TaoSpace

Aperture Plugged In

Today Apple released Aperture 2.1 (Thanks PhotographyBlog!), which include the much awaited editing plugin interface! Best of all, they released the first plugin themselves: a brush based dodge and burn tool, which also does contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur.

Just this plugin alone puts Aperture in a class of its own. The versatility this gives astounding. But then they list who they are working with on plugins:

• Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in, powered by U Point technology, which provides a powerful, precise and easy way for photographers to selectively control and adjust color and light in their digital images;
  
• PictureCode’s Noise Ninja plug-in that delivers advanced high ISO noise analysis and reduction;
  
• Digital Film Tools’ Power Stroke plug-in that features a simple, stroke-based interface to quickly mask and intuitively perform targeted adjustments;
  
• The Tiffen Company’s Dfx plug-in that provides an expansive suite of creative filters and effects;
  
• dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in, which is a high performance chroma key tool for creating seamless composites, and the HDRtoner plug-in that enables the selection of multiple photos to create a single high dynamic range (HDR) image; and
  
• Image Trends’ plug-ins that include Fisheye-Hemi to quickly and effortlessly correct fisheye lens distortion, ShineOff which automatically removes shine from faces and PearlyWhites that automatically whitens and brightens teeth.
  

Very impressive indeed. Noise Ninja support, just as I hoped, plus a lot of other goodies. Now it will be interesting to see Adobe's countermove!

One quick note: somebody really ought to release a Photokit Sharpener-style plugin. The Pixelgenius guys have already said that they're not interested unfortunately...

Lightroom Online

Adobe has gone public with Photoshop Express, their hosted version of Photoshop. Or that's what they say it is.

Anybody who's spent any time at all with Lightroom can clearly see that this is more Lightroom Online then Photoshop.

Case in point:

• You cannot import Photoshop PSD files.


• There are no layers


• You cannot create images for scratch


• There is little pixel-based editing


• 
  

On the other hand:

• Edits can be undone at any time


• Most editing tools are global, i.e. contrast and colour correction type tools


• Browse, edit and publish are basically modes, just like Lightroom has


• The Facebook, Picasa, etc. integration is much like the export plugins Lightroom has, whereas Photoshop has no such thing

Sure enough, a lot of these tools are probably available in Photoshop Album or Photoshop Elements. And of course this thing doesn't support RAW files. Still, I'll be thinking about it as Lightroom Online...

It's still the camera

Some time ago, Michael Reichman of Luminous Landscape fame, wrote an article challenging the view that is only the photographer that makes the picture, and that the camera does not matter. I agreed and wrote some additional thoughts on the subject.

It seems the subject still bugs Michael like crazy and his latest rebuttal makes the point even clearer. Here's to hoping that people will read it in full, before making up their minds.

The other shoe

Lots has been said about the release of the iPhone SDK and the features it has. Even more has been said about Apple's role as gate-keeper for this new software eco-system. Not much at all has been said about version 2.0 of the software.

It has always surprised me how little new there was in the various releases of the software up until now. I've suspected for a while that Apple was readying a v2 with major new functionality. Now we have a first chance to get some understanding of what will be in there.

Some of the features have already been talked about: Exchange support, over the air synching, VPN support, etc. But watching the various tutorials about iPhone development makes it clear that there will be a lot more. Hints are being dropped all the time, disguised as thoughtful how-to's and suggestions by the tutorial's presenters. Some examples:

• In one of the videos something is deleted through shaking the phone. A new action not seen before.
• In another there is talk about marking areas of an image by using the pan&zoom functionality.
• Basic image processing was demoed
• The API includes Bonjour zero-conf networking, that will discover other iPhones in the area. This could be used for "social apps" suggests the helpful presenter.
• Positional audio was demoed. 3D audio generation is apparently possible on the iPhone.

So what does this mean? New gestures, a set of APIs to do audio and image processing, "social" networking support...and that's just the start.

It seems that a lot of these APIs were created after the iPhone launched. The recent Wired piece suggested that getting the iPhone ready in time meant crunch-mode for a long time. Corners were probably cut. With the release of the SDK it stands to reason that all apps will probably see an update in version 2.0, if only to make sure of the various "proper" APIs.

But as the small list above makes clear, R&D didn't stop during this time either. New ways of doing things, new gestures, and more advanced ideas of what a pocketable touch-screen device could do will lead to dramatically better software for version 2.0.

By the time everyone has gotten used to what the SDK can do, and is building apps, version 2.0 of the iPhone software might just be the next big surprise, and the other shoe will drop.

Cafe standards

Oliver's latest post touched on something I've been thinking about for a while: Social networks competing on features and a portable social graph.

The way I've been thinking about it is a bit more conceptual though. My point is this: social networks will be like cafes.

Think about it. In real life you might discover a new cafe,r bar or other hang-out place. It has free wireless, plays the fashion-channel on a huge flat-screen and on fridays it two-for-the-price-of-one between 7 and 9. You like it and bring your friends. You have a good time. After a while, lots of other people show up. Perhaps the "hip" crowd, more likely a bunch of "kiddies". It annoys you and so you move on to the next place. This one has designer furniture and a good selections of malt scotch. After a while, a whole bunch of 40-somethings starting their second youth show up, so you and your friends move on again...Somewhere in the middle you meet your brother for lunch in an old hang-out of your that somehow is still around. You've forgotten about it and the fancy LEDs in the toilet-seats down there. Cute. Food's not bad either. You should drop in occasionally.

Social networks are likely to end up just like that. You find a new one with some cool features, you use it for a while, get annoyed by the invasion of other people not like you and move on. You might use some others just for a few hours to meet some business contacts online or to chat with your 16 year old nephew, who frequents places you've never heard of.

Your social graph and your data will all be portable in one way or another. Switch networks won't even be anything you think about. You just get up from your seat, pay up, go out the door and see what's in that little alley off to the right...