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Parallels Desktop on M1 Macs now runs ARM Windows 10 at 'native speeds'
Parallels Desktop 16.5 has arrived with native support for M1 Macs, promising Windows 10 virtual machines at 'native speeds' — if you don't mind the ARM version.
AfterShot Pro 2 from Corel is a competitive Mac photo manager
Corel's latest Mac OS release, AfterShot Pro 2 (currently on sale for US$69.00) is hard to quickly characterize. It combines elements of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. It excels as a RAW-file importer and manager with very fast performance. It easily catalogs and can search for images in extremely large libraries. It supports sophisticated batch processing and has world class noise reduction from Athentech. Images can be tagged with your own categories in addition to the standard EXIF tags your camera creates. Image editing is non-destructive, with both manual and automatic adjustments. Among the features is lens correction to reduce distortion in any of your DSLR lenses. For output, you can easily create contact sheets, templates for standard print sizes, and even create web galleries to show off your images. There is complete on-board help as well as web-based videos to walk you through the application. In this latest edition, AfterShot Pro shows you how to create HDR images and adjust them. I gave the app a spin and found it powerful, but it took a while for me to adjust to it after many years of using Photoshop. The GUI is efficient, but very different. It took a few sessions to get comfortable with where controls were located, but once I did I found the program to be fast and efficient. The HDR mode is powerful, with plenty of adjustments. I found it superior to Photoshop's HDR tools, but not quite up to where Photomatix and the NIK HDR programs are. There are several presets to get you close to your desired "look", but most people will want to adjust from there. Import of raw files is very speedy, but in the HDR mode when I had five files open, my Mac Pro would hesitate for a couple of seconds on each adjustment. Curves and the usual tonal adjustments are easy to apply, and the application supports layers which most experienced photo editors will want. There is so much here, it's worth a trip over to the Corel website to watch the videos and get an idea of what the program will do. Although reasonably priced for an app this professional, it's not going to unseat Photoshop and Lightroom, which Adobe now makes available at reasonable subscription prices for advanced amateurs and professionals. Also, Corel has an on again-off again relationship with Apple and the Mac. Corel Draw was offered and then withdrawn in 2001. They had Word Perfect for the Mac which was pretty popular as an alternative to Microsoft Word, but it was pulled off the market back in 1997. If Corel will stay with the Mac platform, the company has a chance to build up a loyal audience, especially offering this kind of software at very competitive pricing. AfterShot Pro 2 is a solid application. Although it's an excellent editor on its own, it has the ability to hand off work your to another editor like Photoshop if you want to. AfterShot Pro 2 runs on any Mac with OS X 10.7.3 or higher. It ran fine on Yosemite. It wants 250 MB of hard drive space, and at least 2 GB or RAM, but the more RAM the better. There are separate 32- and 64-bit editions. Corel AfterShot Pro 2 looks very good. I expect some areas of performance could be speeded up a bit, but for less than 70 dollars, this is a pretty incredible package. Expect to spend some time learning it, but in my tests I saw no glitches or crashes. If you are interested in AfterShot Pro 2 you can download a fully functional demo, and there is a 30 day money back guarantee.
Avid Studio for iPad gets renamed, free on the App Store for a limited period of time
Avid Studio for iPad arrived back in February, priced to coax iPad filmmakers away from Apple's in-house iMovie. Since then, however, the company sold its consumer business arm to Corel, leading it to re-brand the package as Pinnacle Studio for iPad. The editing app has gained a bunch of features that users were clamoring for, including 1080p support, integrated uploads to Box and a raft of stability tweaks. As part of the change, it's being offered free for a limited time, so if you own an iPad (or plan on getting one in the future), we suggest you jump-cut to the App Store pretty quickly.
Corel introduces AfterShot Pro for $99 on Linux, Mac and Windows
The crew in Ottawa is now taking square aim at Aperture, Lightroom and other similarly situated products with its new product called AfterShot Pro. Available for Linux, Macintosh and Windows, the software retails for $99 and promises to deliver a complete workflow for RAW files, including file management, batch processing and non-destructive editing capabilities. AfterShot Pro is said to be fully multithreaded and optimized for multiple cores and CPUs. A trial is available for download from the company's website, while physical copies will begin shipping by month's end. It'll certainly be an uphill battle for the scrappy competitor up north, but with a product portfolio heavily leveraged in the graphics industry, it certainly seems time that Corel jumped into the fray.
TUAW's Daily App: Corel Paint it! Now
Corel was a big deal back in the days before Photoshop -- I remember CorelDRAW as being one of the most premiere art apps out there. It still is, of course, but Corel has fallen to the wayside now that Photoshop and Illustrator have become so popular. However, Corel has made an interesting step onto the App Store with the awkwardly-titled Corel Paint it! Now (free). Not a drawing app, Corel Paint It! Now lets you apply artistic filters to your photos, like oil or pen and ink. It works well and does its job in an interesting way, as you can watch it "draw" the resulting image, suggesting some sort of drawing engine is at work. You can create some pretty funky pictures, and then you can send them off via email, Facebook or Flickr. At even 99 cents, I'd question what this app is for, but at the current price of free, it's probably worth a download just to see it in action. In fact, Corel tells TUAW that the app has seen over 175k downloads already, so you'd be in good company. I wouldn't depend on it for anything important (the resolution is sadly low), but it's a nice little trick to spice up some pictures that could use a cool effect on them.
Corel brings InstantON technology to Sony's VAIO P
Man, that first edition VAIO P was not the one to buy. Just a month after we saw the thing unveiled at CES, we've already learned that a Gobi-equipped version is on the way. Furthermore, Corel has just proclaimed that all future VAIO Ps will ship with its own InstantON technology to alleviate slow boot times associated with running Windows Vista on an Atom CPU. As with most alternatives, Corel's version of the software enables users to surf the web, check email, chat online and play back photos, videos and music in seconds after turning on their machine, and it sounds like Corel has crafted a customized interface specifically for this pocket-friendly(ish) PC. If this just made your decision to run out and snag a VAIO P, you can find the Corel-equipped version now in Japan and elsewhere later this month.[Via GadgetMix] Update: In order to address some understandable confusion with this release, Sony has provided the following response: "All of the P Series shipped to date come equipped with Gobi mobile broadband technology and the instant-mode option, but certain feature deployment varies region by region. As such, the mobile broadband feature is exclusively supported by the Verizon Wireless network for all US customers."
Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray Update Pack ready for download
Ooh, goodie! A full five months after Corel released its WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray application, the first major update pack has arrived. The unimaginatively named WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray Update Pack checks in at just under 50MB and size and promises to resolve the "Enable S/PDIF Out" / "HDMI output to speaker" issues while expanding the list of compatible commercial titles and enhancing compatibility for a slew of VGA chipsets within Windows Vista / XP. There's no direct mention of BD-Live support, but for those who purchased the original, why not give the update a go and report back?[Thanks, Tyler]
Toshiba's SpursEngine chip dominates in transcoding demonstration
Toshiba has let us know just how incredible its SpursEngine SE1000 chip really is, but all that talk has never amounted to much -- until now. Packed away in a dusty corner of Computex 2008 was Corel's demonstration booth, which just so happened to have a few rigs set up with a Cell-optimized version of its DVD MovieFactory application. One station utilized the SE1000, while the other relied solely on a 3GHz Intel Core 2 Quad CPU to transcode 1080p H.264 video to 480p. According to onlookers, the SpursEngine-based machine completed the task nearly twice as fast as the hamstrung opponent, proving that maybe Toshiba does have something worth waiting for on that PCI-Express card. Too bad there's still no mention of a price.
Corel's WinDVD nabs BD-R 1.1 and BD-RE 2.1 playback certification
Corel's not satisfied with simply snagging DTS-HD Master Audio certification for WinDVD 8; it's also trumpeting the ability of WinDVD to fully support BD-R 1.1 and BD-RE 2.1 recordable / re-recordable media. Reportedly, this certification proves that said application "has passed the stringent standards and guidelines set by the Blu-ray Disc Association to ensure the best possible user experience," but it's not like that spill really means anything to you. You can, however, now rest assured that WinDVD will be all BFF like with discs that use H.264 and VC-1 for encoding. Availability? OEMs can get it now, retail consumers will see it in early 2009.
Corel's WinDVD 8 lands DTS-HD Master Audio certification
Sure, WinDVD 9 supported those fancy audio codecs right out of the shrink-wrap, but up until now, WinDVD 8 users have been shut out solid. Thankfully, Corel finally saw fit to pass down a little love to its loyal end users still rockin' the ocho, as said software picked up DTS-HD Master Audio certification over at Computex. As you very well know, this now enables the application to play back Blu-ray Discs with 7.1 discrete channels of lossless audio, which surely makes the audiophiles in attendance remarkably jovial.
AACS patch for WinDVD, HD DVD and BD players: update or never watch movies again
In case DRM hasn't caused you -- the honest consumer -- enough pain already. Check it, you've got some required software updating to do now that Corel has introduced a patch to their cracked InterVideo WinDVD software. Best do it pronto too. According to Corel, "failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD DVD and BD playback being disabled." That means no more hi-def movies for you, Mr. assumed criminal. Thing is, this is no ordinary patch since WinDVD exposed the hardware specific device key to video pirates. So not only are you required to update their janky WinDVD software, you also have to track down and install the paticular AACS patch for the HD DVD or BD player you own. Of course this only patches one flaw in the massively compromised DRM boondoggle. And just think, you can repeat the whole process again after hackers circumvent this latest attempt at "content protection." Isn't DRM nice?[Via Impress]
Corel's Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus does HD DVD / Blu-ray burning
Sure, you might not have expected Corel to be the company bringing you the latest iteration of Ulead's DVD MovieFactory software, but regardless of the distributor, version 6 Plus touts the oh-so-anticipated HD DVD / Blu-ray burning features. The newest edition also sports an Edit Room for polishing up your vidz before hitting the burn button, as well as the more typical storyboard / timeline layouts to organize your efforts. Notably, the software also supports a respectable amount of formats, "allowing users to import, edit, and convert HDV, DivX or AVCHD and output in HD DVD, Blu-ray, or traditional DVD." Potentially the best part lies in the price, however, as the Standard (read: not your cup of tea) version rings up at $49.99, while the high-definition-lovin' Plus flavor only demands $79.99, and both should be available right about now.
HD DVD "download center" features previewed
The big HD DVD press event at CES isn't until this evening, but Corel sent out information about new networking features they'll be demoing. New HD DVDs supporting the features will be able to open a "download center" on the screen and download additional clips from content providers, and also share collections of clips called "my scenes" with other people who own the same movie. They'll be demoing these features on an Intel-based PC running Intervideo's WinDVD software -- apparently running the still MIA HD Upgrade pack -- tonight. We wonder if these functions will ever extend to people who don't yet own a particular movie, but its still a step up from people sending low-res YouTube clips of famous movie scenes around.
