photos

As if there aren't enough ways to share your photos with friends and family members, Apple has introduced yet another sharing method in iOS 6: Shared Photo Streams.

Shared Photo Streams allow you to post and share photos to a Photo Stream album hosted by iCloud. The photos stored there don't count against your iCloud storage allotment, and will work over Wi-Fi and cellular data. You're able to share photos with fellow iOS users as well as by creating an iCloud.com Shared Photo Stream album for non-iOS users.

Following today's OS X 10.8.2 update for Mountain Lion, Apple has issued updates to iPhoto and Aperture, which bring the latest versions of the popular photo management suites to 9.4 and 3.4, respectively. The updates include a number of small bugs and fixes, along with new features and addresses several notable issues.

The first of these is both programs now support Shared Photo Streams in OS X Mountain Lion, which allows others to view Photo Streams you have set up in iCloud. In addition, the programs now support directly opening and editing a file from … Read more

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 during an event last week, a new feature to iOS 6 was also shown off -- panorama photos.

The new feature, which is specific to the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, allows users to take 240-degree panoramic photos using the native iOS Camera app.

Taking a panoramic photo with iOS 6 is simple. Launch the Camera app and tap on the Options button along the top of the screen. Select the panorama button.

You'll then see some instructions on the screen. From there, it's easy. Move your phone in a slow, steady … Read more

Long known for its DVD/media playback (PowerDVD) and disc authoring (Power2Go) tools, CyberLink also publishes a full suite of consumer-level photo- and video-editing software that includes powerful technology. In an exclusive release for Download.com, CyberLink's two flagship editing programs -- PhotoDirector for photography editing and management; PowerDirector for video editing and effects -- update to versions 4 and 11, respectively, including a new version of PhotoDirector for Mac. The company is also introducing two new video-production tools for audio -- CyberLink AudioDirector -- and color -- CyberLink ColorDirector, as well as a Director Suite that packages them … Read more

Seeing as Mars is much further away from the sun than Earth is, a solar eclipse would look different than it does here. Curiosity -- NASA's Mars rover -- caught an image of what this phenomenon looks like from the Red Planet.

While somewhat less impressive than what a solar eclipse looks like from Earth, appearing as a tiny black blip on a small white blip, this photo is still fascinating. Mars has two moons that orbit it, so the moon seen in this image is called Phobos.

To get this photo, Curiosity -- ever the clever rover -- … Read more

Google has acquired the company behind popular iOS photo-sharing app Snapseed, the companies announced today.

Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, posted the news about acquiring Snapseed creator Nik Software to his Google+ account. The app allows users to edit photos and add filters as well as share them on Facebook, Flickr or via email -- similar to Facebook's recently acquired Instagram app.

"We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone," he wrote, adding that Google+ now has 400,000,000 users since it launched a year ago. … Read more

It's easy to click away with your digital camera or phone and save tons of snapshots to your PC. If you've ever admired someone else's immaculately trimmed and framed digital pictures, there's no reason yours can't look the same; all you need is software that can create borders and frames for your images. But a tool that's too difficult to use is almost worse than no tool at all, especially if you spend a lot of time learning to use it but end up no further than when you started. Not all picture framing … Read more

Magic Photo Editor is a shareware digital image editor optimized for creating photo collages, frames, and portraits using a variety of template masks, objects, and borders. It's free to try with a 30-use limit. But it has some serious issues, starting with a clunky, unattractive interface that lacks common features. More serious is a lack of basic functionality, though.

Magic Photo Editor's user interface was the first hurdle: it's colorful but too simple by half, with nothing but a sidebar listing basic controls and features. Amazingly, we could not resize the interface -- not by clicking and … Read more

Depending on which version of Android you're running, there might be a Bugdroid or gender-neutral silhouette that appears for each contact that is missing a custom photo. While seeing these instead of a contact's photo isn't too big of a deal, it's always nice to see the faces of your family and friends that are calling you. This is especially useful if you're at a location where the volume of your device needs to be turned off and you can see who is calling with just a quick glance.

While this method is a bit … Read more