A couple of weeks ago, we shared a sneak peek of Adobe’s upcoming Shake Reduction Tool for Photoshop that has been dropping jaws ever since an advanced preview was debuted all the way back in October of 2011. The tool selects a section of the image, uses some complicated calculations to determine how the camera was moving when the photo was taken, and then remove the blur — pretty incredible stuff.

But it looks like Adobe has been beaten to this magical release by the small startup Intelligent Imaging Solutions and their newly announced Photoshop plugin Piccure. Read more…

Amateurs just getting into post-processing sometimes opt to purchase the much cheaper Photoshop Elements over spending the hundreds more it would cost to get the industry standard pro version. Unfortunately, the gap in features between Elements and the upgrade leaves a lot to be desired, which is why the ElementsXXL plug-in came to be.

ElementsXXL is a Windows-only plug-in that brings a massive list of features previously reserved for the full-featured Photoshop to Elements — all for only $50. Read more…

Film emulation software company VSCO has added another offering to its lineup of Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw plugins. VSCO Film offers the same high-end film emulation power as Film 01 and 02, except it’s designed for mimicking the look of instant films rather than standard color and black-and-white film stocks.
Read more…

A couple of weeks ago we featured a Google Chrome extension for overlaying “rule of thirds” lines over any online photograph. Now we have a different tool for examining other photographer’s photographs: Image Histogram.

Created by developer/photographer Nick Burlett, it’s a Chrome Extension that can quickly bring up the histogram of any online photograph.
Read more…

Earlier this year, we wrote about a new company called Fourandsix (pronounced “forensics”), a collaboration between a former Photoshop product manager and a professor who’s an expert in digital forensics. The goal of the new startup was to build powerful tools that would make detecting digital photo manipulation easy. Well, the first Fourandsix product is now available.

Called FourMatch, it’s an extension for Photoshop CS5/CS6 that “instantly distinguishes unmodified digital camera files from those that may have been edited.”
Read more…

If you’ve been shying away from posting your photographs to Facebook because you don’t want them stolen, security software company McAfee has come up with a solution for you. It’s a new tool called McAfee Social Protection, and helps you protect your photos using invite lists, blurring, and lock-down.
Read more…

There are plenty of presets out there that attempt to make your digital images look like they were shot with film, but VSCO Film by Visual Supply Co is different: it’s a Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW add-on that uses film profiles to change how the RAW files are interpreted rather than simply perform standard adjustments on the images. The video introduction above shows some examples of what the various options can do. This patent-pending method of film emulation doesn’t come cheap — it costs $120 each for Canon or Nikon profiles, and $200 for both.

VSCO Film (via Jeremy Cowart via John Nack via Wired)

Perfect Layers is a new plug-in by OnOne Software that brings layers functionality (e.g. image layers, blend modes, layer masks, etc…) to Lightroom and Aperture. The program is currently in Public Beta right now available as a 30-day free trial, meaning you can download and try and a free preview version for Lightroom.

Perfect Layers (via Scott Kelby)

Update: Wow, that was fast. Looks like the program isn’t in Public Beta anymore. Instead, you can try it for 30 days or pay $500 for the full suite of programs/plugins.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winner was randomly selected and posted here. Thank you to everyone who participated!

It’s time for another PetaPixel giveaway! Huzzah!

Today I’m giving away a copy of onOne Software’s Plug-In Suite 4.5, a package that retails for $499.95.

This is a package of six award-winning plugins for Photoshop, and four of the plugins can be used with Lightroom and Aperture. Here are the plugins:

Genuine Fractals: The industry standard for resizing images
PhotoTools: Instantly give your photographs a professional look
PhotoFrame: Add edge effects, backgrounds, and adornments
FocalPoint: Easily add selective focus
Mask Pro: Remove unwanted backgrounds
PhotoTune: Quick and easy color correction

If you purchase all six of them separately, they would cost about $1,300. One lucky PetaPixel reader is going to get all of them for free.

Entering this contest is easy, but please pay attention to detail to ensure that your entry counts.

To enter, all you need to do is answer the following question:

What is your favorite or most memorable photographic experience?

Just like most of our previous giveaways, there are two (2) ways to send your answer to us. You can use both ways to double your chances of winning, but please don’t use either of them more than once:

1. Leave a comment on this entry with your response
2. Tweet your response (it doesn’t even need to be @petapixel), but be sure to link to this post (http://bit.ly/kKCQv) at the end of your tweet. Here’s an example tweet:
   

   My fav photo experience was when I went to the grand canyon in 2006! http://bit.ly/kKCQv

Linking to this page in your tweet will automatically add your tweet to the “Social Media Reactions” list under the comments. This makes it easier for us to manage entries and randomly select a winner.

In our previous giveaways, you could simply tweet the answer to us without a link, but I had to record each of the tweets by hand. As the number of entries has gone up, it has gotten harder and harder to do by hand, so I’m asking that it be a little more automated now.

The deadline for entering this contest is the evening of Saturday, July 25th, 2009. We will randomly select the winner and post the results at that time.

Good luck!

Oh, and also — if you submit a really unique or interesting answer (feel free to include links to photographs!) that catches our attention, we might include some of them in the results post.

Update: Don’t worry if your response doesn’t show up in the Social Media Reactions immediately after you tweet it. It’ll show up eventually.

Update: Just to clarify, adding a link to this post is only required for tweet entries. If you respond via a comment, there’s no need to do anything else aside from respond. We just need the link in the tweets to track them.

Keep the favorite experiences coming. They’ve been extremely interesting to read so far!

Update: Looks like the Social Media Reactions aren’t showing up as they should. We’ll try to get it sorted out and working for our next giveaway. For this giveaway, I’ll include the tweet entries by searching for our link (http://bit.ly/kKCQv).