Freedom Village Malls Entrance -- Online Photo Sharing

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 software combines power and simplicity so you can make your photos look their best, share them in imaginative ways, and easily find and view all your photos and video clips. Experiment with easy-to-use compositing tools that let you create perfect group photos, seamless panoramas, and more. Easily brush away wrinkles and unwanted objects using the Spot Healing Brush for instant results and the Healing Brush for finer control. Now when using the Healing Brush, you can preview your changes prior to committing them to get the best results possible. Make image selections in seconds so you can easily adjust specific areas of a photo. Easily adjust skin tones for a more natural look, even in poorly lit photos. Start creating quickly, no experience necessary Express your ideas in customizable layouts Create photo books with greater ease and flexibility Entertain friends with custom slide shows and interactive web galleries Share with family and friends using a variety of fun options Instantly download photos from your camera Categorize photos and video clips with easy-to-use visual tags Group photos into convenient Albums Develop creations more quickly by gathering the photos you need for a specific project in one place View and organize your photos quickly, even when your library grows to include thousands of photos Select and adjust specific areas of a photo more quickly and easily than ever before Easily organize stills and video clips with visual tagging options System requirements - Intel Pentium 4, Pentium M, Intel Centrino 1.3GHz or compatible processor, Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, 256MB RAM, 1.5GB free space, Color monitor with 16-bit color video card, 1024x768 monitor resolution at 96dpi or less, Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible display driver, CD-ROM drive, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 7.0, or Mozilla Firefox 1.

CD-ROM: CD-ROMMake your photos look their best with easy-to-use editing tools, Do more with your photos in unique creations for print and web, Easily find and view all your photos and video clips, Easily perform more advanced retouching and enhancing thanks to easy image-selection tools, amazing compositing capabilities, and more, Share your stories in imaginative photo books, scrapbook pages, slide shows, interactive web galleries, and more
Company: Adobe (2007-10-05)
List Price: $99.99
Amazon Price: $67.99
Used Price: $101.85

Apple Aperture 2.0 Upgrade

Aperture 2, Apple's groundbreaking photo editing and management software, delivers more than 100 new features that make it dramatically faster and easier to use and even more powerful. Featuring a streamlined user interface, Aperture 2 provides accelerated performance with its optimized database and new Quick Preview mode for rapid-fire browsing. Thanks to advanced image processing with powerful new tools--such as Recovery, Vibrancy, Vignette, and a soft-edged Retouch brush--you'll get the most out of every image. And thanks to integrated .Mac Web Gallery support, you can showcase your work on the web in minutes. From importing images to publishing them online or in print, Aperture 2 helps you realize your creative vision.

Please note: This is the upgrade version.

Aperture 2, Apple's groundbreaking photo editing and management software, gives photographers powerful tools to manage massive libraries, speed through photo edits, make essential image adjustments, and deliver photos online or in print with ease.

The Essential Tool from Import to Output
Aperture 2 has been designed to help photographers import, manage, enhance, and deliver photos in a single, integrated workflow that dramatically streamlines every aspect of digital photography.

Import images fast--manage them professionally
Aperture starts its flexible, fast image import the moment you attach a camera or memory card to your Mac. It instantly displays thumbnails of every image and offers streamlined ways to add copyright, keywords, and other metadata during import. You can also import photos from cameras, card readers, memory cards, DVDs, and hard drives, or pull shots directly from iPhoto.

Once the images are in your library, you can organize them logically by using Aperture projects, folders, albums, and Smart Albums. Find images quickly with powerful search tools that let you search by any metadata field or image adjustment. And the flexible and open library system lets you store your images wherever and however you like--directly in Aperture, on external drives, even on a network storage device. The robust file management tools allow you to easily move your original photos to a new storage location at any time, so you'll never run out of space for your library as it continues to grow.

Find images quickly with powerful search tools that let you search by any metadata field or image adjustment.

Aperture adjustment tools help you make your best photos look even better.

Make selects quickly and easily
After adding hundreds of new photos to your library, Aperture provide the fastest and most efficient way to review them all and pick the very best. Aperture lets you edit photo shoots using tools such as Quick Preview mode for rapid-fire image review and Compare mode for easily evaluating images side by side. With Aperture, you can even zoom and pan multiple images at once for tight comparisons before making a pick.

You can use the stacks feature to automatically group images shot in a sequence, and speed through big projects using keyboard shortcuts to apply ratings and keywords.

The Light Table gives you a freeform space for grouping images visually, letting you resize, overlay, compare, and organize images into comp layouts.

Adjust and enhance images precisely
Aperture adjustment tools help you make your best photos look even better. Aperture takes you far beyond the basics of straightening, cropping, and improving exposure. Powerful toning controls let you correct exposure, fix white balance, set black point, enhance colors, and recover blown highlights and shadow detail. The softedged Retouch Brush removes spots, dust, and blemishes precisely. The new Vibrancy and Definition tools let you selectively enhance detail and saturation in specific areas of an image.

Copying adjustments from one image to another is simple using the Lift and Stamp tool, which allows you to batch-process adjustments on multiple images with one click. And because all adjustments are nondestructive, you don't have to worry about damaging your original master images. Aperture never touches them.

Take the final steps and showcase your best work
Aperture makes it easy to delivery professional photos online or in print. With flexible export options and integrated online and print publishing capabilities built into Aperture, showcasing your work has never been easier.

Flexible export option
Save finished photos as JPEG, TIFF, or PSD. Output at exactly the size and resolution you want, embed ICC color profiles and metadata, and protect your photos with a watermark when you publish. Send photos to colleagues via Mail. Include the photos in iLife or iWork documents, taking advantage of the direct integration of Aperture with iMovie, Keynote, Pages, and other applications.3 Sync them directly to your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV. Or use an Aperture export plug-in to send photos to Flickr, SmugMug, Gallery, Zenfolio, or Picasa.

Publish online
Aperture offers fully integrated .Mac Web Gallery support, so you can publish a portfolio using your .Mac account in minutes. Use your password-protected Web Gallery to deliver photos, letting others download JPEG or original RAW masters directly from your site. One-click syncing means any changes made in the galleries are reflected in Aperture and on the web instantly. With the effortless HTML-based Web Page and Web Journal options of Aperture, photographers have the tools they need for instant, effective web publishing.

Professional-quality books to order
Aperture provides all the tools you need to create custom-designed books in small, medium, and large formats. You can place, resize, rotate, and mask photos, so your book looks exactly the way you want. Hardcover books include a full-bleed, wraparound dust jacket. Choose from eight elegant designed themes, adjust to your own specifications, then place your order--all right within Aperture.

High-quality printing
With new built-in support for 16-bit printing, Aperture lets you produce high-quality prints with smoother gradients and better color fidelity. The new Print dialog also features print sharpening controls for fine-tuning sharpness for print. You can also order traditional lab prints directly from Aperture in a variety of sizes (wallet size to 20 by 30 inches).

The new Quick Preview mode in Aperture is a lightning-fast way to speed through high-quality image previews, browse and compare photos, and make selects with virtually no lag time.

Optimized for Speed
With Aperture 2, virtually every photo management task across the workflow is faster, thanks to powerful new preview and search options, a more streamlined user interface, and a more responsive database.

The new Quick Preview mode in Aperture--combined with its unmatched compare and select tools, Loupe, multi-image zooming, and Smart Albums--provides the fastest and most efficient way to edit a photo shoot. Switching between projects, scrolling through thumbnails, and searches are all dramatically faster. Exporting images is now a background operation, allowing you to keep working as Aperture renders your finished images. In addition, Aperture significantly improves the performance of certain processor-intensive adjustment tasks such as noise reduction, and Highlights & Shadows.

Quick Preview
The new Quick Preview mode in Aperture is a lightning-fast way to speed through high-quality image previews, browse and compare photos, and make selects with virtually no lag time. Quick Preview simply tells Aperture to load only the preview of each photo when it is selected, rather than decoding and loading the full-size master image. This means photographers can scan through a shoot rapidly, make preliminary selects, and sort photos, edit metadata, and build albums faster than ever. The feature takes advantage of the embedded JPEG previews that are created in-camera by most cameras when shooting RAW images, or uses the preview that Aperture generates after import. Quick Preview is easy to toggle off whenever the full-resolution image is needed (to make image adjustments, for example).

The revamped database in Aperture 2 is the key to dramatically faster searching and sorting, even when working with very large libraries.

Sophisticated Aperture metadata tools make metadata tagging and editing rapid and effortless, at any stage of the workflow, even in full-screen mode.

The visual keyboard interface for the Command Editor makes it easy to modify shortcut keys or create new ones.

Faster and More Powerful Searches
Rebuilt from the ground up, the revamped database in Aperture 2 is the key to dramatically faster searching and sorting, even when working with very large libraries. Powerful new search features, unavailable elsewhere, include the ability to search for images by adjustment (find all black-and-white images, for example) and to perform complex searches based on any combination of metadata fields. This gives photographers incredible flexibility in sorting their libraries, allowing them to quickly locate any images that have had a specific filter, adjustment, or metadata tag applied to them.

Advanced Metadata Support
Sophisticated Aperture metadata tools make metadata tagging and editing rapid and effortless, at any stage of the workflow, even in full-screen mode. New features include the ability to embed IPTC metadata directly into master RAW files on export. And photographers can now precisely adjust the time and date stamps of images by a specific offset, to easily correct in-camera errors or to sync multicamera shoots.

Background Export
Aperture now exports images in the background, so photographers can continue their work uninterrupted while their final images are rendered and exported--an enormous time-saver. Clicking on the Activity indicator in the Viewer toolbar opens the Activity Window, which provides the status of all background operations in progress.

Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
Aperture speeds tasks even more by letting photographers create their own keyboard shortcuts. The visual keyboard interface for the Command Editor makes it easy to modify shortcut keys or create new ones. And the ability to save an unlimited number of shortcut sets for different users or tasks, and to easily switch between shortcut sets, means that multiple users can work in the way that's most efficient for them. The Command Editor can also be used to look up existing keyboard shortcuts.

Faster Navigation and Scrolling
The combination of major database improvements and a revamped thumbnail browser optimized for speed gives Aperture dramatically improved performance across the workflow. Photographers will notice incredibly fast thumbnail browsing and scrolling, minimal load time when switching between projects, as well as performance improvements when applying certain processor-intensive adjustments such as Noise Reduction and Highlights & Shadows.

Tethered Camera Support
The new Tether command in Aperture lets users of popular Nikon and Canon digital SLRs tether their cameras to their Mac and capture images directly into Aperture, without relying on third-party software or scripting. It's easy to set up and provides studio photographers with immediate, full-screen feedback while they shoot.

The Show iPhoto Library command makes it easy to browse your entire iPhoto library from right within Aperture, and drag selected iPhoto imagesÑor even entire albums or projectsÑinto Aperture projects.

Intuitive and Accessible
No other professional workflow application offers the ease and depth of Aperture photo management and editing tools, including a streamlined interface that's easy to navigate and puts tools where you need them. The new, all-in-one Inspector makes it easier than ever to work efficiently in Full Screen mode, while the simplified browser lets you scan through photos and switch between viewing modes more efficiently. The innovative All Projects view gives photographers a quick visual overview of their entire library. And to help Aperture newcomers get up to speed fast, Aperture ships with a set of useful sample projects and 50 online video tutorials.

Streamlined User Interface
The simplified user interface of Aperture is more intuitive and makes it easier to switch between viewing modes, so that your workspace is always optimized for the task at hand. A new Hide Browser option gives you maximum screen real estate for images, books, web pages, and light tables. You can cycle through the three remaining viewing modes--Viewer Only, Browser Only, and split Viewer/Browser--with a single keystroke for maximum efficiency. And the new Filmstrip view in the browser makes shuttling through thumbnails of large photo projects easier than ever.

All-in-One Inspector
The new consolidated Inspector brings together the Projects, Metadata, and Adjustments Inspectors into one tabbed panel, maximizing screen space and making it easy to work efficiently in Full Screen mode. You can switch to the panel you need with a single keystroke, and stay in Full Screen mode while you add and edit metadata, switch between projects, and apply corrections and adjustments.

Innovative Project Skimming
In the new All Projects view, each Aperture project appears as a single thumbnail image--similar to the Events view in iPhoto--for easy visual skimming of all the projects in your library. You can slide your mouse pointer across a project to quickly skim the photos inside, define a Key Photo for each project to serve as the "poster" image, and double-click a thumbnail to instantly open a project and go directly to the selected image.

iPhoto Browser
Aperture also makes it easier for iPhoto users to dive in and get great results with their images. The Show iPhoto Library command makes it easy to browse your entire iPhoto library from right within Aperture, and drag selected iPhoto images--or even entire albums or projects--into Aperture projects.

The simplified user interface of Aperture is more intuitive and makes it easier to switch between viewing modes, so that your workspace is always optimized for the task at hand.

Switch to the panel you need with a single keystroke, and stay in Full Screen mode while you add and edit metadata, switch between projects, and apply corrections and adjustments.

A true soft-edged brush tool, the new Retouch Brush removes blemishes, dust spots, or other unwanted elements with precision.

Sample Projects
Aperture ships with four complete sample projects of professional images--including full-resolution RAW files--that are perfect for experimentation and learning. Some of the projects include adjusted images to help you understand how the adjustment and enhancement tools can be used most effectively. In addition, the projects include sample books, web pages, Light Tables, albums, and Smart Albums, so you can explore your output options by experimenting with these ready-made professional examples.

Online Video Tutorials
Aperture includes a direct link to 50 video tutorials, each focused on a specific task in the Aperture workflow--from importing photos to making final prints. With nearly two full hours of video content, the targeted tutorials bring newcomers up to speed fast and help existing Aperture users get the most out of the new features.

Aperture introduces an unparalleled level of quality to RAW image handling, with an all-new RAW decode engine that delivers superior images with less noise, better detail, powerful highlight recovery, and improved color rendering.

Powerful Image Processing
Aperture provides all the essential tools that photographers need to get the highest possible quality out of their images, whether shooting RAW or JPEG. The application has been built around an all-new RAW processing engine that delivers remarkable quality that can be further enhanced with an arsenal of simple but powerful adjustment tools. Powerful new image adjustment and enhancement tools give photographers what they need to correct exposure, adjust tone, and refine images in more precise and powerful ways, all nondestructively. For even more control, innovative RAW fine-tuning controls let photographers perfect their renders on an image-by-image basis.

Next-Generation RAW Image Processing
Aperture introduces an unparalleled level of quality to RAW image handling, with an all-new RAW decode engine that delivers superior images with less noise, better detail, powerful highlight recovery, and improved color rendering. You can selectively migrate existing images from the 1.x to 2.0 RAW decode, so you control which images in your library are re-rendered. Aperture supports 100 different RAW formats from today's leading cameras--including Adobe's DNG format--plus JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files. And the new Baseline DNG support means that even users of cameras with RAW formats not natively supported in Mac OS X can work with their images in Aperture.

Highlight Recovery and Black Point
Powerful new tools let you correct exposure and enhance images with precision, giving you a wider range of artistic control over how your images are rendered, and rescuing previously unsalvageable highlight and shadow detail. The new Recovery slider offers remarkably effective recovery of "blown" highlights. A new Black Point slider on the Exposure brick speeds up toning, making it easier to set a black point and adjust the shadow areas of an image independently from the midtones and highlights.

Vibrancy and Definition
Two new adjustments add remarkable detail and punch to your images. Vibrancy applies saturation selectively to unsaturated hues only and protects skin tones for more pleasing and realistic results. Definition adds superb clarity by applying local contrast to images to accentuate detail.

Vignette and Devignette
The new Vignette filter lets you apply either gamma- or exposure-based vignettes around the edges of your images for artistic effect. Exposure vignettes simulate lens-created vignetting by reducing exposure at the edges of an image. Gamma vignettes apply a gamma adjustment to pixels in the vignette area, resulting in a more pronounced effect. Devignette lets you easily correct existing vignetting problems, removing unwanted optical vignetting where dark or shadowed areas appear at the periphery of images.

Retouch Brush
A true soft-edged brush tool, the new Retouch Brush removes blemishes, dust spots, or other unwanted elements with precision. You can specify the brush softness and opacity for precise control over the desired effect. A Detect Edges option helps you preserve image detail when repairing spots adjacent to hard edges. In Clone mode, you can easily clone pixels from one portion of an image and paint them over problem areas to make perfect visual repairs with multiple undos.

RAW Fine-Tuning
An expanded set of RAW fine-tuning controls give photographers even more control over tuning Apple's RAW decode on an image-by-image basis. Hue Boost, which lets you control the degree to which hues are preserved when the default tonal response curve is applied, can be particularly useful when rendering saturated highlights such as sunsets. The Moire control reduces unwanted color fringing and patterning that can sometimes appear in RAW images due to a moire effect.

Highlight Hot and Cold Pixels
Highlight Hot and Cold Pixels is a new overlay option that makes it easy to see exactly which pixels in an image are completely white or black, so you can adjust tones and set a perfect black point. Aperture also includes out-of-range pixel overlays, which can be invoked on the fly by holding down the Command key while using the Exposure, Levels, Recovery, and Black Point tools. Photographers can choose between Color or Monochrome overlays.

New integration with .Mac Web Gallery means photos can be published from Aperture to a password-protected photo web gallery on .Mac with just a few clicks.

Enhanced Output
This seamless integration of Aperture with the rest of the Mac platform makes it a complete output solution. With built-in support for 16-bit printing and integrated print sharpening, Aperture produces superior-quality prints more easily than ever. Plus, the expanded book features let you design and publish one-of-a-kind, professional books with new sizes, themes, finishes and layout tools.6 And Aperture gives photographers the tools they need for instant, effective web publishing as well as essential access to their portfolios on their iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.

Publishing to .Mac Web Gallery
New integration with .Mac Web Gallery means photos can be published from Aperture to a password-protected photo web gallery on .Mac with just a few clicks. Visitors can view photos, download high-quality JPEG images or even RAW master files, and post their own images from any computer on any platform. One-click syncing makes it easy to keep published web albums completely up-to-date. When combined with the effortless HTML-based Web Page and Web Journal options that Aperture offers, photographers have the tools they need for instant, effective web publishing.

16-Bit Print Support
Aperture produces superior-quality print output more easily than ever. Built-in support for 16-bit printer drivers from leading manufacturers means high-quality print output with smoother gradients and better color fidelity. And integrated print sharpening lets you dial in the exact amount of sharpening your printer needs, giving you sharper prints with more detail.

Custom Book Options
Aperture has expanded its photo book layout tools to make it easier to create one-of-a-kind photo books, professionally printed and bound by Apple and delivered to your door.6 Choose from eight professionally designed layout themes--two of which are new--as a starting point, but make the book your own by customizing the layout and adding your own borders to photo and text boxes. Books are available in three different sizes. New finishing options include foil-stamped hardcovers and dust jackets. Publishing your images as high-quality books was never easier.

CD-ROM: CD-ROMNext-generation RAW image processing for producing images of the highest quality, Quick Preview mode for rapid-fire photo browsing, Image adjustment controls such as Recovery, Definition, Vibrancy, and Vignette; Soft-edged Retouch brush for removing unwanted elements from photos, Simplified user interface that maximizes screen space and provides direct access to your iPhoto library, .Mac Web Gallery support for instantly publishing photos online, allowing visitors to both view and download images
Company: Apple (2008-02-15)
List Price: $99.00
Amazon Price: $76.69

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Upgrade

Note: This is the upgrade version of Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Upgrade software accelerates your path from imagination to imagery. Ideal for photographers, graphic designers, and web designers, the professional standard delivers new features such as automatic layer alignment and blending that enable advanced compositing. Live filters boost the comprehensive, nondestructive editing toolset for increased flexibility. And a streamlined interface and new timesaving tools make your work flow faster.

Boost your productivity with a streamlined interface.

The Loupe tool in Adobe Bridge CS3 lets you easily zoom into the fine detail of any image.

The new overlay preview and Clone Source palette let you preview, transform, and precisely position cloned areas in a single fluid process.

Zoomify export allows you to efficiently display even the highest resolution imagery over low bandwidth web connections.

Work more productively
Take advantage of a wide range of improvements designed to boost your productivity. Experience native performance on Intel based and PowerPC Macs and on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista systems. Maximize your workspace with a streamlined interface, process raw images with increased speed and quality, and manage assets more efficiently in the revamped Adobe Bridge CS3. And enjoy complete compatibility with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software (sold separately), so the changes you make to an image in one product will automatically appear in the other.

Edit with unrivaled power
The comprehensive image-editing toolset in Photoshop CS3 lets you correct and enhance your images with unmatched creative control. Experiment more freely with nondestructive filters. Manage and correct color more easily, and convert color images to rich black-and-white with one click. Retouch images with more powerful cloning and healing tools. And count on higher fidelity conversion when you merge a series of exposures into a 32-bit high dynamic range (HDR) image.

Composite with breakthrough tools
Photoshop CS3 offers a wealth of features that make compositing multiple images easier than ever before. Create more accurate composites with new tools that automatically align and blend layers or images based on similar content. Make an image selection with one brush stroke. Perfect any selection edge in an easy-to-use, intuitive dialog box. And merge multiple photos into a panorama with superior results.

Product highlights

Boost your productivity with a streamlined interface, enhancements to raw-image processing and asset management workflows, and more.
Experience unrivaled editing power with nondestructive filters, more precise color-correction controls, and more powerful cloning and healing tools.
Easily create rich composites using new tools for automatically aligning and blending layers and making quick selections.

Audience benefit

Professional photographers--With Adobe Photoshop CS3 software, you can perfect all of your images with nondestructive filters and more powerful color-correction, cloning, and healing tools, and you can create sophisticated composites more easily than ever with breakthrough tools for automatically aligning and blending layers, making quick selections, and more.

Serious amateur photographers--Adobe Photoshop CS3 software delivers everything you need to edit images with professional-quality results, and offers a simplified user interface that makes learning and working in the program easier.

Print and web designers--Adobe Photoshop CS3 software delivers unrivaled power to edit images, breakthrough capabilities for creating sophisticated image composites, and the ability to output your final files to a broad range of formats for print and the web.

Photography students and educators--From raw-image processing, retouching, and compositing to final image output, professional-standard Adobe Photoshop CS3 software offers a powerful solution for digital photography workflows.

Work More Productively

Efficient and flexible work environment

Streamlined interface and palette management
Maximize screen space for editing while keeping essential tools accessible. Palettes are now arranged in convenient, self-adjusting docks that can be widened to full size or narrowed to icons or even a thin, self-revealing strip at the edge of your monitor.

Faster, more flexible asset management with Adobe Bridge CS3
Organize and manage images more efficiently with Adobe Bridge CS3 software, which now delivers improved performance, a Filter panel for easier searching, the ability to group multiple images under a single thumbnail, the Loupe tool, offline image browsing, and more.

Custom menus, shortcuts, and workspaces
Set up and save custom menus, keyboard shortcuts, and workspaces for quick access to what you need.

Streamlined Workflow

Better raw image processing
Process raw images with increased speed and superior conversion quality using the Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, which now adds support for JPEG and TIFF formats; new tools including Fill Light and Dust Busting; compatibility with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software; and support for over 150 camera models.

Enhanced PDF support
Work more easily with Adobe PDF-based content. Precisely control the size of PDF pages opened in Photoshop; add security controls and metadata, such as copyright and exposure details, to images within PDF presentations; and create a richer image display in PDF presentations and documents.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom support
Jump from Photoshop Lightroom software to Photoshop CS3 in one click for advanced editing of your digital photos. Lightroom (sold separately) offers an efficient, powerful way to import, manage, and present large volumes of digital images.

Improved printing experience
Experience better control over print quality with color management, a larger print preview window, and more controls in one place so you can print in fewer steps. Improved printing controls, co-developed by Adobe and HP, make printing easier and more predictable, and streamline setup options via integration with select printers from HP, Epson, and Canon.

Presets
Make sophisticated color adjustments automatically with one-click presets in Curves, the Channel Mixer, and the new Black and White conversion dialog box.

Peak performance
Experience native performance on Intel and PowerPC based Macintosh computers, and on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista systems.

Automated production
Automate common production tasks in a variety of ways. Set up event-based scripts, record a series of steps as an Action for efficient batch processing, and design repetitive graphics faster with Variables.

History palette and Edit History log
Undo and redo any set of editing steps in an open image with the History palette, and automatically track all editing steps within your files with the Edit History log. Export steps to a text file or save them as part of image metadata for easier documentation of your work, file audits, and more.

Wide range of supported formats
Import and export a wide range of file formats, including PSD, BMP, Cineon, JPEG, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, PNG, Targa, and TIFF.

Adobe Device Central CS3
Create compelling mobile content, such as wallpapers and screensavers, and then visually preview how it will render on mobile devices using the built-in Adobe Device Central CS3. Tune your designs for mobile screen sizes and lighting conditions.

Zoomify export for high-resolution web display
Take advantage of Adobe Flash and Zoomify technology to export high-resolution images to the web for viewing through Adobe Flash Player software. Flash Player displays your image quickly and efficiently, letting viewers zoom in on details with minimal delay.

Third-party solutions and resources
Take advantage of a wealth of additional resources--including software plug-ins, books, and training--from the longstanding community of expert Photoshop developers, authors, and trainers.

Auto-Align Layers can automatically connect a series of photos into a panorama (left). Auto-Blend Layers can then seamlessly blend lighting and texture to complete the perfect composite image (right).

Edit With Unrivaled Power

Nondestructive editing

Smart Filters
Add, adjust, and remove filters from an image without having to resave the image or start over to preserve quality. Nondestructive Smart Filters allow you to visualize changes without altering original pixel data.

Smart Objects
Perform nondestructive scaling, rotating, and warping of raster and vector graphics with Smart Objects. Even preserve the editability of vector data from Adobe Illustrator software.

Professional color and tone control

Color-correction enhancements
Take advantage of precision color correction made faster and easier. Brightness/Contrast now provides better results from the same intuitive interface, and enhanced Curves controls let you make automatic adjustments with included presets or those you create; convert to black-and-white with point sliders; and use a histogram, color channel lines, and a clipping preview.

Black-and-white conversion
Easily convert color images to rich black-and-white and adjust tonal values and tints with a new tool. Experiment with the included black-and-white presets, or create and save your own custom presets to achieve the best results.

Improved Channel Mixer
Take advantage of new functionality and a host of presets that make the Channel Mixer easier to use for black-and-white conversion.

Enhanced 32-bit high dynamic range (HDR) support
Create and edit 32-bit images and combine multiple exposures into a single, 32-bit image that preserves the full range of a scene--from the deepest shadows to the brightest highlights. New image processing and alignment algorithms deliver superior results.

Maximize screen space for editing while keeping essential tools accessible.

Intelligent Image Editing and Enhancement

More powerful cloning and healing tools
Experience greater control when retouching images with cloning tools and the Healing Brush. See source pixels under your tool or brush for more precise positioning; preview changes to source content live; and set multiple source points, scale, and rotate in the new Clone Source palette.

Rich painting and drawing toolset
Create or modify images with a wide assortment of professional, fully customizable paint settings, artistic brushes, and drawing tools.

Enhanced Vanishing Point
Take perspective-based editing to a new level with the enhanced Vanishing Point, which lets you create multiple planes in an image, connect them at any angle, and then wrap graphics, text, and images around them to create packaging mock-ups and more.

Composite With Breakthrough Tools

Easy compositing and selecting

Advanced compositing
Create more accurate composites by automatically aligning multiple Photoshop layers or images based on similar content. The Auto-align Layers command quickly analyzes details and moves, rotates, or warps layers to align them perfectly, and the Auto-blend Layers command blends the color and shading to create a smooth, editable result.

Improved Photomerge technology
Take advantage of refined Photomerge technology, which uses new layer-alignment and layer-blending capabilities to let you automatically stitch horizontal or vertical photos into seamless panoramas.

Quick Selection and Refine Edge tools
Make selections in a snap. Loosely draw on an image area, and the Quick Selection tool automatically completes the selection for you. Then fine-tune your selections with the Refine Edge tool.

Flexible layers
Composite images, text, and effects on hundreds of layers for extraordinarily sophisticated results. Organize layers with up to five levels of nesting, and save in different combinations as Layer Comps.

Which edition of Photoshop CS3 is right for you?
Photoshop CS3 is available in two editions--Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended--to meet the diverse needs of professionals in a wide range of fields.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended

Builds on Photoshop CS2 with dozens of improvements

Increased productivity with a streamlined interface, Camera Raw enhancements, next-generation Adobe Bridge CS3, and Zoomify export

Unrivaled editing power with live filters, more precise color correction, easier black-and-white conversion, and more powerful cloning and healing tools

Breakthrough compositing with automatic layer alignment and blending capabilities, easier selections, and improved Photomerge® technology

3D and motion support with the ability to edit 3D content and incorporate it into 2D compositions, paint and clone over multiple video frames, and more

Comprehensive image analysis with new image measurement and counting tools

DVD-ROM: CDThe ideal solution for professional, powerful photo editing, Boost your productivity with a streamlined interface, enhancements to raw-image processing and asset management workflows, and more, Experience unrivaled editing power with nondestructive filters, more precise color-correction controls, and more powerful cloning and healing tools, Easily create rich composites using new tools for automatically aligning and blending layers and making quick selections, Ideal for photographers, graphic designers, Web designers, and print service providers
Company: Adobe (2007-04-20)
List Price: $199.00
Amazon Price: $179.95
Used Price: $193.95

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is the ideal choice for any aspiring photographer's digital darkroom. Fix brightness, color, and photo flaws in a few clicks; use precision editing tools to create the picture you want; give photos a unique, exciting look using hundreds of special effects, and much more! Plus, the NEW one-of-a-kind Express Lab helps you quickly view and fix dozens of photos in the time it used to take to edit a few. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 even includes a built-in Learning Center to help you get started, it's the easiest way to get professional-looking photos - fast!

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is the ideal choice for any aspiring photographer's digital darkroom.

Introducing Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is the ideal digital photography software for users who want professional-looking photos and new ways to unlock their creative potential. With the widest selection of photo-editing features--ranging from automatic tools when you need results fast or precision controls for fine-tuning--Paint Shop Pro Photo provides a depth of functionality that grows with users as their skills and knowledge advance. Downloading, viewing, orting, and quickly processing photos is a breeze, and users can learn as they go with a variety of learning aids in the application. With version X2, award-winning Paint Shop Pro Photo continues to set the standard for easy-to-use, powerful software at an affordable price.

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 continues to focus on photo editing, making it the ideal choice for any aspiring photographer's digital darkroom. The exciting new features in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 include the following:

Express Lab--A new streamlined mode of Paint Shop Pro Photo helps users quickly view and fix dozens of photos in the time it used to take to edit just a few. Now users can crop, rotate, and fix their photos without having to open them individually.
Graphite Interface Theme--A new, darker theme for Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 makes photos look their absolute best while users edit them.
HDR Photo Merge--Users can take advantage of their camera's autobracketing feature and combine multiple exposures of high-contrast scenes, which are otherwise impossible to capture adequately.
Integrated Clarify Control--Users can achieve incredible results with HDR Photo Merge by applying automatic dodging and burning. The enhanced Black and White Film dialog box also provides a Clarify control, so users can create dynamic, high-contrast images that mimic the use of black-and-white film with a color filter on the lens.
Makeover Tool Modes--The suite of easy-to-use retouching tools grows in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 to include the new Thinify and Eye Drop modes, which give super results, fast.
Layer Styles--Users can easily apply effects such as embossing, drop shadows, glows, and even reflections, which automatically update whenever the underlying layer is edited.
Visible Watermarks--Users can take credit for their work by adding watermarks to photos. All it takes is a few clicks before printing or uploading proof copies.
Workflow Improvements--Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 makes it easier to use photos in documents, presentations, and Web pages through the new Save for Office and Copy Special options, plus redesigned Resize and Save As dialog boxes.
Auto-Preserve Originals--Original photos are now automatically preserved when users save an edited version. This new feature provides a safety net in case users want to return to the original version.

The Express Lab helps users quickly process large batches of photos.

Supporting these features is the award-winning Learning Center, which help new users get up to speed quickly. The Learning Center is laid out in workflow order, so users can easily identify what they'd like to do with their photos. The Learning Center is truly integrated into the application, so selecting a topic automatically launches the corresponding tool. Unlike products with limited feature sets, Paint Shop Pro Photo provides a full range of functionality, from quick, single-click adjustments to full manual controls. Many common photo-editing tasks are much easier to perform in Paint Shop Pro Photo than in comparable applications, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. Examples include the following:

Replacing color selectively--Change the color of any object in a photo with just one click of the Color Changer tool while preserving the shading and texture of the original object. Even changing a dark color to a light color requires just a single click, as opposed to the difficult, multistep manual process required in Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Correcting perspective--Turn any lens into a tilt-swing perspective correction lens with the Perspective Correction feature. Simply line up four corners on a photo element that should be square, and double-click. Photoshop Elements requires a complex process involving multiple controls.
Blurring the background selectively--Draw attention to an object of interest in a photo with the Depth of Field effect. This feature simulates the use of a low lens aperture setting.
Sprucing up photo subjects--Apply tooth-whitening, slimming, suntanning, and other enhancements with a suite of Makeover tool modes.
Giving images an older look--Take photos back in time by using the seven different historical effects in the Time Machine feature.
Removing unwanted objects in photos--Outline an object to remove, and a background area to use to replace it, and the object is gone. This technique is particularly useful for objects that are larger than the area you use for the replacement texture. In Photoshop Elements, this task requires cloning, which often leads to noticeable repeat patterns.
Removing purple fringe--Detect and remove the colored fringe that appears along high-contrast edges in many digital camera photos by using the Purple Fringe Remover.
Simulating infrared film--Simulate the ethereal effect of infrared photography. The Infrared Film effect even includes options to simulate the flare and film grain qualities of this unique film type.
Importing and exporting CMYK format files--Benefit from fully supported color management, with ICC-standard color profiles, including importing and exporting CMYK format files.
Merging auto-bracketed images--Take advantage of a digital camera's auto-bracket feature to create images that retain all the detail of shadow and highlight areas in a photo.

Process Your Photos Like the Pros
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has a variety of tools and features that allow users to quickly process vast quantities of images without sacrificing quality. Whether users work in offices, in photography studios, or at home, their ability to quickly create top-notch images is critical. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 helps users get the end results they demand with a variety of high-quality, intuitive, and time-saving tools and features.

New! Express Lab:
Nothing has fueled the digital camera revolution like the ability to take large numbers of pictures without having to worry about the cost. As a result of this newfound freedom, however, users are faced with the daunting tasks of viewing, deleting, and fixing all of those downloaded photos.

The Express Lab is ideal for processing an entire folder of photos all at once--without having to sacrifice power for speed. It helps users sort through a vast quantity of images, allowing them to view and process the photos without having to open each one.

Advanced users can fine-tune photos by using a histogram and separate controls for shadows, brightness, highlights, and saturation. Less experienced users can easily refine their photos by using the Suggest Settings feature of the Smart Photo Fix tool. The Express Lab also offers a toolset that lets users easily perform many common editing tasks, such as cropping and straightening photos and removing red-eye and blemishes. Users can also assign ratings to their photos, so they can quickly find their favorites.

Take credit for your work by adding watermarks to photos.

The new Save for Office and Copy Special commands help you optimize images for their intended destination.

New! Visible Watermark:
Professional photographers and hobbyists alike want to put their stamp on the photos they take and share. The Visible Watermark feature lets users add a discreet watermark to their photos to remind viewers who took the shot and to help safeguard against misuse of their images. This new feature simplifies the task of adding a logo or other graphic as a watermark, and users can choose from options such as embossing to give their photos a subtle, professional look.

New & Enhanced! Auto-Preserve Originals and Save As:
Users don't have to worry about overwriting their original photos, thanks to the new Auto-Preserve Originals option. The first time a user saves an image, a backup copy of the original is automatically created one level deeper in the folder hierarchy. The original can easily be restored by using the Restore Original command in the File menu.

Paint Shop Pro Photo is renowned for the number of file formats users can save to. The improved Save As command helps users quickly choose the formats they use most often by listing common and recently used ones at the top of the file format list.

New! Save for Office and Copy Special:
Preparing an image for use in documents, in presentations, or on the Web can be tricky. The Save for Office command removes the guesswork by automatically optimizing an image for its intended use, thereby avoiding problems with file size, performance, or printing.

When users copy and paste images into other applications, the new Copy Special command prepares the image based on its intended purpose. The resizing function is built in, ensuring that no unnecessary image data is added to the document.

E-mailing:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 lets users e-mail photos as embedded files or attachments. A preview feature lets users double-check their images before sending them and check a running count on the size of selected files.

Color Management:
The Color Management engine lets users read and save ICC-standard color profile data in their files, which ensures that on-screen colors match printed colors. In addition, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 supports CMYK input and output for commercial printing.

Makeover tool modes let you quickly and easily touch up the appearance of photo subjects.

Discover Editing Tools You Can't Find Anywhere Else
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has a powerful toolset that can fix nearly any digital photo imperfection. If the problem stems from the quality of the image produced by the camera, a user can apply quick, easy corrections with a series of time-saving tools. If photo subjects don't look their best, their appearance can be spruced up faster and easier than ever before.

New & Enhanced! Makeover Tool:
Everyone wants to look their best in a photo. To that end, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 includes a suite of Makeover tool modes that let users quickly and easily touch up the appearance of photo subjects. The professional-strength Makeover tool contains the following modes:

New! Thinify Mode--makes photo subjects look thinner
New! Eye Drop Mode--takes the red out of irritated, bloodshot eyes
Enhanced! Blemish Fixer Mode--removes blemishes from photo subjects
Enhanced! Suntan Mode--adds color to pale, washed-out skin
Toothbrush Mode--quickly whitens discolored teeth

The Color Changer tool lets you easily change colors in your digital images.

With the Perspective Correction tool, you can fix buildings, landmarks, or objects in your photos that appear in the wrong perspective.

Quickly remove purple fringe from your photos.

The Object Remover makes it easy to remove unwanted or difficult-to-clone portions of images and fills in the removed detail with portions of the remaining photo.

Color Changer Tool:
The Color Changer tool lets users easily change colors in their digital images. For example, users can easily change the color of an object in a photo, such as a car or a piece of clothing. Rather than simply replacing a color, the Color Changer tool detects and analyzes variations in brightness caused by shading and texture, and then it makes the necessary adjustments to the new color to produce a realistic recoloring effect.

Noise Removal:
"Noise" artifacts--small specks of color that interfere with the clarity of the image--are one of the most common problems in digital photography. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 gives users two noise-removal options. The One Step Noise Removal command offers one-step, automatic noise removal.

The Digital Camera Noise Removal command allows users to precisely control how these same corrections are applied. This feature has been favorably compared to specialized noise-removal plug-ins that cost as much as Paint Shop Pro Photo X2!

Perspective Correction Tool:
This longtime favorite gives users the power and versatility of an expensive tilt-correction lens. With the Perspective Correction tool, users can fix buildings, landmarks, or objects in their photos that appear in the wrong perspective or that were taken from an angle other than directly in front. Users can simply line up the four corner points with a shape that should be rectangular to adjust the entire image

Purple Fringe Removal:
The One Step Purple Fringe Fix command gets rid of the purple glow that sometimes appears in digital photos around edges of objects under high-contrast conditions.

Straighten Tool:
Users can easily straighten crooked images by simply specifying a line along an image feature that should be horizontal or vertical, such as the horizon or a building.

Background Eraser Tool:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 lets users selectively erase pixels with the Background Eraser tool. For example, in a photo of a mountain range, users can erase the sky or isolate an object from the surrounding image area. When the background behind photo subjects is erased, fine-edged detail around hair or fur is retained.

Object Remover:
If the only thing that stands between a good photo and a perfect one is an unwanted element--a lamppost, a tree, even a bystander--the Object Remover can help. The Object Remover makes it easy to remove unwanted or difficult-to-clone portions of images and fills in the removed detail with portions of the remaining photo. Just outline the object to remove, and a background area to use to replace it, and the object is gone.

The Crop to New Image feature lets you quickly separate individual images from group scan

The HDR Photo Merge feature helps users get the most out of their digital cameras.

Easily correct distorted images with Lens Distortion Correction filters.

Enhanced! Crop Tool:
Users who scan multiple images at the same time will love the enhanced Crop tool. The new Crop to New Image feature automatically creates a new file from the cropped area and keeps the original full scan open, so users can easily separate individual image files from the group scan.

Enhance Photos Using Powerful, Easy-To-Use Tools
Paint Shop Pro Photo is renowned for being user-friendly--that's because user feedback has always played a huge role in its development. From requesting one-click automatic fixes that take the guesswork out of image correction to insisting on advanced image-editing tools, the user has spoken, and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has responded. And as digital cameras have evolved, Paint Shop Pro Photo has kept pace, so that users can get as much out of their photos as their cameras offer.

New! HDR Photo Merge:
Many digital cameras have an auto-bracket feature, which lets users take multiple shots of the same scene, each with a different exposure level. This feature is ideal for photos taken in high-contrast scenes, such as a sunset. One shot adjusts the exposure to capture the shadows, while another shot adjusts the exposure to capture bright areas. The HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photo Merge feature lets users combine auto-bracketed photos to create a photo that retains the critical detail of the images being combined. While ideal for photos shot using a tripod and auto-bracketing, this feature can automatically align images captured with handheld cameras using manual exposure adjustments.

Enhanced! Black and White Film Effect:
Users can easily create dynamic black-and-white photos by simulating the effects of shooting using black-and-white film with colored filters. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 gives users the full creative control of the Channel Mixer command by letting them select from a virtually infinite range of color combinations within an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. The enhanced Black and White Film dialog box also provides a Clarify control, so users can create dynamic, high-contrast images that mimic the use of black-and-white film with a color filter on the lens.

One Step Photo Fix and Smart Photo Fix:
The One Step Photo Fix command automatically applies six common photo corrections to an image. All the user needs to do is select the command.

The Smart Photo Fix analyzes a photo and suggests settings for auto-corrections of color, brightness, sharpness, and saturation used in One Step Photo Fix. Completely flexible, users can apply the suggested settings or experiment further by manually fine-tuning the settings. At any point, if users decide that they prefer the results of the initially suggested fix, they can quickly reapply the suggested settings. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 gives users the flexibility to experiment freely with confidence, knowing that they can always revert to their starting point.

Depth of Field Effect:
Paint Shop Pro Photo lets users draw attention to a specific area of an image. The Depth of Field effect applies focus to a region of a photo while applying an out-of-focus blur to the rest of the image. This allows users to easily replicate the look of limited depth of field, an effect that usually requires precise manual lens aperture adjustments.

Advanced Adjustments:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 offers advanced users the professional-level tools and features that are usually found only in expensive image-editing applications. These advanced features include the following:

Curves and Levels Adjustments--The Curves and Levels features in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 give users exceptional control over some of the most critical imaging adjustments. The Curves dialog box includes a histogram, so photographers can easily and intuitively fine-tune their work. Three automatic settings let less-experienced users optimize the contrast and color levels in their images with a few clicks.
Histogram Adjustment--With Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, the Histogram Adjustment feature lets users display the tonal range of an image and fine-tune the balance of shadows, midtones, and highlights. More advanced users can use this feature to manually correct exposure.
Adjustment Layers--Whenever a tonal or color change is applied to an image, the image's information is altered, which means that the image ultimately starts to degrade. The advantage of using adjustment layers is that they do not permanently modify the image layers themselves. Advanced users love working with adjustment layers in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 because they offer a great way to adjust the color or tone of underlying layers without actually modifying the pixels of those layers. In addition, users can add multiple adjustment layers to test various color corrections or to see how several corrections look when they're combined.

Lens Distortion Correction Filters:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 provides excellent Lens Distortion Correction filters that help users correct common photo distortions, such as fish-eye, barrel, and pincushion.

Create One-Of-A-Kind Photos
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 offers an array of graphics tools and creative effects that help users transform their photos into one-of-a-kind artistic images. While professional-strength image-correction tools have always been at the core of the application, Paint Shop Pro Photo is also renowned for letting users push their artistic boundaries. Whether making a photo look like it was taken long ago with a bygone era's film and camera technology, or adding stunning artistic effects, users of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 can unleash their creativity.

New! Layer Styles:
This feature lets users apply a variety of artistic effects to a layer, such as Drop Shadow, Emboss, and Reflection, without having to leave the Layer Properties dialog box.

Film and Filters:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 offers users a range of effects inspired by classic film and filter types. Users can experiment with a variety of film-effect and filter-effect combinations to produce interesting, eye-catching results. Users can also simulate the effect of using color filters on the lens of a camera by applying a Creative Filter effect, or they can apply a Film Look to simulate the effect of using different types of film in a traditional camera.

Layer Styles lets you easily apply artistic effects to your images.

Time Machine:
The Time Machine offers users a tour of photographic history by letting them see what their photos would look like if they had been taken in another era. With a range of settings based on photo styles from the 1830s to the 1980s, users can easily send their photos back in time. A live preview lets users see the evolution of photography on a single image.

Warp Brush:
The Warp Brush lets users easily create caricatures of their photos or photo subjects by distorting the pixels in a particular area of the photo.

Effects Browser:
The Effects Browser lets users preview an enormous range of effects before applying them to an image.

Vector Drawing Tools:
Using the Text tool, users can add descriptive or decorative text to an image, and the text can be easily edited and formatted. Using the Preset Shapes tool, users can add predefined shapes--such as callouts, arrows, flowers, and gears--to images. The range of predefined shapes has been expanded in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.

Enhanced! Picture Tubes:
A longtime user favorite, the Picture Tube tool lets users paint on their photos with a collection of professionally designed artistic elements. For example, users can add butterflies and beetles to a picnic setting, fill an aquarium with fish, or frame a picture with holly. Picture Tubes are available in a variety of themes, and users can also create their own graphics to use with the Picture Tube tool. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has several new Picture Tubes, giving users more options when enhancing their photos.

Enhanced! Picture Frames and Photo Edges:
Using picture frames and photo edges, users can easily add eye-catching final touches to their images. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 provides a variety of picture frame styles, and the frames are editable, so users can tweak them or create their own. The addition of new picture frames and photo edges in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 offers users even more creative possibilities.

CD-ROM: CD-ROMThe ideal choice for any aspiring photographer's digital darkroom; an array of graphics tools and creative effects help you transform their photos into one-of-a-kind artistic images, Fix brightness, color, and photo flaws in a few clicks; use precision editing tools to create the picture you want; give photos a unique, exciting look using hundreds of special effects, and more, One-of-a-kind Express Lab helps you quickly view and fix dozens of photos in the time it used to take to edit a few, HDR Photo Merge helps you combine two or more photos taken at different exposures, and then automatically dodges and burns to bring out the contrast, Includes a built-in Learning Center to help you get started; it's the easiest way to get professional-looking photos--fast
Company: Corel (2007-09-20)
List Price: $99.99
Amazon Price: $41.93
Used Price: $40.99

Apple Aperture 2.0

You can use the stacks feature to automatically group images shot in a sequence, and speed through big projects using keyboard shortcuts to apply ratings and keywords.

The Light Table gives you a freeform space for grouping images visually, letting you resize, overlay, compare, and organize images into comp layouts.

Custom Book Options
Aperture has expanded its photo book layout tools to make it easier to create one-of-a-kind photo books, professionally printed and bound by Apple and delivered to your door.6 Choose from eight professionally designed layout themes--two of which are new--as a starting point, but make the book your own by customizing the layout and adding your own borders to photo and text boxes. Books are available in three different sizes. New finishing options include foil-stamped hardcovers and dust jackets. Publishing your images as high-quality books was never easier.

DVD-ROM: CD-ROMNext-generation RAW image processing for producing images of the highest quality, Quick Preview mode for rapid-fire photo browsing, Image adjustment controls such as Recovery, Definition, Vibrancy, and Vignette; Soft-edged Retouch brush for removing unwanted elements from photos, Simplified user interface that maximizes screen space and provides direct access to your iPhoto library, .Mac Web Gallery support for instantly publishing photos online, allowing visitors to both view and download images
Company: Apple (2008-02-15)
List Price: $199.00
Amazon Price: $143.75
Used Price: $149.99

Corel Painter Essentials 4 (Win/Mac)

Corel Painter Essentials 4 is the simple-to-use home art studio that makes it easy for you to draw, paint or turn your photos into paintings. Two new workspaces put the tools you need at your fingertips, whether you're turning a photo into a painting, or drawing and painting on a blank canvas. Plus, Corel Painter Essentials 4 includes an incredible selection of brushes, paints, pens and paper textures for adding unique touches to photos or creating cards, scrapbooks and other fun projects. Based on the world's most powerful painting and illustration software, Corel Painter, it's the ideal way to get started with digital art!

Discover an Expressive, Natural, and Inspiring Home Art Studio
For Corel Painter Essentials 4, the application workspace has been completely redesigned to improve color selection and the discovery of brushes, media, and paper. The new workspace is also easier for users to navigate, especially if they work with a pen tablet.

Corel Painter Essentials 4 is the simple-to-use home art studio that makes it easy for you to draw, paint or turn your photos into paintings.

With Corel Painter Essentials 4, it's now even easier for users to turn photos into expressive, natural, hand-painted portraits.

New--Redesigned workspace:
Corel worked closely with its customers to find out how they were using Painter Essentials. The result is a redesigned and simplified environment with two distinct workspaces: Drawing & Painting and Photo Painting. Each workspace is easily accessible from tabs within the application, and each presents users with the tools specifically needed for the task they've selected.

In the Drawing & Painting workspace, users can access relevant tools, such as the Colors, Color Wheel, and Layers palettes. In the Photo Painting workspace, users are provided with the Source Image, Auto-Painting, and Restore Detail palettes. Both workspaces offer a reconfigured toolbox that makes it easier to identify and select brushes, media, and paper.

New--Brush Drawer:
With Corel Painter Essentials 4, a new Brush Drawer has been added to the toolbox, making brush identification and selection easier than ever before. The Brush Drawer opens with the click of a flyout button. Redesigned icons for each brush category are displayed on tabs along the top of the Brush Drawer. The list of available brushes changes depending on the selected brush category. When closed, the Brush Drawer displays a column from which users can quickly access their most recently used brushes. For convenience, users can also easily add their favorite brushes to the Brush Drawer column.

New--Mixer palette:
In addition to its traditional Color Wheel, Corel Painter Essentials 4 now provides the Mixer palette. By simulating the traditional experience of mixing colors on an artist's paint palette, the Mixer palette makes it easier for users to get the precise color they want. Users can apply two or more colors to the Mixer pad, and then blend the colors together until they are satisfied with the result.

New--Colors palette:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 provides the new Colors palette, which lets users choose a color with just one click.

New--Easier pen tablet navigation:
With its new workspaces, Corel Painter Essentials 4 makes it easier for pen tablet users to navigate. Many of the application's buttons and sliders are larger and easier to grab. In addition, the controls for frequent actions, such as Undo and Redo, have been better exposed so that users can access them without using a keyboard.

New--Professional prints:
Accessible from the File menu, the new Online Print Services option lets users get professional prints on canvas, watercolor paper, or other fine art materials.

In the Drawing & Painting workspace, users can access relevant tools, such as the Colors, Color Wheel, and Layers palettes.

In the Photo Painting workspace, users are provided with the Source Image, Auto-Painting, and Restore Detail palettes.

The Corel Painter Essentials 4 Guidebook provides step-by-step tutorials that help users discover the application while completing fun projects.

Turn Photos into Paintings
With Corel Painter Essentials 4, it's now even easier for users to turn photos into expressive, natural, hand-painted portraits.

New & Enhanced! Photo Painting System:
The Photo Painting System has been redesigned and enhanced, reducing the complexity of turning a photo into a painting. With Corel Painter Essentials 4, the streamlined Photo Painting System is now available as a separate workspace. All brushes within the Photo Painting workspace act as cloners and take their color from the source image.

The new Source Image palette makes it simpler to choose a clone source, and includes controls to adjust the opacity of tracing paper and to toggle tracing paper on and off. In addition, the source image is now saved with the painting, meaning that users do not have to keep a separate photo open. The enhanced Auto-Painting palette now includes Smart Stroke technology, which provides more intelligent brush behavior during the auto-painting process.

New & Enhanced--Smart Stroke technology:
Built into the Auto-Painting palette, the new Smart Stroke technology paints with brushstrokes that follow the forms of the original photo. Smart Stroke technology dynamically changes brush size, stroke length, and pressure, based on the detail and focal areas of the original photo, which helps users quickly achieve impressive paintings or sketches.

New--Source image saved with file:
Previously, if users wanted to continue working on a Photo Painting project, they needed to remember which image file had been used as the source. With Corel Painter Essentials 4, the source image is now saved with the RIFF file, making it easier to return to a project later.

Try the Broader Selection of Natural-Media Materials
Painter has always led the way with its unrivaled selection of Natural-Media materials. With Corel Painter Essentials 4, users get access to an even greater selection of Natural-Media brushes, pens, and paper textures.

New--RealBristle Painting System:
First introduced by Corel Painter X, the new RealBristle Painting System heightens the responsiveness of the brush for the artist and represents a major milestone for digital painting. With Corel Painter Essentials 4, users get access to several RealBristle brushes in a variety of brush categories. Brushes that use RealBristle technology are identified by the prefix "Real" in their name. By authentically reproducing the sensation of the interaction between the paint, canvas, and brush, RealBristle brushes take realism to a whole new level.

New--Charcoal brushes:
The new Charcoal brushes range from pencils to hard or soft charcoal sticks. As with other dry media brushes, the opacity is linked to pen pressure.

New--Sargent brush:
The new Sargent brush in Corel Painter Essentials 4 helps users paint in the style of master artist John Singer Sargent.

New--Pens:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 introduces pens in the Pencils & Pens brush category, such as the Scratchboard Tool and Smooth Edge Calligraphy, which are perfect for inking comic books or doing calligraphy

New--Sumi-e brushes:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 has added Sumi-e brushes, which let you create flowing sumi-e-style brushstrokes.

New--Paper textures:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 includes a greater selection of paper textures that accurately reproduce the feel of using traditional art materials. Users can control the texture of the canvas to achieve the results expected from using traditional media on a given surface--for example, pencil on watercolor paper, felt pens on cotton paper, or chalk on the sidewalk.

Explore Learning Materials
Getting started with Corel Painter Essentials and digital art has never been simpler. Users can take advantage of inspiring, tutorial-based videos and a companion guidebook, in addition to the application's Help system.

New--Tutorial-based guidebook:
The Corel Painter Essentials 4 Guidebook provides step-by-step tutorials that help users discover the application while completing fun projects. With projects ranging from beginner to advanced levels, the guidebook introduces various Corel Painter Essentials media and provides tips that introduce some of the elements and principles of art.

New--Video tutorials:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 includes video tutorials that are accessible from within the application. Users benefit by learning from the experience of Painter Master and Ambassador John Derry. The video tutorials guide users through a variety of projects, including those in the guidebook.

Brushes--The Heart and Soul of Corel Painter Essentials.

Enjoy Compatibility
Users who work with the latest operating system from Apple or Microsoft can rely on the compatibility features of Corel Painter Essentials 4. The application is designed to work with the industry-standard software and hardware that digital artists and hobbyists use every day.

New--Universal binary:
While still providing a great experience with PowerPC processors, Corel Painter Essentials 4 is optimized for use with Intel processors.

Enhanced! Windows Vista support:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 Works with Windows Vista.

Enhanced! Support for Wacom products:
Corel Painter Essentials 4 supports the entire Wacom product line, including the Graphire pen tablets, the Cintiq 21 UX interactive pen display, the Intuos3 pen tablet, and the Wacom 6D Art Pen.

Natural-Media Brushes
Brushes are the heart and soul of Corel Painter Essentials. The following sections explain how brushes and media are organized within the application.

Thick Paint
Thick Paint brushes let users simulate painting with thick, sticky paints, such as acrylics and oils. All Thick Paint brushes cover underlying brushstrokes. Many of the brushes can produce multicolored strokes, and others interact with underlying pixels to create realistic effects. The Thick Paint category includes Acrylics, Artists' Oils, Impasto, Oils, Palette Knives, and RealBristle brushes.

Thin Paint
Thin Paint brushes let users simulate the application of thin paint or ink, such as thin acrylic, oil paint, gouache, or Sumi-e ink. All Thin Paint brushes cover underlying brushstrokes. The Thin Paint category includes Acrylics, Gouache, Oils, RealBristle, and Sumi-e brushes.

Water
There are two classes of Water brushes: watercolor brushes and airbrushes. Users must dry both airbrush and watercolor brushstrokes before applying effects. Watercolor brushes produce watercolor effects that react with the canvas texture. With the exception of the Wet Eraser, the width of watercolor brushstrokes is affected by stylus pressure. In previous versions of Corel Painter Essentials, the Watercolor brushes were referred to as Digital Watercolor. Airbrushes apply fine sprays of color. The Digital Airbrush carefully mirrors the feel of a real airbrush. The Wacom airbrush stylus is fully compatible with the airbrushes in Corel Painter Essentials.

Pencils & Pens
Brushes in the Pencils & Pens category are marking tools that simulate pencils, ballpoint pens, markers, and calligraphy pens. Just like their traditional counterparts, the pencils in the Pencils & Pens category interact with canvas texture and are great for a variety of artwork--from rough sketches to fine line drawings. The pencils and the Felt Art Marker build to black and link opacity to stylus pressure. Dragging quickly with a Pencils brush produces a thinner line, while dragging slowly leaves a thicker line. Pens, such as the Round Tip Pen and Scratchboard Tool, create realistic effects without the drawbacks of traditional pens, which can clog, spatter, or run dry.

Dry Media
Dry Media brushes range from charcoal and chalk to pastels and crayons. The opacity of Dry Media brushstrokes is linked to stylus pressure and all strokes interact with the paper texture. These brushes range from hard styles that reveal the paper grain to soft styles that glide on to completely cover existing brushstrokes. The Dry Media category includes Charcoal, Chalk, Crayons, and Pastels.

Blenders
Blenders brushes affect underlying pixels by moving and mixing them. Blenders can reproduce the effects of blending paint by applying water or oil. Blenders can be used to smooth drawing lines and create shading just like a traditional pencil sketch or charcoal drawing.

Effects
There are three types of Effects brushes: Artist brushes, Image Hoses, and Pattern Pens.

Artist brushes let users paint in the styles of master artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh (with brushstrokes that are multishaded), or Georges Seurat (with multiple dots combining to form an image).

Image Hoses are special brushes that apply images, instead of color, to the canvas. The images that these brushes "paint" with come from special image files called nozzles. Each nozzle file contains multiple images. The Variable-Size Image Hose varies the size of images as you paint. The Variable-Angle Image Hose varies the angle at which the images are applied.

Brushes in the Pattern Pens category apply a pattern to an image. Users can vary the size and transparency of the pattern.

Photo
Photo brushes are based on popular brushes from other brush categories, but are optimized for auto-painting.

CD-ROM: CDThe simple-to-use home art studio that makes it easy for you to draw, paint or turn your photos into paintings--the ideal way to get started with digital art, Enhanced Photo Painting System reduces the complexity of turning a photo into a painting, Incredible selection of brushes, paints, pens and paper textures for adding unique touches to photos or creating cards, scrapbooks and other fun projects, Compatible with Intel and PowerPC Macs, Windows Vista, the entire Wacom product line, and major photo-editing applications, Tutorial-based guidebook and accompanying video tutorials/sample files teach you the application while you complete fun, instructional projects
Company: Corel (2007-10-16)
List Price: $99.00
Amazon Price: $87.48
Used Price: $52.99

Adobe Photoshop CS3 [Mac]

Adobe Photoshop CS3 software accelerates your path from imagination to imagery. Ideal for photographers, graphic designers, and web designers, the professional standard delivers new features such as automatic layer alignment and blending that enable advanced compositing. Live filters boost the comprehensive, nondestructive editing toolset for increased flexibility. And a streamlined interface and new timesaving tools make your work flow faster.