much money it pulled in by licensing large numbers of photos, videos, and other imagery for relatively small fees, and how much it paid out to the producers of that content.

In a forum posting Tuesday, iStockphoto head honcho Bruce Livingstone said the Getty Images subsidiary had 2007 revenue of $71.9 million, and it paid $20.9 million to those who contributed the imagery it licenses.

That's a pretty interesting illustration of what user-generated content can sell for, at least in one context.

"We are now selling an image every 1.4 seconds through this industry-changing marketplace," Livingstone said in the posting.

Getty is in the process of going private in a $2.4 billion deal announced in February.

"One thing we've always had to keep close to our chest is our financials. Maybe it's our Canadian background, but we've always found it a bit cheeky and rude to discuss money," Livingstone said. "With the recent announcement that Getty Images is going to be a private company owned by management, employees, and Hellman & Friedman, you'll see lots of numbers floating around about iStock's financials."

Canon remained the top dog in the total camera market in 2007, according to IDC.

(Credit: CNET Networks, based on IDC data)

When it comes to the strategically important and fast-growing market of SLR cameras, Canon remained No. 1 worldwide in 2007 but lost share to Nikon, new statistics show.

Canon sold 3.18 million single-lens reflex cameras in 2007 compared with Nikon's 2.98 million, according to a study released Tuesday by market researcher IDC. That represents a 42.7 percent and 40 percent share, respectively, of the 2007 SLR market. It's a much narrower margin for Canon than in 2006, when it had 46.7 percent of the market, compared with Nikon's 33 percent.

Nikon SLR shipments grew at a 71.1 percent rate, much faster than Canon's 29.3 percent rate, IDC said. To be sure, unit shipments don't reflect another important aspect of market share--revenue, which IDC didn't detail. But Nikon released competitive higher-end models, the D3 and D300, in the second half of 2007, so there's plenty of pressure on Canon there, too.

The SLR market is of major importance to camera makers: it's competitive, and the SLR market is far less saturated than the compact camera market, where camera makers are focusing on getting people to buy replacements or multiple models. SLRs offer much faster performance and higher image-quality than compact models, and lenses can be changed for different shooting styles. Thus, photographers have been flocking ... Read more

Update 6:40 AM PDT: I added some links to Adobe information and further detailed some new features.

The most interesting new capability in the Lightroom 2 beta is localized corrections. This image from an Adobe demonstration shows the control for a brush that can adjust saturation, brightness, exposure, and clarity of the area of the photo you 'paint.'

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

When Adobe Systems launched Photoshop Lightroom, it presented users with an all-or-nothing photo editing philosophy. But with version 2, which goes into public beta testing Wednesday, the company is changing course.

Lightroom 2 offers local editing abilities that permit photographers to edit just a patch of an image--whitening a person's teeth, deepening the blue of a sky, illuminating a child in a tree's shadow. Changes are "painted" on with a variably sized circular brush.

Local editing doesn't open the door to the super-detailed pixel-level tweaking of regular Photoshop, but it's a major step in that direction. It's also a timely answer to version 2.1 of Apple's Aperture, released last week with a plug-in architecture permitting local editing such as dodging and burning to brighten or darken parts of an image.

Regular Photoshop certainly won't be consigned to oblivion. Even within the relatively limited task of editing photos, Photoshop offers a wealth of tools, plug-ins, and options that are beyond Lightroom's scope. But local editing could help free Lightroom fans from the awkward round trips taking photos to Photoshop and ... Read more

F. Mark Gumz, president and chief executive of Olympus Corporation of the Americas

(Credit: Olympus)

Olympus has promoted F. Mark Gumz, president and chief operating officer since 2000, to be president and chief executive of the North and South American operations of the Japanese camera and optics company.

In addition, the company is changing the name of Gumz's division. Olympus USA, a holding company that represented all of Olympus' American operations and that employs 2,500 people, now is called Olympus Corporation of the Americas.

"His appointment will...help position the organization to better respond to customer needs, and his knowledge of Japanese culture and of our company makes him the perfect choice for CEO of this new company," said Tsuyoshi "Tom" Kikukawa, president of Tokyo-based Olympus, in a statement Tuesday.

Gumz worked for Olympus from 1977 to 1983 as vice president of Olympus Camera, the first American hired for the company. He left for 16 years of work consulting and doing other jobs, then returned in 2000 as president of Olympus America, Olympus said.