Photography

How to take shallow depth-of-field shots on an iPhone

Do you wish your iPhone could sometimes act as an SLR camera, with its ability to capture shallow depth-of-field shots, where an object in the foreground is in focus and the background is artistically out of focus? If you'd like to create this bokeh effect with your iPhone, then check out SynthCam, a free app that takes short a video and then synthesizes that video into a photograph. … Read more

1080p shootout: iPhone 4S vs. Canon 5D Mark II

The iPhone 4 already offered standout image quality for a mobile phone, helping to further the general trend of using a phone camera rather than a dedicated camera. And with ever-better video, phone cameras will increasingly will be able to supplant videocameras, too.

Apple clearly hopes to stay ahead of the curve with the iPhone 4S: one of its selling points is a new 8-megapixel camera sensor that can record high-definition video at full 1080p resolution. It seems likely that it will outshoot most of its direct competition in the mobile phone market, but it's natural to wonder how well it stacks up against a high-end camera, too. … Read more

Lytro unveils radical new camera design

Get ready for camera 3.0. Because next year, you might have to decide whether an 11-megaray sensor is enough for your new light-field camera.

Lytro, a Silicon Valley startup, today unveiled its radical new camera--also called the Lytro. With it, the company hopes to rewrite the rules with a technology called light-field photography, but the scale of the company's ambition is matched by the scale of its challenge.

On the outside, the Lytro looks different--a smooth, two-tone elongated box 4.4 inches long and 1.6 inches square. At one end is the lens and at the other … Read more

Easily edit and upload photos to Facebook with Picture Dude

UPDATE October 10, 2011: This offer has now ended.

Whether it's a JPEG, GIF, raw image, or other format, Picture Dude reads your images and optimizes them for Facebook, so you don't have to. Turn sets of images into instant albums, complete with captions. You can use Picture Dude to edit existing albums or create them from scratch. Just upload and you are done!

Picture Dude Image Uploader Plus features:

Images are uploaded quickly because the app optimizes them for Facebook ahead of time. Remove red-eye, change contrast, saturation, crop images, or apply special effects and watermarks, all … Read more

Adobe: We've got the Touch for tablets

After dipping its toes in the water with some limited-scope mobile apps, Adobe Systems is taking the plunge today with six programs for Android Honeycomb tablets, including the company's flagship brand, Photoshop.

The programs, each to debut in November with a $10 introductory price, fall under the new Adobe Touch Apps brand. And they tie in with the new Adobe Creative Cloud, a service for sharing files, finding services, and transferring works from the tablet apps to Adobe's Creative Suite apps running on traditional computers.

Along with Photoshop Touch, the other apps are Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler, and … Read more

Just say "No" to boring slideshows - save over 84% now

UPDATE: This offer has now ended.

Ever spent hours trying to create a slideshow for your wedding, baby shower, or birthdays? I sure have. I specifically remember a time when I was in charge of creating my sister's baby shower slideshow. It started out as a beautiful San Francisco day that soon turned into a night with one too many cups of coffee, I might add, and by the time I was finished, the birds were chirping and it was morning again. I hadn't slept one bit and wondered, how was this possible? I remember trying to match … Read more

Lightroom 3.5 supports high-end compact cameras

Adobe Systems has updated Lightroom and Photoshop to support a number of new small, higher-end cameras from Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, and Pentax.

The software packages handle the raw photos that higher-end cameras can produce, offering higher image quality and better flexibility at the expense of convenience. And as new cameras arrive, Adobe must build support for the new models proprietary formats.

Lightroom 3.5 of and version 6.5 of Photoshop's raw-image plug-in (available on Adobe's download site) now can support a host of new compact interchangeable-lens cameras (ILCs) that lack the bulk-inducing reflex mirror of SLRs. In addition, it supports high-end medium-format cameras from Hasselblad, Phase One, and Phase One's Leaf subsidiary. The full list: … Read more

Compact new hybrid cameras leave me cold

I really wanted to like the new generation of compact, high-end cameras. Honest.

The hybrid designs promised the best of both worlds: the high image quality and interchangeable lenses of SLRs but the portability of a compact point-and-shoot. Their interchangeable lenses mean versatility, their larger sensors mean higher image quality, and their lack of an SLR's reflex mirror means they're much smaller.

My enthusiasm waned, though, as I saw models from Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, and Pentax arrive. And I'm sorry to report that Nikon's new J1 and V1 compact, mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) models left … Read more

Canon's giant image sensor gets a job

A huge image sensor that Canon showed off last year turns out to have more of a purpose in life than touting the company's manufacturing prowess. It's being used to help a Japanese observatory hunt for meteors.

Canon's 202x205mm sensor dwarfs the 24x36mm "full-frame" sensors that are used commercially in the company's high-end SLR cameras. When Canon touted the giant sensor last year, it said, "Potential applications for the new high-sensitivity CMOS sensor include the video recording of stars in the night sky and nocturnal animal behavior."

Well, it looks like those … Read more