image editing
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JPEGmini puts your images on a diet
If you're like me, you've got a hard drive filling up with images. I do a lot of landscape photography, and while I normally shoot in RAW format, they get output as jpegs for the web, email, and the printing service I use. Over the years I've seen a lot of applications that will shrink jpegs, and the jpeg itself is already much smaller than anything that started out in raw, native Photoshop or TIF format. I was offered a new OS X app called JPEGmini to test, and it is impressive. You can drag a folder of photos or even a complete hard drive onto JPEGmini and it goes to work, showing each image it opens and keeping track of how much is saved. It supports images from 2 MB to 17 MB in size, and I have some larger files so the app warned me those would not be shrunk. (Note: The developer says the limitation is resolution, not file size, so any resolution greater than 17 MP will be rejected.) I was a bit skeptical of this shrinking process, so I opened up some of my detailed landscape images and looked at them in Photoshop. I couldn't see any significant difference in the before and after images. I should note that I duplicated a folder of images for this test and worked on the copy, because once you shrink the photos, there is no going back. I saw more than 50% reduction in file size, and there would have been more if I didn't have so many files in that folder larger than 17 MB. This is very nice for sending files via email because I can reduce the file size while keeping the quality. Best of all is that your photos stay in jpg format. No program is going to have trouble opening them. If you want some details on the process, the developers go into more depth about how the application works. Besides the file size caveat, the program only works on jpegs. JPEGmini is US $19.99 through the Mac App Store. It's a little pricey, but it does what it claims. It mightnot be for the pro photographer, but I think most amateur and semi-pros will be thrilled at the drive space you get back. If you'd like to see how the program works without any investment, the developers have a free service on their website where you can upload some files and let their server shrink them and return them to you. Check the gallery for some comparison shots, but remember that these examples are further reduced in quality when we publish them. %Gallery-155373%
Process is a clever and able photo editing app for iOS
There's no shortage of photo editing apps for iOS, and I am constantly amazed at the quality and the creativity of the offerings. Process (US $2.99 universal app) has some unique features that can breathe some new life into your photos. The app features non-destructive editing, so you can apply multiple filters with one layer for each effect. It feels a bit like using Adobe Photoshop on my desktop Mac, but Process is much simpler to use. Photos are saved in full resolution, unlike the somewhat disappointing Adobe Photoshop Touch app for iOS. You can save your effects to use again, or share with others. If you use the app on both an iPhone and an iPad you can transfer the effects between devices via the cloud. The app supports the new Retina Display on the latest iPad. Process is a pleasure to use. The app has many presets and they are quite good. At first glance, they are not as varied or extreme as some of the other filter apps out there, but frankly, that is what I like about them. There's nothing over the top, and your pictures stay naturalistic, which is my processing style. You can certainly push the effects quite a bit, but they never look like a bad LSD trip. The app doesn't have some of the more popular effects, like tilt-shift, but again, that's not what this app is about. You can add layer after layer of effects, remove any of them to see how your processing is going, and try different combinations, all without destroying the original image. Help is built-in and is comprehensive. If you want to do more dramatic filtering and processing, I still like Snapseed from NIK software, but I think Process is very well thought out, extremely flexible, and can improve your images without turning them into Andy Warhol type art. iPhoto is also an excellent choice for photo editing, but it has a higher learning curve. You can check the gallery for some screenshots. %Gallery-152562%
Daily iPad App: Photogene
Unlike many, I didn't buy the iPhone 4S for Siri. It's nice to have a voice assistant, but what I really wanted was the camera. I shoot a lot of photos throughout the day using my iPhone and have been looking for a good image editor to complement its camera. Now with PhotoStream, I am no longer limited to using the iPhone for editing. I can automatically transfer my photos and edit them on my iPad, a convenience that led me to try Photogene for the iPad. Photogene is a fantastic editing application that's great for tweaking and touching up photos. You name it and Photogene has it. It lets you crop, straighten, resize, sharpen, reduce noise, adjust color, correct red-eye and remove unwanted blemishes or spots. If you want to get more creative, there's also specialized effects like reflection or vignette and standard effects like dodge & burn, blur, and grayscale. You can add captions and text to images and apply artistic filters such as sepia or charcoal. There's even several categories of presets that'll let you add a border or change the look of your photo in just a few taps. And if you don't like what you have done, there's multiple undo and redo. One of my favorite features is the collage creator which takes up to six photos and turns them into one image using templates. The app comes with a handful of collage templates and you can buy a pack of 60 that gives you twelve designs for each group of photos (12 templates for a 2 photo collage, 12 templates for a 3 photo collage, and so on). When you're done, you can export your images back to your iPad's photo library, upload them to an online web service like Dropbox, Flickr or Picasa, or share them via email, Facebook or Twitter. If you have a printer, you can use AirPrint to get a hard copy. Photogene is available for $2.99 from the App Store and is a must have for anyone that uses their iOS device for photos or image editing.
Pixelmator releases ... an iPhone game called Flapcraft
I am a big fan of Pixelmator, the excellent image editor for the Mac, and was surprised to see that team's latest project: an iOS game called called Flapcraft, which hit the App Store today. Not surprisingly, the team used Pixelmator to create the game's look. What a clever way to show off your image editor. Flipcraft is a lot of fun. You play as a viking who jumps off of a ramp and executes elaborate tricks. An extensive upgrade system allows for higher jumps, bigger tricks, and more points. It's short, but entertaining. Plus, it looks great. You can pick it up for US$1.99 in the App Store right now. The Pixelmator gang has produced a making-of video which shows the team creating the game's art and designing its website. Pixelmator is indeed a really powerful graphical tool -- it's too bad all of that art and design talent doesn't come with it!
Pixelmator 2.0 announced, coming to Mac App Store later this summer
Today, the Pixelmator team provided a peek at the next version of their namesake image editing tool. With the code name of Chameleon, Pixelmator 2.0 is a major upgrade that is expected to ship later in the summer of 2011. Anyone who has already purchased the app via the Mac App Store for US$29 gets a free upgrade to the new version when it arrives. Along with the increase in functionality provided with the upgrade comes a new price point -- $59. The new feature list is quite comprehensive. First, there are drawing tools (pen, freeform pen, convert, and path selection tools) that allow users to create and edit vector shapes. These tools also include pre-drawn triangle, line, rectangle, circle and custom shapes available on a new Shapes palette. The fill and stroke settings for these shapes are adjusted in a new Shape Settings palette, and shadows are easily added from this palette as well. Probably the most anticipated new feature in the upgrade is the content-aware fill technology that can be used to delete unwanted elements in images. Want to get rid of that sunburned spot on your nose from your vacation photos? With the new Healing Tool or the regular selection tools, it will be easy to select an area and let Pixelmator fill it with nearby image content. New retouching tools are part of the upgrade, including a Sponge Tool for adding or reducing color from image areas by dabbing at them, Burn and Dodge tools to darken or lighten portions of an image, and a Red Eye Tool for exorcising the red glow from eyes in your pictures. Finally, there's also a new Smudge Tool for smearing paint or obscuring details by using a brush tip to do the retouching. The user interface has been streamlined and made easier to use, there's a new Eyedropper Tool for picking up colors, and a number of other toolbars and palettes that have been included. With the announced upgrade, Pixelmator appears to be making great strides towards becoming a much less expensive alternative to Adobe's Photoshop. What do you think, Pixelmator owners? Are you looking forward to the upgrade? Let us know in the comments.
FX Photo Studio now for Mac OS X
I took a look at FX Photo Studio on the iPad earlier this year and gave it a positive review. Now the app has migrated to the Mac App Store, so that users who want to work on a desktop or laptop Mac can modify, adjust and remake their images using similar tools to the iOS versions. I've been using FX Photo Studio Pro for about a week and imported many of my images to see how it worked. The app is no substitute for Photoshop, but for the casual photographer who wants to explore filters, do basic sharpening, level adjustments, color balance, crop, rotate and change the color saturation of images, I think the app is worthwhile. With 159 filters, you can dramatically change your image. As with all filters, you are more likely to mess the image up rather than improve it, but if you are after a big collection of effects, you'll find them here. I thought the black and white conversion was nice and clean, and some of the vignette effects were also good. Things like night vision effects and some color glows that look like LSD-induced nightmares aren't my cup of tea, but some people will love them. That's the strength of having lots of filters. Use what you want and forget the rest. You can also create your own variations on the filters and save them for re-use. Images can be shared from within the app via Twitter, Facebook, email, Tumblr and Flickr. The app has a handy split screen mode, so you can see before and after your changes, and of course, there is undo. %Gallery-123727%
Plasq brings Comic Life to the iPad
Comic Life, the popular Mac application that takes your photos and lets you turn them into a comic book, is now available on the iPad. The iPad version launched late last week and includes several features of its desktop counterpart, including templates, balloon controls and social network integration. The iPad app is optimized for the touchscreen with a user interface that lets you edit and move items using your fingertips. You can also use photos from your photo library or capture them on the fly using the iPad 2 cameras. Once you create a personalized comic book, you can share it via email or Facebook or wirelessly print a hard copy for archival purposes. If you use Comic Life in the classroom or other group settings, you will be able to drag and drop comics between iPads so that you can share your creation with your fellow classmates or friends. You can grab your copy of Comic Life for the iPad from the App Store for US$7.99. [Via The Loop]
Free Photoshop Express 1.5 for iOS adds Retina Display support and more
Adobe has updated Photoshop Express for iOS 4.2 devices, and it now supports the Retina Display for better quality images. The app is faster and more responsive and adds background uploads and multitasking support. The app provides a limited subset of Photoshop functions, like crop, straighten, rotate, saturation, contrast, sharpen and other basics, and it includes a way to add frames. If you have a Photoshop.com account, you can access any of your stored pictures. People who updated today are complaining that the app took some features away if location services are not enabled -- something that wasn't true in the older version. Specifically, if location services are turned off, the app reports that "Photo metadata cannot be added or preserved, and browsing through photos in the library will be disabled." Photoshop Express is free, but it now requires iOS 4.2 or greater. It runs on the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone.
Comic Life 2 for Mac delivers more thought-balloon fun
From time to time, I'm asked to name my favorite Mac app -- as if such a designation was even possible (I love you all equally, kids, don't worry). If you pushed me and narrowed the question a bit to, "Is there a Mac app that you keep coming back to when you have to create something cool in a very short period of time?" the answer is easy. Plasq's Comic Life is my favorite quick turnaround tool, smile inducer and fun photo mauler. The $30 app, from the incubator firm of Skitch, is a delightful (if at times a bit busy) way to take your favorite pictures, add quick captions and layouts, and immediately print or share them with a click. I've used it for refrigerator magnets, party invites, birth announcements, process documentation and more over the years. Yesterday Plasq released version 2.0 of Comic Life, which adds template support, Facebook integration, advanced word-balloon controls and more. It's a $9.95 upgrade for existing users and $19.95 to move to a five-machine family pack. (Note that Comic Life Magiq is $20 more costly; it adds image edit/warp controls and other high-end features, but it isn't file-compatible with CL2 yet.) This is the biggest revamp for the core Comic Life product in its five-year history, and it's fantastic to see one of our favorite indie studios putting out refreshed products right before the Mac App Store hits. There's a free 30-day trial, so check it out!
Skitch leaps out of beta, 1.0 available now
Since it debuted in beta form at Macworld Expo in 2007, Skitch has become a favorite Mac utility for many, many people. It's great at grabbing screenshots, adding annotations and notes, and sharing them on Skitch.com, Flickr, Mobile.me or even your own server. We've waited three years for a 1.0 release while the beta kinks got worked out, and now the wait is over. Skitch has burst out of beta with a ton of new features and an entirely revamped web app geared toward social image sharing. It's aiming to be the Flickr of screenshots, with a full-featured desktop app to back that up. Most of the features that have made Skitch so popular are still free, including screen capture, image editing and annotation, and online sharing of images. If you want to go "Plus," you'll pay a yearly subscription fee of $14.95 (that's a discount right now; it will go up to $19.95 soon). The Plus subscription adds a range of new features, from the ability to grab full-length web page captures to additional editing capabilities. It will also remove ads from the online experience and provide more storage and options. One of the best features in the Plus package, in my opinion, is automatic copy of direct image links after upload. Yes, you can get that for free using something like Droplr or CloudApp, but when combined with all of the other features, it adds some value to the subscription price.
Adobe's Premiere Elements now available for Mac
Adobe has released Premiere Elements for the Mac. Premiere Elements is Adobe's consumer-level image and video editing software, and this is the first time a Mac version has been released. This release -- version 9 -- offers some pretty cool features, like optimized editing of HD video and those neat photo books (much like the ones you can create with iPhoto). They're a big hit with Grandma. Much more powerful technology is behind the Photomerge Style Match feature, which is smart enough to match the style of one photo with another. Let's say you've got a beautiful landscape shot with ominous clouds, sparkling water and an impressive foreground, all perfectly exposed. Another picture is completely washed out and would be better if it looked like the former. Photomerge Style Match does its best to make that happen. You can watch a short demo video here. There's much more to this software, so go and read the details. Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, which is also available now, and Premier Elements 9 are priced at US$99 each. You can buy both for $149. Mac and Windows versions of the applications are included.
Using iWork as an image editor
I recently noted the image-editing functionality of Preview.app, which can act as a "good enough" image editor for many that don't have access to Photoshop. While it's difficult to argue with the free price tag, Preview is not without its limitations. Fortunately, many of these limitations are unlocked if you happen to own Apple's iWork suite, which in its own right can serve as an image editor for the budget-minded.Read on to see how to use iWork in this unconventional way.
Making the most of Preview.app for image editing
Inspired by Bear Grylls's (of Discovery's Man vs. Wild) "make the most out of your situation" scenarios, I present you with a tutorial for making the most out of Preview.app. While not as powerful as graphics editing powerhouse Adobe Photoshop, Preview can oftentimes get you from Point A to Point B -- and sometimes quicker too. Like Bear Grylls, you'll need to parachute out of a plane and into the house of a friend who doesn't have Photoshop -- just kidding. First, a little bit of background. Preview comes pre-installed on Mac OS X, and it's the default image viewer on the system. For PC-to-Mac converts, you could think of it as the Microsoft Paint of OS X; except that it can do a whole lot more. Besides the ability to open a host of image file formats (JPG, BMP, GIF, among them, and even PSD and AI files), Preview can also open PDF files natively. I actually prefer it over Adobe Acrobat for opening PDFs, as I find that they open much quicker using Preview. And like Adobe Reader, Preview contains advanced features, such as annotating.
Photogene is a photo genius for your iPhone
In my recent review of AutoStitch I mentioned Photogene [App Store] which is kind of like a miniature Photoshop for the digital pictures you take on your iPhone.It has a boatload of functions, which will let you fix and enhance your digital images without having to offload them to another image editor on a Mac or PC.Here's some of the functionality: Enhance photos with color adjustment and sharpen tools Crop and straighten photos Add text balloons Create a variety of frames Adjust Histogram Correct Gamma Increase/decrease saturation Adjust color temperature Multiple undo and redo The latest version, released earlier this month, includes support for OS 3.0, adds some new effects, and updates the GUI. Of course no iPhone app is going to replace Photoshop, but Photogene has seemed to capture the features that people really want in getting their iPhone photos in tip top shape for emailing or saving elsewhere. With the new 3 megapixel camera in the new iPhone hardware, Photogene will be even more indispensable. Some of the icons are not obvious in function, but they are quickly learned. I would have liked to see noise reduction among the features, but the developer has created a separate app called NoiseBlaster [App Store] that removes noise from iPhone images. It's an additional $0.99, but I would have liked it included in Photogene.Photogene works on the iPod touch as well, but you'll have to import images since the touch has no built in camera, at least not yet.At US$2.99 it's hard to go wrong if you use your iPhone camera as much as I do.
A Splash of color from Colorsplash
I'm continually amazed at the high end functionality being displayed by various photo apps for the iPhone/iPod touch. We've seen panorama creators, and image sharpeners, just to name two.A good example is ColorSplash [App Store link] a $1.99US app that brings some of the sophisticated controls you'd find in Photoshop right onto the iPhone. ColorSplash can take a color image from your camera roll, or any image uploaded to your iPhone/iPod touch, and desaturate the photo selectively. You can have the photo all grayscale, except for a face, or take they sky to grayscale while leaving the rest of the landscape in color.You can zoom into the photo using the usual finger controls, and paint color selectively on an image, leaving a very striking effect. You do all this with your finger on the touch screen, and with a bit of practice and judicious zooming you can really be very accurate. We're used to seeing images like this come out of high end photo programs, but doing it on the iPhone is a bit of a stunner.The app allows unlimited undo, and brushes can be semi-transparent, so the amount of color can be varied. A palette gives you the option of hard edge or soft edge brushes, and you can save your work at any stage and go back to intermediate versions of your image if you want to. You can work in portrait or landscape mode, and there is detailed, built in help.The program author, Hendrik Kueck. is a computer scientist from Vancouver, B.C. who contributed to the creation of Adobe Lightroom 2.0, so he's no slouch when it comes to imaging theory and practice. He previously did Juxtaposer for the iPhone and iPod touch.The best way to see what the program does is look at some of the simple images I did in the gallery below, or click over to the author's web site for some more information. %Gallery-45093%
TUAW preview: Pixelmator 1.3 "Tempo"
We've praised Pixelmator here before (and we've even shared our love with the devs directly) -- I am by no means an image-editing professional (Photoshop and Aperture are way, way beyond my ken), but Pixelmator lands exactly where I want it to: it's a relatively lightweight application with just enough features to do the complicated stuff when I need it done.One of the big drawbacks of the software, though, is that performance-wise, it's never quite been up to par. Especially when pulling down big jobs like editing a lot of pictures at once or opening or closing really large pictures, Pixelmator has always lagged a bit behind. The team, however, wants to fix all that with their latest release, appropriately called "Tempo" -- they've made huge changes on the back end to try and bring performance up to where it needs to be for a solid image editor.They've made a number of other nice changes, too, including finally creating a "Magic Eraser" with some nice click-and-drag functionality for selecting and editing specific color areas. TUAW recently got our hands on a preview version of Tempo -- our in-depth preview starts after the break, and you can click through the gallery below to see the new features in action.%Gallery-32631%
Picturesque 2.0 released
If you think back to June last year, Picturesque - a neat lightweight image editor - was the deserving recipient of an Apple Design Award for 'Best Student Product'. So it's fitting then that, just in time for this year's Apple Design Awards, Acqualia Software has released version 2.0 of Picturesque. So what's new? First of all, it's a Leopard-only application with a Core Animation-powered graphics engine. Throw in an entirely new all-in-one window interface, plenty of fancy new effects (such as the 3D iChat effect), a Media browser for easy iPhoto access and AppleScriptability (Picturesque meet Cory) and it all adds up to a rather tasty upgrade. With the release of version 2.0, a license for Picturesque will now set you back $34.95 whilst owners of version 1.0 can upgrade to the latest version for just $12.95.
Pixelmator 1.2 "Draftsman" in the wild
My picture editor of choice, Pixelmator, has updated to version 1.2 (as with many other applications, it's just in time for the Apple Design Awards deadline), which they're calling Draftsman. Among the new features are the much-awaited addition of rules and some guides to the UI (with a flashy little indicator as the mouse passes by), as well as the ability to edit color balance and the color curves. There's also a new Polygonal Lasso, and the Transform tool has been reworked "from scratch" to work faster and better.Pixelmator continues to impress, and with every update, it's becoming a more and more robust little photo editor. Just recently, they laid out "a flight plan" on the blog for what they're up to for summer: the next release, 1.3, will be called Tempo, and focus on making the app just as fast as it is visually striking. And they make another bold claim as well: by the end of the summer, they're aiming to be "completely bug-free." Good luck with that.But there's no question that development is rolling along for Pixelmator. The app is available as a free trial over on their site, or a full version for $59. If you're looking for an alternative to the 'Shop, Pixelmator is a great way to go.
Pixelmator hits 1.0
Long-fabled image editor Pixelmator (arguably one of the hottest, and most discussed Mac applications of the year) has finally left beta testing, and version 1 is available to download and buy. Compatibility with layered Photoshop PSD files (and over 100 other file formats too), Core Image-driven editing, Automator actions, iSight and iLife integration and a heck of a lot more await, and it's certainly a compelling option given that a licence costs just $59.If you're wanting to get a quick look at the features in Pixelmator (and our very own screencast didn't whet your appetite enough), then in conjunction with the launch of the app, well-known screencast producer Don McAllister of ScreenCasts Online has produced a brief screencast that takes a look at the basics of the application.Pixelmator requires OS X 10.4 Tiger, with a Core Image-compatible graphics card recommended.
Quickly edit photos with Picturesque
Acqualia has released a new utility for quick-and-dirty image editing called Picturesque. It allows you to add those snazzy reflections that are all the rage these days, as well as crop, curve, glow effects and borders. It could be quite handy for when you want to quickly edit an image for the web, and feel like launching Photoshop would be overkill. Picturesque is universal, requires Mac OS 10.4 or later and costs $19.50 US. Alternatively, check out the free ImageWell for a similar type of no-fuss image editing.Thanks, Zac!
