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Two new photo printers from Sony

LAS VEGAS--Sony's pre-PMA 2009 press event wasn't just about cameras. It was also about things you can buy to go with your camera.

The two new photo printers from Sony aimed at the average point-and-shoot camera owner are the (horrifically monikered) DPP-FP67 and DPP-FP97, updates on last year's DPP-FP75 and DPP-FP95.

The FP67 is the smaller of the two, with a 2.4-inch LCD screen. It can print out 4X6-inch photos, as well as index prints, photo IDs, and calendars. The printer will also do you the favor of fixing red-eyes and evening out the photo's … Read more

15 online photo editors compared

Tools that let you edit photos in the Web browser have come a long way in the last few years. We wanted to take a moment to do a feature comparison with a grouping of editors--big and small, to see what each one is capable of.

Most of the services on this list take advantage of Adobe's ever-developing Flash platform, which in its latest iteration got a huge boost with support for the large images coming out of today's high-megapixel cameras. On the flip side of that, several of the non-Flash-based editors use AJAX to make the changes happen without reloading the page. The benefit here is that you can run these on machines without the latest versions of Flash installed.

While not an exhaustive list of features, we wanted to focus on some of the ones that really mattered, like how much each service costs to use, how large of a photo you can upload, and what makes each one special. Here are the results:

Service Flash/HTML Max. size Max. resolution Cost Layers Effects Killer feature Flauntr Flash 10MB 2850x1599 Free No Yes Part of a larger suite of editing products. You can take your file to another tool without losing changes. Fotoflexer Flash No limit 4500x4500 Free Yes Yes Handles multiple layers with grace. Includes advanced features like curve tweaks and intelligent lassoing for free. Lunapic HTML 4MB 1330x1330 Free No Yes Can run on machines without Flash installed. Really inventive special effects--especially reflective water that ripples. Phixr HTML No limit 1440x1080 Free No Yes Can run on machines without Flash installed. Does not save your photos on its servers for very long, so you can edit sensitive images and nobody will see them. Phoenix Flash No limit 2800x2800 Free Yes Yes Great layer masking, community support, and tutorials. Work from Phoenix can be sent to another editing tool in the Aviary Web suite. Photoshop.com Flash 10MB 6000x6000 Free No Yes Editing features get previewed in real time. Also runs on Adobe's latest and greatest Flash technology. Picnik free Flash 16MB 4000x4000 Free Yes Yes Default photo editor for Flickr, very slick interface. Picnik premium Flash 16MB 4000x4000 $24.95/year Yes Yes Bigger uploads and more effects filters. App also remembers what you were doing the last time you were using it. Picture2Life HTML 5MB 1600x1600 Free Yes Yes Can run on machines without Flash installed. Floating windows workspace, similar to desktop apps. Pixenate HTML 10MB 1600x1200 Free No Yes Can run on machines without Flash installed. Tooth whitening tool perfects yellow smiles with two clicks. Pixer.us Flash 10MB 6000x6000 Free No Yes Remembers the last photo you were working on and has a wide range of filters and effects. Pixlr Flash No limit 2880x2880 (Flash 9 users) 4096x4096 (Flash 10 users) Free Yes Yes Feels a lot like a desktop application, complete with a workspace which you can rearrange and customize to your liking. Snipshot HTML 10MB 5000x5000 Free No Yes Can run on machines without Flash installed. Can import the first page of a PDF file for editing. Snipshot Pro HTML 10MB 5000x5000 $7/month No Yes Effects filters, face detection, support for RAW camera files. Splashup Flash ~6.25MB 1250x1250 Free Yes Yes Really great handling of layers. Photoshop users will feel right at home with some of the user interface.

Two small caveats about size: In most cases, any difference in the maximum photo resolution is a result of which version of Flash the tool--or the user--is running. In Aviary's case, its Phoenix photo editor uses the Flash 9 spec, thus only supporting images up to 2800x2800 in size. Its next release, due later this year, will nearly double that resolution.

Also, the maximum resolution doesn't necessarily mean if your original photo is bigger, it won't take it. Instead, what many of these services will do is simply scale it down to something that's more manageable both for your machine and its servers. Photos with odd aspect ratios are often constrained within the proportion of pixels any given editing app can render within its available workspace.

So which one is the best?

That's a difficult question. It depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to add glitter graphics to a picture to put on your MySpace profile, you should go with Lunapic. If you're trying to edit the RAW photos you just took on your new SLR, you're only going to be able to do it on Snipshot's paid pro service.… Read more

Easily secure images or videos

Encrypting pictures and video to secure them from prying eyes is a simple process with this easy-to-use utility, but it didn't turn out to be as flexible as it claimed during our tests.

Picture and Video Encrypt launches a small, unadorned but functional and easy-to-comprehend interface that's mostly taken up by a pane for listing filenames. There's no detailed Help feature, but figuring out how to use this app is a simple matter: you just click Add, select a file, then click Protect (or Unprotect, if you're decrypting a file).

This app worked fine in our … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Face time with iPhoto '09

How well does the face recognition feature built into iPhoto '09 work? CNET News reporter Ina Fried put it through the paces and she shares her impressions, including a few funny misses. That, plus the headlines of the day, on Thursday's CNET News Daily Podcast.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Today's stories:

Sprint loses another 1.3 million customers

Survey: Apple's Mac customers highly satisfied

Google shows Web-based offline Gmail on iPhone

Playing around with iPhoto's 'Faces'

San Francisco installing EV charging stations

Long Island town promotes hydrogen

Minnesota Senate fight continues on YouTube

Playing around with iPhoto's 'Faces'

Face recognition technology isn't perfect yet.

That's certainly clear when using the "Faces" feature that is built into the recently released iPhoto '09.

Sure, the product does reasonably well at finding your friends and family in your photo collection. Tag a few photos by name and iPhoto comes up with other suggestions, often recognizing photos that are taken years apart and with vastly different looks. Heck, iPhoto even spotted me when I was a different gender.

The science behind face recognition is complex and still evolving. In general, face recognition software looks for predictable patterns--characteristics and proportions that stay constant from one photograph to another, things like the distance between the eyes or from the eyes to the mouth.

Even with things where the science is today, having help--any help--with the tedious task of tagging photos is welcome. And iPhoto can certainly find plenty of matches in your library, even if it won't spot them all.

But the real genius part is how Apple has made the process fun, even when the results aren't perfect.

Early speech recognition was also hit or miss, but it was painful to have to scream at a computer while it constantly misunderstood what you were trying to say. With face recognition, at least as built into iPhoto, the goofs are what make it fun.

The software frequently suggested that my contemporary friends and family were actually my 80-something cousin, my 90-something great aunt, or both. iPhoto also confused Bill Gates with our friend's 3-year-old. And among the suggestions for former CNET colleague Joris Evers was a shot of Wayne Gretzky that I had taken at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. … Read more

Olympus E-30 Art Filters surprisingly addictive

During and after the rollout of the E-30 dSLR, Olympus really pushed the Art Filters feature--a handful of preset special effects--which seemed a bit out of place on a $1,300 dSLR (especially a dSLR that has quite a bit going for it, including very good photo quality and speedy performance).

But in the course of testing the camera I discovered that the Art Filters, or at least some of them, are pretty useful and interesting. Which is another way of saying that they're kind of fun and addictive and completely derailed my completing the review.

More expensive than … Read more

Microsoft is really milking the kid thing

If one cute kid can help sell products, more kids must be better, right?

After debuting its first "rookies" spot last week showing 4-year-old Kylie using Windows Live Photo Gallery to fix her goldfish picture, Microsoft is back with a new spot that shows 7-year-old Alexa using the software to create a panoramic photo.

Microsoft is clearly trying to convince us its software is so easy that a kid can master it.

It's not a bad strategy. But I'm a little surprised it's are back at it with Photo Gallery. The first ad was pretty … Read more

Microsoft tugs at heartstrings with Windows ad

Microsoft's new Windows ad made its expected debut over the weekend, with a 4-year-old cutie named Kylie showing how easy it is to use Windows Live Photo Gallery to edit and share photos.

As I noted last week, Microsoft is pushing ahead with new spots in its Windows ad campaign after taking some time off following the Gates/Seinfeld and "I'm a PC" spots.

In the new spot, which debuted during the Grammy Awards Sunday (and is embedded below), Kylie shows how she uses the program to touch up her photo and then share it with … Read more