Tiffen's color-filter plug-in for Aperture in action.
(Credit: Apple)Apple on Monday released its software developer kit to let programmers write plug-ins for Aperture, the company's high-end image editing and cataloging software.
OK, I recognize it's not the world-changing, paradigm-shifting, heart-stopping iPhone SDK, but it's still important for the "creative professional" market to which Apple has catered for years.
This tool is designed to let others extend the abilities of Aperture, a move that adds some spice to its competition with Adobe Systems' Photoshop Lightroom. Adobe has scads of third-party companies that create plug-ins for regular Photoshop, but Lightroom still lacks the equivalent for important editing functions. However, many have extended Lightroom's abilities with export functions, image-processing presets, and even a geotagging tool.
Among those creating plug-ins for Aperture are Tiffen, Digital Film Tools, Nik Software, Image Trends, and PictureCode, Apple said.
Programmers can download the SDK from the Apple Developer Connection Web site. Some plug-ins are available for download. Find more information at the Aperture Plugged-In Community site.
Eugene Berman's plug-in lets Lightroom users export photos directly to iStockphoto.
(Credit: Eugene Berman)Photographer and programmer Eugene Berman has released version 1.0 of a Lightroom plug-in that enables photographers to export pictures directly to iStockphoto, a "microstock" Web site that sells images for relatively low cost.
Adobe Systems' Lightroom is gaining in popularity as a way to edit and catalog the unprocessed "raw" images from higher-end digital cameras, and Adobe in 2007 released a beta version of a software developer kit (SDK) that lets anyone write plug-ins for exporting photos.
Other Lightroom plug-ins also exist that permit uploads to Flickr, Picasa, Zenfolio, and SmugMug.
Exporting to iStockphoto is a different matter, though. Photographers might be more inclined to take their shots on a trip through Photoshop for more careful noise reduction, edge sharpening, or selective editing not possible in Lightroom.
The plug-in provides the ability to enter keywords, upload multiple photos, and include model releases, Berman said.
However, Lightroom expert Sean McCormack rightly gripes that it would be improved if it exported the photo's title from the metadata title field rather than the filename, which is more likely to be something obscure such as DSC7893.jpg.
(Via Lightroom News.)
Nik's Viveza will ship later this quarter for about $250.
(Credit: Nik Software)LAS VEGAS--Nik Software on Wednesday announced a new variant of its photo-editing software that will run as a plug-in to Adobe Systems' Photoshop.
The company's Viveza plug-in brings the "U Point" editing method, already available in Nik's Capture NX software, to Photoshop. The software functions as a Photoshop smart filter, which means it can be applied nondestructively and updated later.
Viveza will ship in the first quarter for Windows and Mac OS X and cost about $250, Nik said at the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.
The U Point system is an attempt to simplify photo-editing tasks that often require complicated selection and masking operations. Placing control points on an image gives users sliders to adjust color, saturation, lighting, and other parameters, and those adjustments also affect other parts of the image similar to where the control point is located.
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