Photo HowTo

Google has updated its photo editing software and manager Picasa to the version 3.9. It comes up with plethora of new photo editing effects from Picnik and with new side-by-side editing feature. It also supports Google+ social network.

A few weeks ago the new version of Zoner Photo Studio was introduced. So we will take a look on its new features, including nice tone mapping based HDR, GPU acceleration for faster calculations or direct connection to Zonerama.com.

This week Microsoft released a new add-in for the Windows system built-in file manager, Windows Explorer. This add-on Microsoft Camera Codec Pack improves your Windows to be able to show the RAW images within the Explorer or the Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Advancement in Photoshop products has finally created a winner with the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection software. This user-friendly piece of software provides the user with the ability to create and design using photos as a canvas. The user will be able to quickly and easily create photoshopped media. This software also allows the user to interface while working in a virtual partnership effectively, as well as deliver the finished photo virtually anywhere.

About one year ago there was an article about Microsoft ICE, the fastest software for creating panorama photography. Now, I would like to refresh these information with a new article. Microsoft ICE was released in a new version which supports direct upload to Photosynth service.

Have you enjoyed taking pictures for family and friends? Would you like to expand your research; would you like to sell your photography skills as a service? If so, creating a portfolio of your work is a must-do. Without it, your passion for photography is likely to stay a hobby and not become a profitable career. Since it is important to create a portfolio of your work, you may be ready to get started.

As a digital camera user, your pictures are stored on your computer. The ability to store pictures on a computer is a great feature. You can easily share your pictures with others and choose which photographs you want to print. With that said, have you backed up your photographs? Right now, if your computer got a virus and crashed, what would happen to your precious memories? If you do not have backup copies you are out of luck. Speaking from personal experience, this is a place you never want to be.

Do you own an iPod? Are you using Windows operating system? Well, there are not too many options with which you can upload your photos, music and other data to your iPod device especially if you don’t like the iTunes library. However, one solution exists at least.

The last week Adobe released the new RC version of their Photoshop plugin for working with RAW format from digital cameras. If you have a new digital camera and would like to take photos using the RAW format, I highly recommend to upgrade. The Camera Raw is free.

Every photographer has some days when the photos are not taking in the perfect way. We are not perfect, the weather could make taking photos difficult and your digital camera may be much more simple than you need.

The World Wide Web has given photographers a whole new way of showcasing the beauty of their artwork with the use of online photo galleries. Having your work visible on the Internet can pay off well for professional photographers when attracting new clients.

If you are looking for a place where to upload your pictures and share them with others, try the interesting geographical photo-database called MyGreatWorld. It is an online photo sharing application with world map where the users can find the pictures from all over the world. There are continent categories, slideshow and by date filtering. The search functionality is not missing.

What do you prefer? Image organizer or image viewer? Both of this software has certain advantages and disadvantages. Most of the image organizer has own fast image viewer, like Picasa 3. You surely know very fast IrfanView – image viewer with a few editing features. But if you need to browse the gigapixels images in comfort dark user interface, you need another software – try the FastPictureViewer.

These Christmas days are ideal opportunity for taking some photos of your family and friends. Try to surprise them with funny photo collage where you will swap the original faces with your friend’s. You don’t need to be a Photoshop guru. Just try an interesting online service called PhotoFunia.

Are you a panorama photography fan? If so, you probably should know about relatively new panorama photography tool from Microsoft – fast and powerful freeware application called Microsoft Image Composite Editor, or Microsoft ICE shortly.