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iView Multimedia has been acquired by Microsoft Corporation.

iView’s founder, Yan Calotychos, has written a letter to customers about the deal. There is also an Acquisition FAQ answering the main questions customers are asking. Keep an eye on the iView Blog for updates.

Perhaps iView Media will become the Windows-equivalent of Apple’s iPhoto, giving ordinary users a great way to manage their digital photos right out of the box.

Microsoft is committed to continuing to evolve the iView products on both the Mac and the Windows platforms. Hopefully this will mean a wider market for iView MediaPro in the future, with the increased exposure and resources Microsoft can bring to the table.

Customers can continue to use and buy iView products knowing that they will be fully supported as Microsoft evolves the iView product line in the future, for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Update: – Peter Krogh, author of The DAM Book, Digital Asset Management for Photographers (O’Reilly 2005) and iView MediaPro alpha tester, has written a pretty good analysis of what the Microsoft acquisition means for iView MediaPro users.

Don’t forget, if you don’t already own iView MediaPro 3, we’ve got a special deal lined up with iView Multimedia to save you 15% off the normal purchase price.

Technorati Tags: iView, iView MediaPro, MediaPro, Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, photography software, DAM, digital asset management, image management, photo software, digital photography

Filed under: Asset Management, Business, Software, Workflow
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Frank Lazaro has written an article for Digital Photography School about How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography.

Basically, the technique is to create a fairly rough vignette by freehand, and then apply a digital cross-processing effect. The end result looks very good, although it certainly doesn’t suit every photograph.

Have a look at the digitalps Flickr group to see and discuss other readers’ attempts, and maybe to share your own.

Technorati Tags: digital photography, photography, Lomo, Photoshop

Filed under: Technique
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DALSA Semiconductor has just announced that they’ve developed a 111 megapixel CCD image sensor chip!

This square sensor measures 4″ by 4″ with a 9 µm pixel pitch, giving a resolution of 10,560 x 10,560 pixels. This is currently the world’s highest resolution image sensor chip, and also the first imager to break the 100 million pixel barrier.

Unfortunately for us the sensor is for astronomy, not digital cameras. I doubt many of us would be able to afford a camera containing such a chip anyway! Still, these types of pioneering projects tend to break new ground in the areas of technology and manufacturing, so we might get some kind of trickle-down improvements. Here’s hoping!

STA developed the record-breaking chip for the Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory (“USNO”), funded by the Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research Program. The device will assist USNO in the determination of the positions and motions of stars, solar system objects and the establishment of celestial reference frames. DALSA Semiconductor manufactured the device for STA at its wafer fabrication facility in Bromont, Quebec.

Read the press release.

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Leica has announced a new system for marking their lenses with a 6-bit code, allowing the upcoming Leica Digital M camera to identify which lens is attached and to store the information in the image metadata. All new lenses will carry the coding, and Leica will offer a service upgrade to apply the coding to existing M series lenses, including discontinued models.

Details and press release are available at DP Review.

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DP Review has posted their Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 Hands-On Preview.

The press release for the DSLR-A100 is also available on the DP Review site.

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Along with the D2Xs, Nikon has released a ‘pro’ version of their Nikon Capture Camera Control software, Nikon Camera Control Pro. Unfortunately, the press release is fairly scant on detail. This program is available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

The second new software product is Nikon Image Authentication Software, which enables verification of the authenticity of images captured with a Nikon D2Xs digital SLR. This ability is very useful for law enforcement and other government agencies, the media, insurance companies and has a variety of other business applications. Unfortunately, this program only runs on the Windows platform.

Further details and the press releases are available at DP Review.

Filed under: Business, Nikon, Software
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Nikon has announced the D2Xs, an improved version of the D2X.

The main improvements include:

• larger 2.5″ LCD monitor
• electronic viewfinder masking in high-speed crop mode
• longer battery life
• black and white mode
• 3 custom tone curves
• save and load settings, even between cameras
• image authentication system compatible

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Pentax has announced two new 6.1 megapixel digital SLRs, the K100D and the K110D.

Features of both cameras include:

• 2.5 inch 210,000 pixel LCD
• 6.1 megapixel APS-C sized CCD
• 16 segment multi-pattern metering
• 11 point autofocus
• ISO 200 to 3200
• PENTAX KAF mount compatible with PENTAX KAF2, KAF and KA mount lenses
• 1/4000 second top shutter speed
• uses SD memory cards

The K100D also features a CCD-shift Shake Reduction system.

I’m just glad that Pentax seems to have finally ditched the stupid *-ist camera naming system!

Technorati Tags: pentax, digital slr, dslr, digital camera

Filed under: Pentax
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Breeze Systems has released DSLR Remote v1.2, a free upgrade for all registered users of DSLR Remote.

New features include:

• Adds support for the Canon EOS 30D.
• Includes a flexible auto bracketing function allowing up to 15 shots to be taken automatically by varying the shutter speed or aperture.
• Image previews can now be color managed and sharpened to give more accurate results for color critical applications like product shots.

Technorati Tags: dslr remote, eos 30d, digital photography software

Filed under: Software
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iView Multimedia has released a free update to its professional media cataloging application iView MediaPro 3.

Version 3.1 provides the following improvements and enhancements:

• Brand new Notepad feature.
• Universal Binary compatible (Mac).
• Added asynchronous toolbar text search.
• Added feature to automatically extend last defined thumbnail view field if space is available during printing. Field must be more than 1 line high.
• Added feature to import/export labels in XML file.
• Added Finder labeling in folder panel (Mac)
• • Folders are now displayed using user icons and labels as displayed in Finder.
• • Pressing keys 1 to 7 will set the label for selected folders.
• • Pressing key 0 will remove the label for selected folders.
• Included some useful new scripts.
• General Mac & Windows UI optimization and stability issues.
• Improved reliability of folder manager in organize panel.
• LightBox feature renamed to Light Table (for trademark reasons) now supports up to 6 images at once.
• Incremental downloads (Camera/Disk/URL) now always start with a valid increment (Mac).
• Corrected ‘manage color profiles’ issues with list of available color profiles (Win).
• Corrected issue when applying metadata templates to newly imported items.
• Corrected issues when importing/exporting XML for catalogs containing user defined fields.
• Corrected issue with color levels editing dialog (Win).
• Corrected issues when saving one or more files in batch edit mode (Win).
• Corrected issue when importing HTML files (Win).
• Corrected issues when creating capture date sets during import.
• Corrected issue with Description field when “Treat captions as raw HTML” in HTML Gallery didn’t work.
• Corrected issue with grayscale color matching (Win).
• Corrected issue when Make Contact Sheet would incorrectly calculate layout metrics.
• Corrected script issues, including when importing from iPhoto (Mac) and Photoshop Album (Win).
• Corrected issue with dual monitor slideshow/light table (Win).
• SlideShow
• • Enhanced Slide Show to support more than 32000 items.
• • Respects “always use previews” catalog setting.
• • Improved size and quality of export movies.
• • Fixed multiple monitor positioning (Win).
• • Added page up/down key navigation.
• Metadata synchronization, all non XMP compatible file formats are now tagged using 8BIM:1060 resource (Mac).
• Fixed crashing issue when extracting annotations from m4a media.
• Fixed double rotation issue with ORF files.
• Fixed XMP annotation synchronization issues.
• Fixed long standing bug where some thumbnails were not build when importing hundreds of DCR files.
• Fixed issue resolving catalog associated folders (download and version control) when sharing catalogs between Mac and Windows environments.
• Ghostscript for Mac no longer supported.
• Minimum Mac OS support 10.3.9

iView MediaPro 3.1 runs on both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

If you’re a registered user of iView MediaPro 3, download the 3.1 update now.

Don’t forget, if you don’t already own iView MediaPro 3, we’ve got a special deal lined up with iView Multimedia to save you 15% off the normal purchase price.

Technorati Tags: iView, iView MediaPro, MediaPro, photography software, DAM, digital asset management, image management, photo software

Filed under: Asset Management, RAW Files, Software, Workflow
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