A few of the new or enhanced features:

• Selection Control Point - kind of like layer masks
• Auto Retouch Brush - quickly remove dust spots, blemishes
• Shadow/Highlight Adjustments
• Workspaces - Browser, Metadata, Multi-Purpose and Edit
• Quick Fix
• Label/Rating support?XMP) - compatible with Adobe Bridge, Windows Vista, etc
• Auto Color Aberration Control - fix those minor lens errors
• Distortion Control Function
• Black/White Control Points - quick contrast changes

Capture NX 2 should be available in the US late in June and the upgrade from Capture NX will be around $100.

Read the announcement on Capture NX 2 at Nikon’s website.

Another round in the game of camera hardware and software Leap Frog. Since a few new cameras have been introduced it’s time for Adobe to push out some updates.

Camera Raw has been bumped to version 4.4 and Lightroom steps to version 1.4. Happy news for certain camera owners and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard users.

Here’s the skinny -

Added support for RAW files for some of the new cameras. Specifically, the Canon XSi/450D, Fuji S100FS, Nikon D60, Olympus SP-570, Pentax K20D and K200D, and the Sony A200, A300 and A350.

There was also a problem with legacy print drivers under Mac OS X that’s been fixed. The last item corrected had to do with Greyscale conversions. Seems that Color Noise was set to Zero and some B&W conversions looked like Tri-X pushed to 3200! (Or something close to that) Color Noise is back on during B&W conversions.

Dash on over to Adobes Updates Download section to grab these.

Polaroid is getting out of the instant picture business. They’re closing 3 production plants and letting go of 450 employees. Their thinking that people would still want instant pictures just didn’t pan out. Digital P&S cameras and quick printing at your local drug store, camera store or grocery store is apparently quick enough for everyone.

You’ll still be able to get Polaroid film into next year and Fuji will continue to make certain instant films, mostly for pro use.

The last Lighting 102 assignment over at Strobist is about Double Duty Lighting. It sounds easy: use one strobe and reflective surfaces so the light comes from multiple directions. David adds a twist by also narrowing you down to 1 of 3 concept choices.

Read the whole assignment and go grab the mirrors off your wife’s vanity. Or the mirrored tiles off your wall.

This sounds like a fun assignment.

ACDSee is an image management tool that supports lots of file formats, including PSD and RAW. Import, organize, use keyword tags, backup to CD/DVD, it does it all. You can even post your images directly to Flickr and Smugmug directly from within the program.

The Photo Editor makes you life easy with Auto Fix for contrast, color and more. You can create cards, calendars and many other projects to let your creativity come out. Text can warp or wrap around objects and with the Mask tool you can knockout a background or blend 2 images easily.

Fotoslate 4 is their printing program and the nicest feature is gang printing. Maximize your paper by printing as much on it as possible. Group wallets and 4×6s or do 2 5×7s on an 8.5×11 sheet. Fotoslate makes it easy.

These 3 software tools will do virtually anything the average digital photographer needs. Visit the ACDSee website before Feb 14, 2008 to pick up this deal.

The big debate is over what PPI (pixels per inch) is necessary. Personally, I’ve found that 10×15 and larger prints look just fine at 150-200 PPI. Smaller prints benefit from 300 PPI. Your 16×20 or 20×24 does NOT have to be 300 PPI.

Taking a 3 MP image at 2048×1536 pixels and making a 16×20 directly puts you at around 100 PPI. That’s spreading those pixels a bit thin. You’ll see artifacts and probably won’t like the print. Software to the rescue.

Presuming you have Photoshop or PS Elements, there are basically 3 ways to upsize images.

Stair Step Interpolation - The theory here is to gradually increase the image pixel size, usually in 10% increments, until you hit your final size. If you’re using PS 6 or 7 this may be the best, but the CS versions have better algorithms for image size.

One Shot Upsize - Tim Grey and other PS gurus have stated that using the Bicubic method in the PSCS versions works fine in one step. I’ve found this to be true.

Software Plugins - For years the standard plugin for upsizing images was Genuine Fractals. Now that Liquid Resize was recently acquired by onOneSoftware I would expect to see GF getting even better. onOneSoftware also owns Genuine Fractals.

Can you stretch your 3 MP image up to a 24×30 print?? According to Genuine Fractals the answer is yes. And with minimal loss in image quality.

Try it for yourself and grab the 30 day trial of Genuine Fractals.

Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac is scheduled to ship early in the second quarter of 2008.

When the PC version was announced I wrote a brief article about it. You can check out some of the new features and grab a PDF from the link in this article: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 announced.

Lightroom users will benefit from the update as there are a few enhancements. Automatic XMP writing performance has been improved, Importing can now build 1:1 previews, the Export dialog layout is improved, and Lightroom supports Canon sRAW and Fuji compressed RAF files. Grab the Readme file off the download page for full details.

The updates incorporate support for the MAC OS X 10.5 Leopard and add support for the following new cameras:

• Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
• Canon PowerShot G9
• Nikon D3
• Nikon D300
• Olympus E-3
• Olympus SP-560 UZ
• Panasonic DMC-L10

The Camera Raw update is for users of Photoshop CS2/3, Elements 4, 5 and 6 and Premier Elements 3.

If you’ve recently purchased one of the cameras above (or are waiting impatiently for your D300 to arrive at the end of this month) go grab the update now.

You’ve seen me reference the Lightroom Killer Tips website a number of times. Starting in October of this year they’ve added a new feature - Monday Presets. Every week Matt Kloskowski is posting a group of presets for either the Develop or Print modules.
You can go find all of them here.

Another place to find presets is the Inside Lightrom website. They have a growing collection of user uploaded presets and the Inside Lightroom Develop Presets v3.0 pdf you can grab for free. This document will put you on the path of creating your own presets. Perhaps you could share your best creations at Inside Lightroom.

I’ve talked about it before, but if you want an all encompassing collection of Develop presets go get the PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW! from OnOneSoftware. Check out the video on that page too for details on how to use these presets. Essentially, there are a number of presets for color temp, contrast, saturation, sharpening etc. Just go down the list and apply as needed. By the time you get to the bottom of the list your image is perfect (theoretically).

Use presets in Lightroom and unlock one of the most time saving functions of this great software.

He starts by pushing the Exposure up a stop or more. Set the Recovery and Fill Light to 100, Blacks to about 50 and Saturation to -70. Clarity and Vibrance also get pumped to 100. (I know, this sounds totally whacked out!)

All of this will create some noise, which you can leave alone if you like. You can get rid of some of it with a Luminance setting of 25 and Color setting of 50. Reduce your Sharpening and Detail a bit too.

The final bit is to add a vignette around the corners. Start with your Lens Vignette at -50, then adjust to your liking. You’ll also want to revisit your Exposure and Blacks settings to bring back some snap. Now save this as a Preset so you can use it again.

Buildings, flowers, or any image without a lot of fine detail work best. Try some crazy corrections during your next editing session in Lightroom. You never know what you’ll get.

Last month I wrote a couple times about the Wacom pen tablets. Included in their software bundle is Corel Painter Essentials, a nice program for turning digital files into painterly looking art. If you haven’t invested in a pen tablet yet, there’s a free software available called Deep Paint that will do the same thing.

Both softwares let you start with an original image as the base and create a cloned image using various brush tools. Airbrushes, paintbrushes, crayon, chalk, and many more. Vary the size and strength using sliders to get exactly the effect you want. Let your inner Van Gogh come out and create some unique art.

The Help file is quite complete and will get you started toward your first art creation. Although you may find it easier to use a pen tablet, using a mouse is possible too. Play and experiment. You can always start over or save changes as you go along. Just have fun.

Although development on Deep Paint stopped in 2005, it’s still available as a free download from download.com. It’s a big file, coming in at over 50 meg, but well worth the download.