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Two image processing software companies rolled out new versions of their sharpening products last week. Nik Software, of San Diego, released Sharpener Pro 3.0 ($199.95), a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture, and Akvis Software, of Vancouver, BC, debuted Enhancer 9.5 as a plug-in ($69) for Photoshop and a number of other image editors and as a standalone application ($81) that includes support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing.

The new edition of Sharpener (photo above) incorporates Nik's U Point technology into the product. U Point allows an imagesmith to apply sharpening effects precisely to areas of a photograph without the need to manufacture complex layering masks. Nik has also improved the product's output sharpening, making it easier to tailor sharpening to a particular output device, and added a creative sharpening feature for enhancing specific areas in a photograph. What's more, this incarnation of the software has a "soft proof" tool for viewing sharpening results before printing and the ability to save output presets so they can be reused. Other highlights of this rendering of Sharpener Pro are an updated RAW presharpener that fine tunes detail without introducing noise, a selection tool that can "paint" sharpness into selected areas of an image, "smart filter" support for adjusting sharpening in conjunction with Photoshop's Smart Objects feature, and compatibility with Aperture's Multi-image support.

A 15-day trial version of the Nik software is available from the company's Web site.

Akvis Enhancer (photo, right), which works on both PCs and Macs, is designed to improve image sharpness no matter what caused the fuzziness--poor or excessive lighting, movement or bad focusing. The plug-in version has two modes. In Enhancer mode, detail is improved in shots with exposure problems by intensifying color transitions in the image. In Focus mode, the software comes to the rescue of fuzzy and out-of-focus photos. There's a third mode in the standalone variation. It will improve the play of light and dark in a picture through High Dynamic Range technlogy. The technique requires several snaps to be taken of the same scene, but the results can be arresting.

A 10-day trial offering of the application is available from Akvis.

Google's software aces have been businer than the front page of a supermarket tabloid this week. Not only did they unveil a beta of a new browser, but they trumpeted the release of new versions of their their photo sharing tandem Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa is Google's photo editing and organizing software; Web Albums, its online picture sharing site. With the latest versions of these products, Google is emphasizing integration.

"Sharing online has skyrocketed in importance, as more of us develop a network of friends and family who are tuning into our pictures," Google Product Manager Mike Horowitz explained in a blog.

"We've therefore brought the Picasa software and Picasa Web Albums much closer together, breaking down barriers between your home PC and your online albums," he added.

Among the many new features in the Google duo is the use of face recognition to organize images. When you choose to activate Web Albums' "name tags" feature, the online application will automatically tag photos based on facial similarities. "By doing so," Horowitz observed, "you can easily find that photo of your cousin from two years ago; create a slideshow of you and your best friend, or share an album with everybody who appears in the photos."

A less exotic but still useful organizational tool added to Picasa, now in its third incarnation, is "sync to Web." It will automatically update your online albums when you make changes to them on you add or edit photos on your computer.

After installing Picasa, you'll find some new menu choices when you right click on an image file in Windows Explorer (the program only runs on PCs). There's a "Preview" item that displays the image in a new viewer. Not only does the application have Google's trademark minimalist chic, but if you have a mouse or trackball with a scroll wheel, the wheel can be used to zoom in and out of the photo.

In addition to adding features, Google also expanded some of Picasa's capabilities. a favorite of mine is its addition of more RAW formats to its repertoire. Viewing a variety of RAW formats with a single application is very convenient. Better yet, RAW files can be viewed directly from their file location with the Preview utillity.

While I'm still only scratching the surface of this latest version of Picasa, even in this beta release, there's a lot to explore for an inquiring imagesmith.

If you're dissatisfied with the dull gray-scale conversion tools found in many photo editing software programs, you may want to test drive a plug-in released this week by Nik Software, of San Diego. According to the company, its new product, Silver Efex Pro, uses a range of advanced imaging algorithms to eliminate unwanted artifacts when converting color photos to black-and-whites and includes a state-of-the-art grain engine that mimics the silver halide process used in developing film.

What's more, the new offering includes the company's U Point technology that provides easy to use tools for direct on-image control of tonality, contrast and structure. With the technology, specific areas of an image can be altered with just a few mouse clicks and without the need to create complicated selections and layer masks.

"For many photographers, black-and-white is their preferred outlet for creative expression," Nik President and CEO Michael J. Slater said in a statement. "Previously available tools often required acceptance of a one-size-fits-all solution or complex conversion techniques and endless fine-tuning."

"Silver Efex Pro is truly a comprehensive and easy to use software product that is specifically designed to address the challenges that photographers face when converting images to black-and-white," he added.

With the program designed to work with Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture, a photographer starts with a "neutral" conversion of a color image to black-and-white and then with a single click can apply more than 20 presets that emulate a variety of processing styles from ambrotype and tintype to classic artistic renderings, trendy high contrast effects and application of grains that imitate popular film stocks. Moreover, images can be further customized with a set of tools that include filters, variable toning controls, vignettes, as well as global brightness, contrast and structure controls.

The suggested retail price of Silver Efex Pro is $199.95. It is available immediately as a download from the company's Web site. A boxed version of the software will be available next month. You can take the plug-in for a free 15-Day ride by downloading a fully functional trial version of it.

If you've ever searched for economically-priced software that does more just get the job done, then chances are you've run into Serif. The UK-based applications shop has been selling its wares in Europe for years and although its products could be purchased in the States over the Internet it didn't have a retail presence here until this spring when it gained shelf space at Fry's and Micro Center stores and appeared on the virtual racks at Amazon.com, Buy.com, Dell.com, Newegg and PC Connection. Now its product lineup--which includes a solid digital imaging editing program called PhotoPlus X2--has grabbed even greater retail presence this month with its entrance into Office Depot.

A new Microsoft Vista version of PhotoPlus X2 ($71-$79) was released by Serif last fall. It included a number of interesting new features such as an automated makeover studio for removing imperfections in portraits, a QuickFix Studio for swiftly making improvements in photos and new artistic effects such as Comic Book and Vignette, as well as the ability to burn slideshows and photos to discs.

Other programs offered by Serif include

• PagePlus X3, a desktop publishing program aimed at small businesses and individuals looking to create in-house publications such as brochures, newsletters and catalogs.
• WebPlus X2, a WYSIWYG Web site design package.
• DrawPlus X2, a vector drawing program that includes Flash animation creation functionality.

Unfortunately, Serif doesn't offer time-limited free trial versions of its software. For those of us with long memories, that's sort of ironic, since the company used to give away old versions of its applications for free--a laudable practice if ever there was one.

Despite its many foibles, the Windows World has one indisputable advantage over denizens of the Apple Sphere: greater software variety. That's not to say that the software available to Macintosh users isn't great, there's just more of it in the PC realm. To some extent, Apple has contributed to its software dearth by making outstanding applications and packaging them free with its hardware.

Nevertheless, from time to time, an independent developer who believes they have a better idea rolls the dice in the Apple market. One such developer is an Australian company named Nolobe, which today released a photo editor called Iris ($79). The program, which only operates under Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), is designed to run in a single window and eschews the multiple pallette approach used by applications like Adobe Photoshop. According to Nolobe, the program has a wide assortment of fully customizable paint settings, brushes and drawing tools; a comprehensive toolset to quickly correct and enhance images; layer-based editing support; and the ability to import and export a wide range of file formats including TIFF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, PICT and BMP.

"Iris has been created for previously overlooked Mac owners who simply wanted an accessible and easy to use image program that provides professional results, without the professional price tag," Matthew Drayton, founder and CEO of Nolobe, observed in a statement.

Just as inkjet printers create images with patterns or dots, mosaic artists create their images with bits of colored glass or tile. While most of us don't have the skills to craft mosaics from glass or tile, we do have the raw material to be patchwork artists: our digital photos.

Creating mosaics from photos can be laborious, but there are computer programs that can make the process as simple as filling in fields in a form. Needless to say, the output from those programs won't be challenging the work of a master photo mosaic artist like Robert Silvers, but they still can be fun to play with for hodgepodge hackers. One such application is Andrea Mosaic.

The freeware program lets you take a folder of photos and turn them into a mosaic of images based on a root picture. While the software's interface is strictly utilitarian--it would play the heartstrings of a DOS applications writer like a virtuoso--it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss.

Photo editing programs come in many flavors. At the professional end of the category, you have applications like Adobe Photoshop. Then there are semipro offerings like Adobe Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro. And then there's ACDsee Photo Editor 2008. Photo Editor is geared toward folks who want to do more with their photos than just editing. Sure, the software made by ACD Systems International, of Victoria, British Columbia, has plenty of editing tools, but it's very much a project-oriented application--projects like digital scrapbooks. That's evident in the new version of the program released yesterday, which has beefed-up layout tools; new templates from designers like Andrea Gold, Maggie Lamarre and Vicki Stegall; and new ways to integrate text with pictures. Also new to this edition of the program are built-in "how-to" guides to improve the software's useability and a number of "under the hood" changes to improve performance. Photo Editor is priced at $49.99, but a free 30-trial download of the software is available at the product's web site.

Photo sharing site Phanfare was quick to jump on the new iPhone G3 bandwagon today with software that allows images to be directly uploaded to the Internet from Apple's mopho. Phanfare CEO and Cofounder Andrew Erlichson explained the purpose of the application, which will be distributed through Apple's new iPhone store, at his blog.

"The Phanfare camera application turns the iPhone into a connected digital camera that takes the PC out of the loop for uploading and sharing," he wrote. "Users enjoy the convenience and portability of the iPhone with all the benefits of cloud-based storage and sharing."

"As you take a picture," he continued, "you can instantly add a caption, add a photo to an existing album or create a new album without ever leaving the application."

"For consumers," he added, "digital photography was a huge step forward over film, but uploading digital photos to a computer is just too complicated. The Phanfare iPhone app gets the computer out of the uploading loop and makes digital photography significantly more convenient."

How convenient? For the answer to that question check out Erlichson's video at his blog.

Award-winning image processing software maker DxO Labs today announced a new release of its flagship product, Optics Pro. The new release from the Paris-based company, version 5.1, is being offered in both Windows and Macintosh flavors. In this edition of the application, Mac users, for the first time, will have access to DxO's improved RAW conversion engine that reduces noise and artifacts in images before they're amplified by the conversion process. Among the features in this version of the program is support of three new digital cameras--the Canon EOS 450D/Rebel Xsi, the Canon EOS 1Ds MKIII and the Nikon D60.

Owners of release 5.0 of the application can upgrade to 5.1 for free. Users who bought version 4.5 of the program on or after August 1, 2007 are also entitled to a free upgrade. Users who purchased the the standard edition of the software before August 1, 2007 can upgrade for $95; buyers of the elite edition before that date can upgrade for $125. Shelf price for new users is $169 for the standard version and $299 for the elite release. Free 15-day trial versions of the program are also available at the company's Web site.

Nikon released today a spruced up version of its professional level image processing and editing software, Capture NX2. Here are some of the new features in the latest release of the application.

• Selection Control Points. Masking areas of a photograph is simplified by the use of control points. A point can be placed anywhere on an image and used to make adjustments such as D-Lighting, Unsharp Mask and noise reduction.
• Auto Retouch Brush. This tool can be used to remove blemishes, dust and other distracting elements from pictures without destroying the integrity of the image.
• Shadow/Highlight Adjustment. With a simple slider tool, shadows can be opened up and blown-out highlights can be recovered.
• Redesigned Graphic User Interface (GUI). Among the improvements in this area is a workspace feature for better access to tools and pallettes.
• Improved Edit List. New menu choices allow for swifter access to tools like tone curves, exposure compensation, contrast, and highlight and shadow protection.
• Filters, Ratings and Sorting Toolbar. These additions allow for more efficient finding of photos.

"We have listened carefully to the requests of current Capture NX users and photographers in developing this powerful new software," Nikon's Senior Manager for Software Products Michael Rubin said in a statement. "This is an economical solution for the photographer who requires non-destructive image editing and wants to quickly and easily process their images."

Capture NX2 is expected to be available for purchase at the end of this month for $179.95, or for the upgrade price of $109.95. In the meantime, a 60-day free trial version is available via download from Nikon today.