macOS New App Release – Pixelmator Pro 1.4

Product Announcements – The Pixelmator Team of Vilnius, Lithuania has released Pixelmator Pro 1.4 Hummingbird, a major update to the award-winning Mac image editor designed to make powerful professional tools accessible to everyday users. The update introduces an incredible new Photos extension, bringing the entire Pixelmator Pro app to Photos, includes an all-new Zoom tool, an improved Crop tool, and much more.

“This is undoubtedly one of the craziest and best updates we’ve ever released,” said Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator Team. “The Photos app is a fantastic photo management tool and a great photo editor. And now, with the amazing new Pixelmator Pro extension, it becomes an incredibly powerful layer-based image editor as well.”

The new extension for the Photos app includes every single tool and feature from Pixelmator Pro, integrating the entire app within Photos. This includes the machine learning-powered photo enhancement tools, nondestructive adjustments and effects, support for editing RAW photos, full support for layer-based editing, and more. So you can edit photos using a complete collection of advanced image editing tools without ever leaving the Photos app.

Changes made with the Pixelmator Pro extension can be saved directly to the Photos library, with layers and other nondestructive edits automatically preserved in an associated Pixelmator Pro document. Whenever an image previously edited with the Pixelmator Pro extension is reopened, layers, adjustments, and effects are restored automatically. And thanks to iCloud support, Pixelmator Pro files saved to the Photos library automatically sync between devices, so users can start editing on one device and continue on another.

The new Zoom Tool, with its beautiful, incredibly responsive navigator, adds a way to zoom and pan around images with ease. And the Crop tool now includes a Delete mode, the ability to crop to custom pixel sizes, and redesigned crop presets that free up even more space for viewing and editing images.

The major update also brings a number of additional new features and improvements, such as the ability to drag and drop layered files directly into existing images, refreshed Slice and Paint tool presets, image size templates for a variety of devices, significant performance improvements for documents with a large number of layers, and a whole lot more.

Pricing & Availability
Pixelmator Pro 1.4 Hummingbird is available today exclusively from the Mac App Store as a free update for existing users, for $39.99 for new customers, or with an upgrade discount for owners of the original Pixelmator.

macOS New App Release – WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro for Mac

Product Announcements – WidsMob Technology Ltd. (WidsMob) of Copenhagen, Denmark has released WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro for Mac. WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro is the upgrade version of WidsMob InstaBeauty. It adds face key points for users to retouch portraits and optimize all the skin areas accurately. The built-in portrait makeup and face skin retouching filters are easy to use. All photo retouching can be finished in clicks.

The portrait editing program is capable to touch up all details of portrait images. Users can optimize and adjust the desired skin area, enhance different aspects of portrait and have a stunning makeup. There are 3 different presets levels to enhance the portrait editing effects. The before and after parameters can show the comparison directly.

WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro offers all-rounded Portrait Enhancement, including remove eye circles, blemish removal, brighten eyes, deepen smile, lift cheeks, slim face, enlarge eyes, enhance nose, remove shine and whiten teeth. Each parameter can be adjusted in 3 different levels. Thanks to the artificial intelligence, users can adjust key points to make the portrait editing more accurate.

Furthermore, WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro provides various portrait edit makeups. Users can adjust the blush, lipstick, colored contacts, eye color, eye lashes, eye liners, eye shadow and more. There are multiple blush modes with different colors, dozens of color contacts with different intensity and tens of eye shadows with different positions and colors. It is easy to get the desired makeup with simple operations.

Full Skin Management
* Automatically detect/manually adjust the skin areas.
* Smooth skin/brighten skin in 3 different levels or manually.
* Change skin tone with different colors.

Portrait Makeup Solutions
* 7 blush makeup modes with different colors and intensity.
* Custom lipsticks with different colors, intensities and glosses.
* 14 different colored contacts eye with stunning design.
* 7 different eye makeup modes in different colors.
* Dozens of eye lashes in different colors and intensity.
* Dozens of eyeliners in different colors and intensity.
* Tens of eye shadows with different positions, colors, intensities and glitters.

Custom and Apply Presets
* 10 default presets to apply portrait touchup with ease.
* Custom and save the presets with different parameters.
* Apply the preset to all the portrait images within one click.

Other Portrait Editing Features
* Detect all portraits within one image.
* Detect and adjust all the portrait points.
* Export the touched portraits in high quality.
* Lock face to prevent more than on portraits being retouched mistakenly.
* Apply portrait touchup effects in batch.
* Work as a plug in version for Photos.

WidsMob InstaBeauty Pro version 2.1 has fixed exporting issues and updated the icon. With the advanced face detection technology, the portrait retouching and makeup will be easier and funnier.

Language support: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish

System requirements:
* OS X 10.10 or later
* 64-bit processor

The product can be ordered through the website

macOS New app Release – Pixelmator Pro 1.3.4

Product Announcements – The Pixelmator Team of Vilnius, Lithuania has released an update to Pixelmator Pro, adding a new Core ML-powered feature that intelligently matches the colors of different photos or objects using a machine learning algorithm trained on millions of professional photos. The update also brings a new Free Transform feature to freely resize, distort, and transform layers, and includes a number of additional improvements and fixes.

“With Pixelmator Pro, our goal is to create the most powerful image editor that absolutely anyone can use,” said Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator Team. “Our extensive collection of color adjustments gives users all the tools they need to bring out the best in any photo. And ML Match Colors makes these tools accessible even to complete beginners who want to quickly match the look of one photo to another.”

The new ML Match Colors feature lets anyone match the look of one photo to another in an instant. And it couldn’t be simpler to use. To match the style of a photo, users simply drag and drop images onto the Color Adjustments pane. ML Match Colors then analyzes the contents of both the source and target photo to identify any objects, detects their colors and lighting, and applies a range of color adjustments to the target photo. 37 individual adjustments in total, such as Brightness, Shadows, Highlights, White Balance, and Selective Color, are used for color matching.

ML Match Colors is also available in the Edit menu as Paste and ML Match Colors, letting users automatically color match any objects when pasting them into a new image. ML Match Colors has been trained on 20 million professional photographs and is powered by Core ML, delivering unmatched image analysis speed and performance.

Another headline feature in the update is the new Free Transform tool, which adds a number of different ways to transform objects, including the ability to skew, distort, and change the perspective of any layer. Along with perspective transformations, the Free Transform tool lets users resize individual layers using 3 specialized layer scaling algorithms – Bilinear, useful for photographic images, Lanczos, for images with small and intricate details, and Nearest Neighbor, which is most often used for pixel art.

Pricing and Availability:
Pixelmator Pro 1.3.4 is available today exclusively from the Mac App Store as a free update for existing users or for $39.99 (USD) for new customers.

macOS New app Release – WidsMob FilmPack for macOS

Product Announcements – WidsMob of Hangzhou, Zhejiang has released WidsMob FilmPack for macOS. WidsMob FilmPack applies stunning analog photo filters for photos of Digital cameras and smartphones. It helps photographers make analog photos more attractive with colors, contrast, and gain. There are 4 different color rendition profiles, 28 types of camera profiles, 15 options for color modes, and 25 film gain profiles. Users can find a suitable photo filter for vintage rendering or having fun with colors.

The film analog software reproduces classic films, such as Kodak Ektachrome, Fuji Velvia 50, Fuji Superia, Ilford HPS 800 and more. It should be an all-in-one filmpack with 4 different color renditions, vibrant and dramatic color for Color Positive Film, classic and nostalgic for Color Negative Film, vintage-inspired Black and White Film, and special color rendering Cross Processed Film. It just rediscovers the stunning photo effects of analog film.

Users can get color rendition profile, color mode setting (contrast, saturation, special effect), and up to 20 film grains to create a visual beauty gallery. It brings out the nuances in the color rendering photos, which photographs can select the classic one accordingly. Even for the Black and white photographs, WidsMob FilmPack is able to reproduce hundreds of results with different profiles and contrasts easily.

Analog film grain is essential to give a vintage aspect for the digital images. What is more important, it also makes them look in a different texture. The film is developed by the world’s most reputable processing laboratories and is then subjected to high-resolution digitization in order to measure the film response and to extract the grain matrices. Not only for the original Film Grains of the camera profiles but also adjust the size and intensity to make the effects special. Just apply the film grains for the digital photos within one click to make everything different.

All types of RAW images are supported. The Before-and-After mode enables photographs to enjoy an instant preview for the photo filters. The one-click feature can restore the photos to the default setting or original status. The Zoom feature is also useful to check the details for the stunning effects.

WidsMob is a professional application software developer located in Hong Kong with users from all over the world. WidsMob is dedicated to bringing people great software to make life smarter and simpler. At present, the program is available for all Mac versions on the official site and Apple Store.

macOS New App Release – GraphicConverter 10.7

Product Announcements – Independent developer, Lemke Software GmbH of Peine, Germany has released GraphicConverter 10.7, an important update to their popular image editing utility for macOS. The utility has become known as the “Swiss Army Knife” of image editing applications and allows users to convert any of over 200 graphic file formats into any of almost 80 other graphics formats.

GraphicConverter’s 1.5 million users around the globe will appreciate the new features version 10.7 brings to the app. New features include a dehaze batch action, a new service to convert JPEG files to 75 or 85 percent, the ability to import exported LR keywords into the keyword palette, and much, much more.

“GraphicConverter has long been one of the most popular image editing utilities available for the Mac,” says Thorsten Lemke, founder of Lemke Software GmbH. “This new version builds on GraphicConverter’s already great feature set, providing both new and improved features for our users.”

New Features Include:

• Browser context menu: append path to iptc caption
• Offset GPS date/time stamp command
• Dehaze batch action
• Clear of keyword palette
• Import of exported LR keywords into keyword palette
• Sort by rating & aspect ratio and resolution & pixel size added
• Sort folders separate
• A new service: convert to JPEG at 75 or 85 percent
• Sliders in dialogs moveable by scrollwheel
• Image context menu entry for animation: save frames as separate GIFs/PNGs
• Browser context menu: copy exif date to other metadata dates

GraphicConverter has long been one of the most respected image utility tools available for the Mac. Apple was even impressed enough to have included GraphicConverter as a default app on many of their Mac models.

While Lemke Software added several great new features to version 10.7, the improvements didn’t stop there, as the new version also offers considerable improvements to the app’s previous features.

Feature Improvements Include:

• Display of autofocus point of some FUJI cameras
• Open with application will be called with all selected files at once (macOS 10.10 or later)
• Option to disable slideshow effects on 10.13.x or earlier
• Option to disable display of zoom during slideshow zoom
• Find duplicate resolves aliases and symlinks
• Improved ratio display in browser
• Localizations

As always, GraphicConverter 10.7 is the best way available on the Mac to capture, import, convert, and export images. The app also offers power image editing and slideshow capabilities and provides color management profiles, 3D image support and much more.

Feature Include:

• Ability to open files in 200 graphics formats
• Ability to export to almost 80 different formats
• Import directly from camera (also RAW)
• Catalog generation (web, print, picture)
• TWAIN and image capture interface for scanners
• Direct support of the photo services Flickr and locr
• Graphical file and picture browser
• Slide show functions
• Powerful batch processor feature
• Support for Applescript
• Express picture enhancement function
• Powerful functions for editing pictures
• Advanced effects and filters
• Plug-in architecture
• Color management with ColorSync and ICC profiles
• 3D image support
• Supports the latest technologies of the different Mac OS versions
• Multilingual (12 available languages)
• Image verifier
• Ability to browse local copies on cloud services like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud, and Google Drive

“We’ve made GraphicConverter 10.7 easier to use than ever, thanks to the informative tutorial videos we’ve posted on out YouTube page,” continues Thorsten. “Users who would like to try GraphicConverter to make sure it fits their needs can download a trial version and follow along with the video tutorials. Plus, version 10.7 is a totally free update to any version 10.x customers.

GraphicConverter 10.7 provides the best way to capture, import, convert, and export images on the Mac. The utility’s graphic conversion features alone are worth the price of the app. Users are encouraged to try GraphicConverter today.

System Requirements:

• Requires OS X 10.9 or higher
• 64-bit processor
• 145 MB

Pricing/Availability:
GraphicConverter 10.7 is only $39.95 USD (or an equivalent amount in other currencies) and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Photography category. It can also be directly purchased online from the Lemkesoft website. GraphicConverter 10.7 is a free update for all customers of version 10.x. Upgrades from older versions of GraphicConverter are available for $25.95 USD.

macOS New App Release – WidsMob PhotoVault

 

Product Announcements – WidsMob of Hongkong, China has released WidsMob PhotoVault, their photo vault program for Mac. WidsMob PhotoVault has different security levels to encrypt and hide photos. All photos are locked up and protected with password protection. It custom slideshows with loop and duration automatically.

Users can group photos with Favorites and different albums with ease. Furthermore, it is supported to export hidden photos to Email and save those encrypted photos to a computer. Moreover, WidsMob PhotoVault has more editing features to make the whole process easy.

All the sensitive photos can be well encrypted and organized by WidsMob PhotoVault. There is no extra technology background or storage space required. The encrypted photos will be moved into the private database. Others will not find encrypted photos in the original destination folder. None third-party application could find those photos either. What’s more, the image encryption software supports to decrypt and export any hidden photo without restrictions.

Here are some useful features about the photo vault software:

• Double security protection for the password and photos.
• Encrypted photo data.
• Quick screen lock.
• Batch import photos/folders at lightning spend.
• Remove original photos after importing.
• Add photos to Favorites.
• Import photos into album directly.
• Order by name, date, type, and size.
• Create Albums right in the App.
• Add photos to an album.
• Batch export photos.
• Email photos.
• Support nearly all image formats.
• Fast photo viewing experience with in-app photo viewer.
• Support JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF and over 50 RAW image formats.

Pricing and Availability:
WidsMob PhotoVault is just $12.99 USD (or an equivalent amount in other currencies) and is available from the Widsmob website. A free trial version is available for download.

macOS New App Release – Pixelmator Pro 1.3 Prism

Product Announcements – The Pixelmator Team of Vilnius, Lithuania has released Pixelmator Pro 1.3 Prism, a major update to the award-winning Mac image editor designed to make powerful professional tools accessible to everyday users. The update introduces a range of great new features – such as layer color tags, filtering and search, clipping masks, and quick opacity and blending controls – that make creating advanced illustrations and designs easier than ever before.

“We created Pixelmator Pro with the goal of making the most powerful professional image editing tools accessible to pros and beginner users alike,” said Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator Team. “And this major update brings a number of handy new features that make creating advanced illustrations and designs easier than ever, whether you’re a long-time pro or a first-time user.”

Thanks to a number of brand new layer organization features, Pixelmator Pro is now even better suited to creating complex designs and intricate, multi-layered illustrations and artworks. Color tags give users more flexibility to organize designs by tagging important or related layers. Layer filtering makes it possible to temporarily filter out layers from the layer list according to layer type or color tag. And the new search feature gives users an instant way to find any object, even in the most layer-rich compositions.

This update also brings clipping masks, allowing users to clip the contents of one layer to the outline of another. This is an essential tool for many digital artists and designers and makes it possible to create perfect masks using existing objects in a design. What’s more, in Pixelmator Pro, clipping masks can be created from any layer at all – whether it’s an image, some text, a layer group, or even a nested shape, allowing unrivaled levels of flexibility.

Pixelmator Pro 1.3 Prism, the third major Pixelmator Pro update since the app was released just over a year ago, includes a range of additional improvements, such as a more nondestructive editing workflow and improved support for exporting Photoshop documents, as well as other fixes to keep the app running smoothly. Pixelmator Pro is available on the Mac App Store.

macOS New App Release – Pixelmator Pro 1.2.4

Product Announcements – The Pixelmator Team of Vilnius, Lithuania has updated Pixelmator Pro to version 1.2.4, which adds a redesigned Color Balance adjustment inspired by professional color grading tools, the ability to resize images using different scaling algorithms, two new Automator actions, and more. Pixelmator Pro was also awarded the Mac App of the Year award on Apple’s Best of 2018 list.

“It’s been an incredible year for Pixelmator Pro,” said Saulius Dailide, one of the founders of the Pixelmator Team. “We’ve shipped so many great updates since the 1.0 release with so many great new features, making Pixelmator Pro better and better with each release. And we’ve just been honored with a Mac App of the Year award as well, which is a fantastic way to close out the year.”

The redesigned Color Balance adjustment brings a much more fluid and intuitive way to adjust the color balance of photos, inspired by professional video grading and editing tools. Video professionals need the fastest and easiest way to get exact color looks and the wheel interface is a favorite among them. It lets you easily add a color tint to the shadows, midtones, and highlights of an image, also adjusting the brightness and saturation of colors in each range. And Color Balance can now be improved automatically using a Core ML-powered algorithm trained on 20 million professional photos. Which makes creating beautiful photographs using Pixelmator Pro easier than ever.

With this latest update, users can now resize images using scaling algorithms designed for specific uses in image editing. The Lanczos algorithm better preserves small details when downsizing, Nearest Neighbor lets users resize pixel art while keeping the signature blocky look, while Bilinear is useful for resizing photographic images as it’s fast and naturally softens edges. Pixelmator Pro 1.2.4 also includes a range of additional new features, like two new Pixelmator Pro actions for the Automator app, an improved Grain adjustment that adds film-style grain in a more natural and realistic way, as well as other improvements and fixes.

On Tuesday, Pixelmator Pro was also honored with the Mac App of the Year award for making “a huge range of pro-level image-editing tools accessible to all.” The award came almost exactly a year after Pixelmator Pro was initially released on the Mac App Store and crowns a busy year for the Pixelmator Team, which included many significant updates to Pixelmator Pro, the unveiling of a new photo editing app for iPad, and updates to the original Pixelmator apps on macOS and iOS.

macOS New App Release – Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter

Product Announcements – Joyoshare Studio of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, a first-class and creative multimedia software developer, has released its new product, Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter, aiming at helping users efficiently convert the special Live Photo files to more adoptable and popular formats, such as GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and WEBP, on Windows and Mac without hassle and therefore making Live Photo shareable and viewable on any device.

Live Photo, a camera feature firstly introduced for iPhone 6S/6S Plus, can record both audio and motion for up to 3 seconds MOV video and shoot a static JPG picture at the same time. More precisely, this function has the ability to capture 1.5 seconds before and 1.5 seconds after the photo. For Android users, Live Photo is made up of one MP4 video and one JPG image similarly. However, not everyone can enjoy and view this kind of funny Live Photo directly, expect iPhone 6/6s & later iDevice users as well as limited Android users. This is why here comes Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter to release users free from sharing Live Photo files to Facebook, Twitter, Android phone, etc. without viewing problem.

By adopting advanced image encoding technology, Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter not only allows users to convert Live Photo to GIF, the most widely-used image format, but also enables users to convert Live Photo to still images, including JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, and WEBP. Effectively, this intelligent tool offers the possibility to converting Live Photos to GIF, JPG, BMP, etc. in batch so that users can import multiple files at a time and convert them to the desired format with only one simple click.

“To provide users with a more comprehensive solution, Joyoshare specifically added preview and edit function to Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter.” said Daniel, the R&D team director of Joyoshare. “Now users can completely benefit from this unique feature, previewing Live Photo in real time and selectively choosing designated frames before conversion, which is more in line with users’ actual needs.”

As a versatile and excellent Live Photo converter in the current market, Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter is also capable of adjusting quality and resolution according to users’ preference. Besides, users are permitted to decide whether to keep original aspect ratio before converting Live Photo to JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, etc. at their own will. Crucially, Joyoshare makes it simple to finish Live Photo to GIF or still conversion within a few clicks. Import Live Photos, choose definite frames and output format and start conversion. Everything is done quickly.

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 Sierra, 10.13 High Sierra and 10.14
• 1 GHz Intel processor or above
• At least 512 MB physical RAM

Pricing and Availability:
Joyoshare LivePhoto Converter is reasonably priced at $9.95 for a single license copy with free support and update. More license types, including $19.95 for 2-5 PCs with lifetime free update and support, and $29.95 for unlimited use, are supported as well. LivePhoto Converter can be purchased through the website.

Star Wars Scenes Recreated with Toys

Star Wars – My son sent me a link to the article “It’s no Jedi mind trick, these iconic Star Wars scenes are all toys” today. I think that this photographer has put together some amazing photos considering he is only using Star Wars toys and a little Photoshop magic to create his photos. If you are a Star Wars fan you will likely enjoy them.

I included one of the photos from the article above, but if you follow the link to the article there are 39 more photos you can view.