OnOne Software is releasing a Standard Edition and a Lightroom & Aperture Edition of Perfect Photo Suite 7 to go along with the Premium Edition (currently shipping) of the photography software suite.  
Learn more here: Perfect Photo Suite 7

The Standard Edition allows usage of the entire Perfect Photo Suite 7 as a standalone application. This edition is ideal for those who don't shoot RAW or use Adobe Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, or Apple Aperture but want to enhance, stylize, correct their JPG images with a professional touch, and create and edit multi-layered files without Photoshop.

The Lightroom & Aperture Edition of Perfect Photo Suite 7 is designed for the photographer who does not use Photoshop but uses Lightroom or Aperture as the hub of their editing and photo management workflow. It provides powerful image editing tools that do not exist in those products and gives them the ability to extend their image editing power, maximize their creativity, and solve the most common problems in photo editing. With the Perfect Photo Suite 7, users can work with a variety of image format including RAW, JPG, PNG, and TIFF, create and edit multi-layered files, and access any of the Perfect Photo Suite 7 modules directly from Lightroom or Aperture. After adjustments are made, edited images may be saved as a .PSD, .TIF, .PNG, or .JPG right next to the original image in their Lightroom or Aperture library. This edition of the Suite also works as a standalone application for quick touch ups and edits.

The Premium Edition is the version of Perfect Photo Suite 7 that has been available since October 31, 2012.

Perfect Photo Suite 7 Premium Edition
Full Version – $299.95
Upgrade Version – $149.95

Perfect Photo Suite 7 Lightroom & Aperture Edition
Full Version – $149.95
Upgrade Version – $79.95

Perfect Photo Suite 7 Standard Edition
Full Version – $79.95
No upgrade available

Learn more here: Perfect Photo Suite 7

With new easier-to-use and powerful tools, a significantly redesigned user interface, and improved workflow integration with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, Perfect Photo Suite 7 is our best product to date and it's available now!

If you've already purchased Suite 7, you can download it here. Or,download the free trial and see just how fast, easy, and powerful Suite 7 is. (Installing Suite 7 will not remove other onOne products from your computer).

Order Perfect Photo Suite 7 by November 15th and you’ll receive the Premium Preset Pak1 for free. With Suite 7, you get the all-new Perfect B&W and new versions of Perfect Effects, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Layers and Perfect Resize. Learn more »

As previously announced (in the photo store review page), Photoshelter will be performing a major system upgrade later this month – the first of a year long series of improvements to bring a multitude of new features to PhotoShelter. The following is the official time window for the planned system downtime.

Date: Saturday, 24 March 2012
Summary: PhotoShelter System Upgrade – Full Site Downtime

Duration: 8 hours

START: 12:01 AM EDT 24-MAR-2012
END: 08:00 AM EDT 24-MAR-2012
(US Eastern Daylight Time; UTC-04:00)

The March 24 upgrades will bring dramatic improvements to the PhotoShelter user interface, image management, file sharing and delivery tools. 

SAN JOSE, Calif., — March 6, 2012 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 4 software for Mac OS and Windows. Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution helping amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, enhance and showcase their images. First released as a public beta in January 2012, the final version of Lightroom 4 is now available for US$149 for the full version and US$79 for the upgrade, providing an incredible value for photographers. Lightroom 4 introduces refined technology for superior shadow and highlight processing, ability to create photo books, additional local adjustment controls, and enhanced video support.

But that's not the only news.  Did you see that price?  $149  That's 1/2 the price LR 3 was…  I don't know if this is temporary or a permanent price reduction (that would be amazing huh?)…  I would not wait too long to find out though: Buy Lightroom 3 at Adobe.com

   It's a New Year – that means a clean slate and a fresh beginning! 

To help you get off to a good start in 2012, here's a comprehensive list of Artists Network competitions. Whether you work in watercolor, acrylic, pastels, oils…we've got a competition for your skill level and your medium. So mark your calendars – enter and your work could be seen by galleries, collectors, enthusiasts and fellow artists alike!

A new Google Plus (G+) daily photography theme.
#WorldCultureSunday

I really love cultural photography. So I thought I would be well suited to curate one of the photography theme days that are so popular here on G+. Since there seems to be nobody else doing a culture theme, I'm jumping in. I can't wait to see the photos which the G+ community will bring to the table. 

Lightroom 3.6 Bugs – Fixed


- Rapid advancement through the grid can make the preview processor die
- Lightroom does not write to the correct metadata fields after editing capture time
- Lightroom crashes when saving keyword to file
- Certain JPG files appear to unsupported or damaged upon import into Lightroom
- Publish to HD fails in LR 3.5 for publish collections created in 3.3 or earlier
- Entering a custom aspect ratio in Quick Develop leaves the Crop Ratio menu black
- Default scrolling behavior on OSX 10.7 makes non-scrolling mousewheel actions work backwards (Mac only)
- Incorrect aspect ratio displayed in menu when crop is copy/pasted or applied via Previous button in the Develop module (Mac only)
- Copy/Pasted Crop Aspect Ratio lost on edit
- Copy/Pasted/Previous crop loses aspect ratio lock when adjusted in the Develop module
- Tethering doesn’t work with the Nikon D3x
- Error thrown when exporting video from slideshow and Lightroom is running as a 32-bit application

Did you ever think your photos could sing?  Well, they still can't…  but.  They can make some pretty interesting noises with the use of a cool program called "Photosounder".   The program seems to have potential in many areas which are actually practical.  But I'm just going to point out this one feature which turns images into sound.   If you watch this video for a while you'll start to see patterns in how it's working.  It's using color, shape, relative postition and other visual features to produce a "sound fingerprint" of the image.  

By manipulating an image your can create new sounds.  Create an image and then start changing it in Photoshop and listen to how the "music" of your photo changes.  The examples in the video below are based on fractals which of course have patterns and symmetry of a sort… I wonder what plain 'ol photographs sound like?

I don't know the practical uses of this in photography… but it seems like it could be a lot of fun to play with.

It's a both when you're browsing your RAW photos outside of Lightroom or Bridge,, yes?   You are forced to attempt (and usually fail) to browse for a photo by file name.  If you are not very vigilent at good naming techniques upon import (and most people are not) then you're screwed.  Why?  because Windows is not capable of displaying a thumbnail of your NEF file, so you just get some generic icon.   Well, problem now solved.  Nikon has released a codec for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 which will allow you to display your RAW NEF files in your explorer browser.  Hooray!

Download here: http://nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/

I've been working on my Google+ page for a while now and have found that hands down, it's a better venue for promoting my photography than Facebook.   At first glance one might think that they are pretty much the same type of social network, but I'm finding more and more that Google plus has more features, better security, and maybe most importantly..   the community seems very "vibrant"!