PhotoSoftware

This week at CES, Adobe released Lightroom 4 beta for both Windows and Mac. Available as a free download from Adobe Labs, the digital photo management and editing software gives users a preview of the new features that will be offered in the final release, expected in March 2012.

What's new:

• Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
• Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
• Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
• White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
• Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
• Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
• Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr.
• Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
• Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

CyberLink has a new value-priced software collection that combines PowerDirector 10 video editing software and PhotoDirector 2011 photo software. Called the Video & Photo Creative Collection, this bundle is priced at $149.95, saving you about $20 if purchased separately.

PowerDirector 10 makes creating professional looking home videos easy. It features CyberLink's TrueVelocity 2 video rendering engine, which dramatically speeds up the editing process. PowerDirector 10 offers over 300 new features and enhancements, including a choice of 3 different editing modes, integration of plug-ins from third-party partners, free-hand painting tools, time lapse controls, along with "the most comprehensive set of 3D video editing tools available today."

PhotoDirector 2011 offers pro-quality adjustment tools for photo editing and supports a large number of file formats. It also offers native rendering of RAW files from Canon and Nikon cameras, a feature that maintains the quality of original images without the hassle of installing plug-ins.

In addition, PowerDirector and PhotoDirector users can download user-generated effects (and share their own) via CyberLink's DirectorZone online community, with access to more than 225,000 free effects, titles, menus and tutorials. Read more

Do you have video of your summer vacation loaded on your smartphone or computer? Don't let it just take up space – wow your friends by making it into a professional looking movie using muvee's latest easy-to-use video editing software, muvee Reveal X.

muvee Reveal X comes packed with new features and is the first automatic video editing program to include Styles with effects, transitions, animated text, 3D particle sequence loops, and video and graphics content built in. Royalty-free music and fonts are also included and have been hand-picked to compliment each Style.

In addition, muvee Reveal X has a new Audio boost feature that allows you to pick and choose video scenes to be heard louder than background music. It also offers Intertitles - blank title slides that you can place in between your photos and videos - to define chapters within your movie, and Captions now supports two-line headlines and subtext. Saving options have been improved as well. Uploading capabilities for YouTube and Facebook now support the 720p HD streaming service. Saving on the iPhone 4 and iPad will also be in 720p H264, with iTunes integration for auto-syncing to iOS devices. Read more

Yesterday we told you about X-Rite's i1Display Pro and ColorMunki Display, the company's newest color calibration solutions. Today, X-Rite announced a new trade-in program for customers who purchase either i1Display Pro or ColorMunki Display.

Between now and September 30, 2011, you can receive up to $40 cash back when you trade in your old monitor calibration system towards a new X-Rite ColorMunki Display or i1Display Pro solution. With the purchase of ColorMunki Display (and colorimeter trade-in) you'll receive a $25 rebate, i1Display Pro will get you a $40 rebate.

"For anyone looking to upgrade their color calibration system, now is the perfect time with the introduction of the new ColorMunki Display and i1Display Pro solutions," said Mark Rezzonico, vice president X-Rite Photo Marketing. "And especially with this limited time trade-in program it's a win, win all around. Photographers and other creative professionals can send in their old colorimeter of any make, model or age to step up to the latest technology and receive up to $40 back on their new purchase."

The offer is valid for purchases made and shipped within the U.S. or Canada only. Visit www.xritephoto.com for the Trade-in details and downloadable trade-in forms.

If there's one thing X-Rite knows, it's color calibration. The color calibration experts just added two new hardware/software solutions to their lineup– i1Display Pro and ColorMunki Display.

Professional photographers looking for the highest level of on-screen color accuracy for displays, laptops and projectors and want total color control, i1Display Pro is the solution for you. With its 'Advanced' user-defined settings, in-depth quality assurance tools and predefined 'Basic' settings, i1Display Pro offers the perfect balance of speed and options for your changing needs.Read more

Digital Anarchy announced that their Beauty Box skin retouching tool is now available for Apple's Aperture. The plugin provides an automatic, easy and inexpensive way of smoothing skin and removing blemishes in photographs.

Features include:

• Automatic Mask: Beauty Box uses face detection to identify the skin tones and create an automatic mask in just those areas.
• Smart Skin Smoothing: Smoothing controls like Amount and Radius intelligently adjust the skin smoothing.
• Batch Processing: Automatically smooth the skin in hundreds of images by tying Beauty Box into a batch operation.
• Control Over Mask: Advanced Mask tools are available to make changes to the mask
• Sharpen Details: Use fine-tuning controls like Preserve Edges to preserve important details like hair, eyelashes and jewelry.
• Add Skin Texture: Bring back skin texture, like pore structure, that can be lost because of the smoothing.
• Fast Processing: Beauty Box uses GPU speed and nVidia's CUDA to increase render performance.

X-Rite Photo last week announced its schedule of free March Webinars for professional and serious amateur photographers. This month X-Rite will be addressing specific color management topics.

The March Webinars are:

• Getting Started in Lightroom 3 - Part 1: Organization, Color Workflow and Basic Edits
• Getting Started in Lightroom 3 - Part 2: Advanced Image Editing and Printing
• When you Travel, Bring your Passport! with Seth Resnick
• Beyond Monitor Calibration - Get Prints That Match Your Display!

The Webinars are designed to help photographers gain confidence and learn quick, easy and powerful ways to enhance their color workflow. Webinar attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions during the presentation. Read more