Software News

Shortly after I moved into my former home, there was a knock at the door. Standing in front of me was an 8-year-old girl who lived down the street. “I’m selling note cards,” she told me, “I made the pictures.” A second look showed subjects a kid might shoot but others demonstrated that she was thinking about the photographs before making them. I bought several note cards and asked about her camera, which turned out to be borrowed. With her grandmother’s permission I gave her an old, unused digital point-and-shoot. The girl loved the camera and was inspired to keep making photographs and we talked from time to time about her aspirations. Today she’s a young woman with professional ambitions.

We've told you about software that converts color images to black-and-whites before, including Tonality Pro, and now here's another monohrome conversion program called SILVER projects professional. Featuring a variety of black-and-white tools including 73 presets, 60 "expert" filters, 37 pro film emulations (with a Grain Engine) and tonal value transformations, SILVER projects professional lets you create interesting results with 16-bit quality.

LaserSoft Imaging’s newly developed SilverFast printer calibration now offers an exclusive tool which is designed to offer improved color precision and printing quality. The flexible settings also allow the optimization of all previously generated ICC compliant profiles.

If your eyes have glazed over by the countless videos out there comparing the latest smartphone cameras to real cameras, you’re not alone. The tipping point for photographer Evan Ranft was a video he saw comparing a Google Pixel smarthphone’s camera to a Hasselblad medium format camera.

The free Snapseed app for iOS and Android phones and tablets has long been a favorite among “serious” mobile photographers who want powerful image-editing tools without a lot of superfluous gimmickry.  And now the app has been updated to include features some of us found missing.

Our local supermarket has Halloween candy and scary witches on display, so that can mean only one thing in New Jersey—school is about to open. Annually, each and every elementary school student produces, on average, 331* metric tons of precious artwork; add another 11* tons if they attend summer camp. Some of the items are small enough to fit on the refrigerator door, and all of them are worth keeping forever. Short of renting offsite storage space to house and curate their youngsters' souvenirs of academia, how do sentimental parents cope?

[ *Author's estimate based on absolutely nothing. ]