Film footage from the early 1900′s, when hand-cranked cameras were all the technology available, aren’t exactly high-quality. Choppy, jumpy, and sped-up, the people in these films look anything but natural.

One YouTuber, however, has taken it upon himself to enhance some footage from this time period and, in the process, produced something much closer to today’s standards of clarity and stability. Read more…

Lytro introduced refocus-able photos to the public when it unveiled the world’s first consumer light field camera back in October 2011. Since then, a number of people and companies have been brainstorming refocus-able photo technology of their own.

One developer created a tool that can turn video footage into refocus-able stills. Toshiba and a company called DigitalOptics are both working to build Lytro-style smartphone camera modules. Next week, there’s going to be a new contender: an app called FocusTwist.
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Aberrations, distortions, corrupt images; all of these are things we typically try to avoid in the world of digital photography. But the Glitché app does the exact opposite. Instead of trying to remove digital imperfections from your photos, the app piles specific distortions on, and in the process turns your pristine pics into “works of digital art” … at least that’s what they’re calling them. Read more…

Over 100 million people around the world snap photos with Instagram on their phones now. If you like the look of Instagram filters but would rather not broadcast the photographs to the world every time you snap a picture, there’s actually a (semi-old) trick you can use to save the pics without sharing them (for iPhone users, at least): all you have to do is turn on “Airplane Mode.”
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The Internet let out a collective gasp back in October 2011 when Adobe gave an advanced preview of a crazy new image deblurring feature it has been working on. The feature can take a photo that’s blurry due to camera shake, calculate the movements that caused the blur, and “reverse it” to create a sharper photo.

It looks like the feature isn’t too far off now. Today Adobe released the above video that offers a sneak peek at what the tool actually looks like inside an upcoming version of Photoshop. Just as with the demo from two years ago, this video will drop many jaws.
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The Android operating system has been expanding beyond the world of smartphones and into the realm of “smartcameras” as of late, but did you know that by doing so it has simply gone full circle? That’s right: Android was originally intended for digital cameras rather than for phones.
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From the very first version of Lightroom in 2006, Adobe has been releasing public betas prior to shipping to make sure that the final product has all of the kinks worked out, and this year is no exception. Earlier today, Adobe released the public beta of its upcoming Lightroom 5, complete with video and photo examples of a few exciting new features. Read more…

Nikon released software development kits (SDKs) for its SLRs some time ago, allowing for developers to create software that play nice with Nikon cameras. Using the company’s DSLR SDKs, savvy programmers can develop software that controls camera functions such as aperture, shutter speed and even shutter release.

Unfortunately, Nikon’s SDKs are notoriously difficult to work with. But if you’re just dying to control your SLR from your computer, SourceForge user Thomas Dideriksen has kindly done the heavy lifting for you by putting together an open source C# wrapper library that allows you to do just that.
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Following on the heels of a similar announcement by Adobe itself, design marketplace Creative Market has announced that it too has set up an in-app marketplace for Photoshop users. Out now, Creative Market’s Photoshop extension allows users to browse and buy from the company’s massive catalog of templates, fonts, infographics and more without ever leaving the comfort of Photoshop. Read more…

Steganography is the art of passing secret messages in a way that most observers wouldn’t detect even though the message is in plain view. Unlike cryptography, which attempts to transmit messages as nonsense, steganography uses security through obscurity, relying on the fact that most people aren’t looking for secret messages in ordinary things. Passing notes in invisible ink would be one example.

Owen-Campbell Moore, a computer science researcher over at Oxford University, has been developing a method for passing secret messages through Facebook photo sharing.
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