Industry: January 2008 Archives
Adobe software plug-in maker onOne Software, of Portland, Ore., announced today it's buying, for an undisclosed sum, the seam carving technology of Liquid Resize. The technology was developed by an Austrian-based couple, Ramin Sabet and Irmgard Sabet-Wasinger based on the research of Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir (see video above). What seam carving allows you to do is resize photos in radical ways--turning a vertical into a horizontal, for example--with a minimum of distortion. According to onOne, a beta version of software incorporating the seam carving technology will be available at its Web site at the end of this month. A Photoshop plug-in using the tech has a release target of the middle of this year. If you can't wait until the end of the month to tinker with this stuff, you can try your hand at it at a Web site called Rsizr.
Now that the season for review and reflection has passed, prognostication is in order. Among the valiant souls willing to venture into that dicey realm is Mason Resnick, who today fearlessly made these photo industry predictions for 2008.
- Starter DSLRs will have face recognition technology.
- More pictures will be shot, fewer will be saved.
- Digital camera prices will reach parity with film cameras.
- Wi-Fi cards will rock the camera world.
- Digital frames will surpass cameras as biggest holiday gift.
- Kodak will be saved by its new sensor (photo above).
- The Leica M8 will have company.
- Infrared photography will become cliché.
- 2008's sleeper pro cam will be the Olympus E-3.
- Cameras will be able to change focus after the fact.
Resnick says that 60 percent of his predictions were on the mark last year. That's a success rate that any horse bettor would love to have.
