Without a doubt digital photography has made it easier than ever to capture life's precious moments, but it's also made it easier to lose them, too. That's why it makes good sense to have some kind of the photo recovery software on hand for those occasions when the unspeakable occurs. One such program is Easy Digital Photo Recovery ($29.95) made for Windows by MunSoft. According to the company, which released a new version of the program this week containing some minor tweaks--the Windows Recycle Bin database is now supported and scanning of NTFS disks is now faster and more liable--the application uses a unique algorithm that is specifically optimized for photo recovery. Here are some of the features of the program.

• It will recover a number of file types including JPEG, TIFF, CR2, NEF, SR2, ARW, ORF, RAF, MRW, ERF, 3FR, DCR, MEF, PEF, DNG, X3F, BMP, GIF and others.
• It will filter recovered information by filename, date, size and recovery status.
• It will recover photos even if the media has been formatted.
• It supports NTFS, FAT32 and FAT16 file systems.
• It also supports IDE, ATA and SCSI hard drives.

In addition to photo recovery software, MunSoft also makes more general recovery programs such as Easy File Undelete ($49.95) and Easy Drive Data Recovery ($69.95).

For shutterbugs who want to print on the go, Canon USA today announced a mobile printer that at first glance looks like something you'd find the Easter Bunny toting around after a trip to KFC. The Selphy CP770 ($149.99) is designed to be not only portable--it comes in a storage bucket with a handle and storage area for paper, ink, cartridge and power cord--but independent, too, since it can be used without plugging it into a computer or camera. For true independence, though, you'll need the optional battery pack, which sells for $79.99. The printer is designed for ease of use--its buttons are larger and there are fewer of them--and with its color offerings--apricot and "crisp" white--it's definitely not aimed at the Goth set. Other features include a 2.5-inch LCD for previewing images before they're printed and a high speed infrared port that's compatible with some mobile phones.

In addition to the CP770, Canon also introduced today the more-conventional looking CP760 ($99.99).

For many moons, point-and-shoot digital cameras and digital SLRs have been on a collision course and today they collided to form the 10-megapixel Olympus E-520. The new snapper has the infrastructure of a DSLR but the trappings of a point-and-pop bytecam--features like live shooting through an LCD, scene modes and that darling of the P&S world, face-recognition. Olympus point-and-shoot pundits will recognize two other features of the 520--Shadow Adjustment Technology, for improving the dynamic range of images containing contrasting light and dark areas, and Perfect Shot Preview, for viewing on the camera's 2.7-inch display several versions of the same shot with different white balance and exposure settings.

This compact camera, which measures 5.35-by-3.6-by-2.68 inches--not much bigger than Olympus's smallest DSLR, the E-420--has triple threat mechanical image stabilization built into the body of the unit. Not only will it do the typical CCD adjustment along the X and Y axes, but it also has specialized stabilization modes for capturing moving subjects while panning with the camera and holding it either horizontally or vertically.

The E-520 is scheduled to reach retailers in July. Body-only price is pegged at $599.99 and a kit with an ED 14-42mm F/3.5/5.6 Zuiko digital zoom at $699.99.

In addition to the E-520, Olympus pulled the wraps off a new super wide-angle zoom lens.

PhotoShop users are familiar with plug-ins--applets that enhance the function of the main program and can be accessed from within it. That's because plug-in developers have found Adobe's photo editor a lucrative playground for their wares. Not so, however, with Apple's iPhoto software. Maybe the development community feels that devotees of what's essentially a free program won't be inclined to dish out dough for added functionality.

If that's the rationale for eschewing the iPhoto market, it isn't one shared by plug-in maker onOne Software, of Portland, Ore. It released today a version of its Essentials 2.1 program for iPhoto. The add-on, priced at $59.95, beefs up iPhoto's capabilities with tools for fine-tuning color, contrast and brightness; vignetting images; framing a photo's edges; and enlarging a photo with as minimum loss of quality. The software gives iPhoto users an opportunity to experiment with professional caliber tools without making a professional level outlay from their bank accounts.

Batteries are the bane of anyone who uses electronic gizmos of any genre so promises of hassle reducing power solutions are hard to ignore--even when they're couched in mystery. A case in point: an announcement today by methanol fuel cell maker MTI Micro, of Albany, New York, that it has cut a deal with "a global Japanese developer of products utilizing advanced optical and digital technologies, including digital cameras" to adapt MTI's Mobion fuel cell technology "for use in various precision imaging applications, including digital cameras."

"MTI Micro has now signed agreements with two global OEMs that operate within two of the three largest consumer electronic segments - mobile phones and digital cameras," the company's CEO Peng Lim said in a statement. "We are pleased that our Mobion platform may potentially power devices in these two segments."

Fuel cells have a number advantages over the current ubiquitous power plant for mobile electronics, the lithium ion battery. One edge is they don't have to be recharged. You can remove a methanol cartridge from a cell, pop another in and you're good to go. Another plus is they won't blow up in your face. What's more, they're far greener than chemical batteries. They're so safe that the U.S. Department of Transportation has already approved them for air travel--even though they're not expected to hit the mainstream until next year.

From time to time, the thought crosses many a shutterbug's mind that it might be a good idea to dig through the old pre-digital archives and turn some antique snapshots into bits and bytes. That brain nugget soon loses its luster, though, after the tedium sets in of scanning photos one at a time with a flatbed scanner. If your images are small enough, however, Ransen Software has a way to speed up your workflow. It's a program released today called RansenScan ($29.95, free demo available).

What you do is place several snaps on your scanner. There must be space between the images so the software can distinguish them. When you scan the multiple photos, RansenScan will turn them into individual image files. The interface displays the actual scan and the individual "subscans" side-by-side. You can also correct from within the software elements like size, color, contrast, brightness and saturation, as well as crop and rotate the images. In addition, snaps can be printed directly from the application should you want fresh prints of the photos.

The software also has a feature for extracting individual portraits from group shots and creating composite prints from them.

If you've been balking about digitizing your photo archives, RansenScan just might be the spur you need to overcome your procrastination.

Panoramas made by stitching together several digital photographs can be fun to create but shooting their components can be a little unsettling. That's because the mind's eye and a camera lens don't always see eye to eye on where one shot ends and another begins. Bytecams with panorama modes make the process more precise by displaying the end of one photo at the edge of their displays while the next photo in the sequence appears live on the screen. But even that approach is imperfect, especially when bright sunlight is washing out the LCD. Panoramistas--at least those with tripods--need not despair, however. A company called Lenspen makes a gadget called the Panamatic ($24.95) that will take the worry out of shooting properly aligned frames for a panorama. You attach the Panamatic to a tripod and the camera to the Panamatic. The unit has a level that can be used to make sure that the tripod is perfectly horizontal. As you take each shot in a panorama, you rotate the Panamatic by one click. When you're finished, you upload your photos to your computer and cobble them together with stitching software. This definitely sounds like a useful item to have in the old gadget bag.

When it comes to discerning the nuances of shadow and light in the physicial world, it's hard to beat the human eye. That's why some imagesmiths resort to digital tricks, like High Dynamic Range processing, to level the playing field between peeper and lens. With HDR processing, an image editor can meld several photos with different exposure settings into an arresting picture.

A similar process can used to surmount another bugaboo for lensefolk: the narrowing of the depth of field in macro photography. No doubt you've encountered that problem when taking a close-up of a flower or insect. You can only get a portion of the subject in focus because the aperture of the shot is limiting your depth of field. One way to address that problem--a way that predates digital photography--is to use a tilt-shift lens. That can be a costly solution to the snag, since a good tilt-shift lens sells in the $1500 range. But, as Megapixel.net contributor Jim Bilbro, of Georgetown, Texas, pointed out to me this week, there's a more economical resolution to the depth-of-field challenge. It's called Helicon Focus.

What you do is shoot a number of photos focusing each on different areas of the same subject. Then you feed the pics into Helicon Focus and it creates a single image with what's essentially a depth of field of infintiy.

Prices for the software, which is made for both Windows and Mac platforms, range from $30 for a one-year license for a "lite" version of the program to $250 for the "pro" version of the application with an unlimited license. Before you buy, though, you can try it out for 30 days for free by downloading it from the Helicon Web site.

Microsoft isn't often linked to free software, but that isn't the case with Pro Photo Tools. PPT is a neat program to introduce geotagging into your photographic repertoire. Here are some of the things it will do for you.

• It will take photos with GPS information attached to them and add to them location data--street address, city, state or region and country.
• It will take location information attached to a photo and add GPS coordinates to the picture.
• It can take route information from a GPS receiver, match it to the date and time data attached to a photo and create GPS information for the picture.

When you load a route into the program, it will appear as a green line on a map within the software. Then you select the photos that correspond to the route and the application will take GPS information from the images and place them in their correct locations along the green line. Pretty nifty stuff.

If all this GPS palaver is befuddling to you, you can simply drag a photo from your hard drive to the thumbnail palette in the program, fill in some location information and watch a "pushpin" of the photo appear on the application's map. When you roll your cursor over the pushpin, a thumbnail of the photo will be displayed.

Although I initially had difficulty setting up the program because it demanded that I install Microsoft .Net 3.0 before installing Pro Photo Tools, once I surmounted those problems, I found the application relatively intuitive to learn and fun to use. If you're interested in geotagging your photos, this offering from Microsoft is worth a tryout.

Touch-screen devices are all the rage these days. Their convenience and cachet have seduced digital device makers of every denomination, including bytecam houses like Sony and Panasonic. But a tech breakthrough by Capella Microsystems may give them something that will still be present after the lapdogs of fashion move on to the next trend. That something is longer battery life. The Santa Clara, Calif.based fabless semiconductor company announced yesterday that it has produced an industry first--a proximity and ambient-light sensor chip. The chip can be used for a number of applications like deactivating the display on a touch-screen phone when it's placed near an ear for talking. In the photographic world, it can be used to automatically turn a camera's LCD on or off depending on whether or not its operator is looking through the unit's viewfinder. By shaving the time that a display is active, the chip can extend the battery life of a device. “In the past, proximity and ambient light sensors had never been combined in a single chip because of the cost and space required for plastic filters," Capella President Cheng-chung Shih explained in a statement. "Our patent-pending Filtron technology allows us to overcome this obstacle by building the optical filters into the chip as part of the integrated circuit fabrication process.”