Digital imaging expert Tim Grey tackles your digital darkroom questions in his new book, Take Your Best Shot (O’Reilly, $35), written in Q&A format where he answers your most common and vexing digital darkroom questions.

Grey, who is host of the annual Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, is a member of the Photoshop World Dream Team of Instructors and he has written over a dozen books, such as the Tim Grey Guides series for Sybex that includes Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers, Photoshop CS3 Workflow and Color Confidence.

In ...

The promise of the PTLens software for lens correction is so inviting you could probably plunk down $15 without much thought to it. Hey, if it matters, you can still try it for free. Download the software and it’s good for 10 images, free. Pay via PayPal if you like it.

Tom Niemann’s PTLens offers to correct lens pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective in your photos and it’s available for the PC and Mac platforms. Tom's done a good job of including almost all current camera models for his lens correcton ...

Nik Software says the update to their award-winning Color Efex Pro 3.0 photographic filters is now available. The update is available for free download for current owners of the application.

Color Efex Pro 3.1 now supports Aperture 2.1, Apple’s groundbreaking photo editing and management software, Capture NX 2, the latest version of Nikon Corporation’s award-winning photo editing software, and the Smart Filters feature of Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Color Efex Pro 3.1 features Nik Software’s patented U Point technology and offers a comprehensive, powerful, and easy to use set of ...

Ben Long at CompleteDigitalPhotography.com has released Version 3.7 of his Photoshop Action Pack, a collection of 90 Automator Actions that allow you to script nearly all of Photoshop's functionality from within Apple's Automator in Mac OS X 10.4 and later.

The new version, which is for Photoshop CS3 adds two new actions: Set Blending Mode of Current Layer, and Copy IPTC to Spotlight Comments. The first lets you change a layer's blending mode, just as you would from Photoshop's Layers palette, while the second lets you automate the process of copying IPTC tags ...

The updated Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 now incorporates Acrobat 9 Pro; Adobe CS3.3 is available in Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, and Master Collection editions.

Adobe said Acrobat 9 Pro brings together the power, reach, and richness of the Adobe PDF and Adobe Flash formats and introduces numerous enhancements to print production workflows. It allows the user to combine documents, video, audio, and other file types into easy-to-distribute PDF Portfolios, complete with customisable interactive navigation.

Additionally, Acrobat 9 Pro lets designers collaborate on documents more effectively and efficiently. Design professionals can now, ...

Plug-In Suite 4 by onOne Software offers full versions of six essential software tools – Genuine Fractals 5 Print Pro, PhotoTools 1.0 Professional Edition, PhotoFrame 3.1 Professional Edition, Mask Pro 4.1, PhotoTune 2.2 and FocalPoint 1.0 – in one affordable combination that includes everything a photographer needs to make their images look their best.

Version 4 – for Photoshop CS2 and CS3 – is the latest upgrade to the award winning Plug-In Suite product line that combines several of onOne Software’s individual Photoshop plug-ins into a highly affordable package.

The ...

What? We haven’t even quite learned – much less mastered – Adobe CS3, and now there’s CS4?

Yes, Adobe has released beta versions of Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Soundbooth CS4; Photoshop CS4 can’t be very far behind.

Consequently, lynda.com, a provider of software training videos online, announced new courses on all of the just-released Adobe CS4 beta versions. All visitors to the lynda.com Online Training Library can view these entire courses for free.

For free access to these new training videos—Dreamweaver CS4 Beta New Features, Fireworks CS4 Beta New Features, and Soundbooth ...

Korean publisher YoungJin has released a new book, Photoshop CS3 Accelerated by Blues Kim, a hands-on training guide to Adobe’s photo editing application.

Featuring easy-to-follow exercises, the book gives the reader a visual walk-through of Photoshop CS3’s functions and offers sample design projects to work on. The book begins with a clear-cut introduction to essential concepts and terminology. Newly learned skills are then put to the test by following the step-by-step exercises. Full color, crisp screenshots on every page give readers a clear picture of what’s possible, and the ...

ImageSpan’s LicenseStream Creator can now be accessed via plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom. LicenseStream Creator is a content licensing and settlement managed service for creators of digital media.

Its simple-to-use, intuitive interface makes it easy for professional and user-gen creators to register and license a broad range of digital content, including photographs and images, track and manage royalties, and bill and collect fees.

ImageSpan said this new automated platform also enables easy assignment of revenues to multiple parties, making it especially useful for the highly-distributed transactions typical of today’s Web 2.0 world ...

The Art of Black and White Photography by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann focuses on image composition and image capture, with an emphasis on the creative aspects of black and white photography, as well as on the digital workflow.

After introducing the ground rules of composition, Hoffman illustrates their applications with various photographic genres such as architecture, street photography, portraiture, and surreal photography with his own black and white images.

In the second part of the book, Hoffmann illustrates the elements of a “photographic language”, which ...