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FlickrExport 2.0 beta 1
FlickrExport has entered a 2.0 beta phase, ushering in some really, really cool new features including: FlickrExport now supports uploading to existing sets. Uploaded photos can be added to a group pool after upload. FlickrExport now displays a list of your tags used on Flickr which can be added to photos before uploading. This list can be filtered using regular expressions. FlickrExport can copy the title and description back to iPhoto if it has been changed inside FlickrExport. This feature is turned off by default. If a photo's date has been modified in iPhoto, FlickrExport now communicates this to Flickr. It is now possible to specify description text for a new Photoset as well as its title. The one catch in this new version, however, is that Fraser Speirs, its developer, has decided to turn FlickrExport into shareware. While I can't find a price anywhere on the FlickrExport 2.0 beta site, I personally am not surprised, as this is a powerful plug-in that Mr. Speirs has obviously spent quite a bit of time on. I know I'll be happy to buy a license once he announces a price - but what about you, loyal FlickrExport users? Do you mind offering up some of your hard-earned cash for some of Mr. Speir's hard work?
Review: iWeb's enhancements are exactly what it needed
In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.
ChocoFlop - powerful image editing
Even as an alpha image editor, I think it's safe to dub ChocoFlop a true "poor man's Photoshop." It offers layers, real-time preview of filters and effects (of which there are many), a slew of selection tools, blending modes, masks, color adjusting and a whole bunch of file formats it can save to and even more it can read from - including many versions of RAW. For the full details, check out the longest image editor feature list I've seen in a long time.As an alpha it's free, and the author has stated on his blog that, once it goes official and commercial, ChocoFlop won't cost more than $50 USD. I haven't cracked this open yet myself, but if you've been looking for a powerful image editor that offers quite a bit more than the standard CoreImage-based options out there, ChocoFlop should be right up your alley.
OS X-native GIMP coming
StyleMac has discovered that GIMP is making its way to OS X native goodness, as Mikael Hallendal, involved with the project, posted on his blog. For those not familiar with GIMP: it's basically an open source version of Photoshop. No, it isn't an exact, feature-for-feature alternative, but it's one of the best available analogies I can think of.As far as I've found, there's no ETA on when you'll have one less reason to run X11, but this will certainly be a welcome addition to OS X's graphic edition options.
iPhoto Buddy: Speeds up iPhoto's load time
I came accross a neat freeware app today coded by Rick Neil called iPhoto Buddy. This app allows you to create more than one Library of photos so iPhoto can load more quickly. Each Library can be named, given an icon, and doesn't have to respect chronological time.If you've been struggling with iPhoto taking a century to load because your Library has more than a couple thousand photos (or you are on a less zippy Mac), fear not, iPhoto Buddy will make your iLife easier.iPhoto Buddy is compatible with iLife 04, 05, and 06, requires a minimum of OS 10.2.4, and even allows you to import an iPhoto Buddy created Library into iMovie or iDVD.[via Appleology]
