kremalicious

Today some informations about Google’s new open source browser called Google Chrome came up. First published as a comic on Blogoscoped.com and confirmed by Kara Swisher, Google Chrome will be a WebKit-based browser with a new JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8 and with Google Gears included.

Google Chrome has a different UI-Design compared to other browsers especially regarding tabs. Google Chrome tabs will be on top of the address bar so every tab has its own address bar. Beside that every tab will run its own process to improve stability.

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LightZone 3.6
This update adds expanded RAW support to the following cameras: Canon EOS 450D, Canon EOS 1000D, Fuji Finepix S100FS, Nikon D60, Nikon D700, Olympus E-420, Olympus E-520, Pentax K20D, Pentax K200D, Samsung GX20 Sony A200, Sony A35

Edit for Aperture 1.35
The 12 module Aperture edit plug-in comes with improved interface and speed.

Aperture Assistant 1.0.62
Aperture Assistant now works with Aperture 2.1.1 and adds numerous optimizations and bugfixes. The thumbnails are now exported up 50-100% faster and the whole Aperture Assistant now launches twice as fast.

Tiffen Dfx Digital Filter Software 2.0
This version features exclusive multiple masking and layering capabilities without having to exit the plug-in, plus more than 1,000 new filters and effects and local language menu. The exclusive EZ Mask feature, one of seven mask types, allows users to easily create precise multiple masks with just a few quick strokes.

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The successor of the EOS 40D is (almost) here: Canon officially announced the Canon EOS 50D along with the new lens Canon EF-S 18-200/3.5-5.6IS. The EOS 50D and the new lens will be both available in October 2008, Canon says.

The EOS 50D comes with an CMOS APS-C sized sensor (crop factor 1.6) with 15.1 megapixels. Being Canons first DSLR with the new DIGIC 4 image processor the EOS 50D can burst 6.3 shots per second with improved image quality.

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There’s good news for all you Mac OS X Leopard GUI Themer out there. While there’s Panic’s Candybar for icon customization in OS X there is no application to alter all the user interface elements of Leopard. In Tiger there was an application called ShapeShifter but since the whole GUI in Leopard changed it stopped working.

Architect and Façade to the rescue: SlightlyPretentious announced its “Theming made easy”-application Architect is coming as a public beta next sunday (is it 08/31 or 09/07?) on Wednesday, September 3rd. Icon Designer Laurent Baumann already posted a new sweet application icon for this app a while ago and we can expect a nice and good looking solution for theming and customization in Leopard. Head over to the Screencast and see Architect and its UI in action.

While Architect will help you customizing Leopards UI and building themes out of your modifications, Façade (Laurent’s icon of it) will help you switch (and manage?) the themes. But currently there’s no word on the SlightlyPretentious website about this application.

Slightly Pretentious made Architect available as a public beta while claiming Façade will be coming in october. But Façade already has its own nice website.

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Phase One Capture One 4.1.2
A free update which offers the benefits of Lens+ and Focus+ lens correction support to Phase One digital back owners with Hasselblad H, Hasselblad V and Contax mounts.

Maperture 1.0.1
New plug-in for Aperture which lets you geotag your photos inside Aperture.

VueScan 8.4.82
Adds support for more scanners and improves infrared cleaning.

Aperture to Picasa Web Albums 1.4.2
This update adds support for exporting geotags, viewing album contents by double-clicking on an album cover and adds stability enhancements.

GalleryExport for Aperture 1.0.7b / GalleryExport for iPhoto 1.0.8b
Both new beta versions include stability and performance enhancements.

iMedia Browser 1.1.1
“Version 1.1.1 adds support for iPhoto events, multiple Aperture libraries, and the ability to manage custom folders in the source list. The application is now available in English, Danish, French, German, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese. There are also dozens of performance improvements and bugfixes in the release.”

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Earlier this month PictureCode finally released their noise reduction software Noise Ninja as an Aperture plug-in for Aperture 2.1 and above.

The results are just as amazing as they are with the Photoshop plug-in. But the Aperture plug-in uses a streamlined interface which differs from the photoshop version. But the functionality is the same.

You can download a trial version of Noise Ninja for Aperture (images are watermarked with a grid pattern when you save them) and give it a try. The Noise Ninja plug-in for Aperture is available as a part of the Pro Bundle (US$ 79.95) which includes the Photoshop and the Aperture plug-in. If you have an existing Pro Bundle license you can upgrade it for US$ 20 to include the Aperture plug-in license.

Interested in more Aperture plug-ins? Just have a look at my article First overview: Aperture 2.1 adjustment plugins have arrived to get an overview about what’s available at the moment or browse my blog by the Aperture plug-in tag. Additionally you can have a look at the brand new Apple website for all the Aperture plug-ins and ressources.

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Apple Aperture 2.1.1
MobileMe comes to Aperture with this update. As with every Apple software update this one “supports general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.”

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
Lightroom is now a native 64-bit app on Mac and Windows. John Nack has some highlights from this update and Tom Hogarty has every new feature and improvement.

Adobe Camera RAW 4.5
Along with Lightroom 2 a new version of Camera RAW was released which providesthe same rendering obtained in Lightroom 2.

Apple iPhoto 7.1.4
“Also addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues”. Beside that this update contains new holiday greeting card and postcard themes for use with Apple print products

Photoshop Automator Actions v3.7
Ben Long updated his Photoshop actions for Automator compatible with Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3

Pixelmator 1.2.2
New features include a live gradient tools and you can draw a straight or 45° line with shift. Beside that many improvements and bug corrections are included. The release notes with all new features and improvements are available here.

GalleryExport for iPhoto and Aperture 1.0.7b
Both updates for Aperture and iPhoto just include bug fixes.

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Beside a new version of Color Efex Pro for Capture NX, Nik announced a brand new plug-in for Photoshop and Aperture. Silver Efex Pro is a tool to create black & white images with the power and simplicity of the U-Point technology. You can easily fine tune portions of your black & white images. It’s also capable of emulating film grain and 18 different types of film while also providing 20 one-click preset styles. But Silver Efex Pro is also capable of color toning the image.

You can get a 15-day trial from Nik’s website. It can be purchased through Nik’s online store for US$199.95.

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I’m thrilled to announce that kremalicious.com now uses an iPhone optimized theme. When you browse this website with your iPhone everything will automagically switch to the new kremalicious iPhone theme which is simply called kremalicious{iPhone}. See those hip brackets?

How does it work?

When the website detects an iPhone or iPod Touch it will automatically switch to another freshly created theme which is absolutely seamless to the user. This detection is done by the wonderful slim iPhone Wordpress plug-in from ContentRobot which was slightly modified by me.

The theme itself makes heavy use of the -webkit-border-radius css option to display all the round corners. That’s why there are just four images at work in the whole theme which makes it load in no time even on EDGE connections. And because just the theme is switching all the content remain the same so you don’t have just a shortened mobile version of this website.

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Last week two new image editing plug-ins were announced for Aperture 2.1: The PTLens plug-in for correcting barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective and the Jade plug-in for automatic correction of color, levels and exposure.

The PTLens plug-in from ePaperPress was available as a Photoshop plug-in in the past and is well known for its lens pincushion, barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective correction abilities based on a lens model database similiar to Kekus’ LensFix CI plug-in.

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Here’s my DeliciousLinks list with my favorite links from the past weeks.

Be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next DeliciousLinks.

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As you may have noticed, kremalicious.com was a bit screwed in the last week and some of you have asked me via mail and twitter what exactly was wrong. So to satisfy the curious geek in you I will provide some informations about it.

It all started with a move of my whole website to new and shiny servers with PHP 5 running by my host. I didn’t heard of any incompatibilities between the latest Wordpress version running on PHP 5 and in fact Wordpress loves to use PHP 5. But somehow I wasn’t able to update my site neither over http or ftp. Since I can contact my host admins directly (thank you jpBerlin/Heinlein-Support!) this problem was addressed rather quickly. They just neglected to tell me that the server address for login also changed (I should have think of this too). So all my changes were applied to my Wordpress installation on the old server. Problem solved I thought.

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Apple has updated its latest operating system to version 10.5.4. As alway Apple recommends the update to all Mac OS X Leopard users. According to Apple this update adds support for more RAW formats to the whole system meaning you can use these new RAW formats in all Mac OS X applications based on Core Image (iPhoto, Aperture, Preview etc.). But at the moment it’s unclear which new RAW formats were added. Apple hasn’t updated the general RAW format compatibility list yet. According to Apple’s general RAW format compatibility list the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update incorporates the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility update 2.1 released in May. The cameras fully supported by this update and now also by the 10.5.4 update are: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D, Epson R-D1, Leaf AFi 7, Leaf AFi 6, Leaf AFi 5, Pentax K200D, Pentax K20D. Just the Epson R-D1s seem to be new to the list of supported cameras in OS X 10.5.4.

This update also addresses the issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server which could lead to data loss in previous versions of Leopard. Performance issues when using the Final Cut Studio applications with AirPort networks were addressed too.

The other changes include fixes for X11, L2TP VPN, AirPort, iCal, Safari, Spaces and Exposé. For a complete list of changes you can have a look at the corresponding Apple support article.

The update is available via Software Update for all Leopard users. Alternatively you can grab the update package from the Apple website (88MB) or the whole Combo update (561MB). The Leopard Server update is available too as standalane package (133MB) or as Combo update (677MB).

If you’re on Tiger and don’t want to update to Leopard you can grab the Security Update 2008-004 for Intel (128MB) or PowerPC (80MB) to just take advantage of the security related fixes.

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After the latest Digital Photo Professional update (DPP 3.4.1.1) revealed some evidence about an upcoming Canon EOS Rebel XS/1000D, Canon finally introduced this new entry-level DSLR this month. The EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D/Kiss F (full product specifications) is technically a hybrid between hardware and features found in Canon’s entry-level cameras from the past: the 7-point autofocus system comes from the XT/350D, the Digic III processor is the same as in the XSi/450D and the Live View feature is implemented with the same features as found in the XSi/450D.

With this DSLR Canon seems to open up a new class in their EOS system which is somehow below the former entry level cameras (XT/350D, XTi/400D) and the latest entry-level XSi/450D. It’s priced 200$ below Canons current or former entry-level DSLR XSi/450D and you can find a nice first review of this new DSLR over at Digital Photography Review.

Canon also introduced the new midrange Speedlite 430EX II, replacing the 430EX flash unit. This new Speedlite is now fully configurable with the Camera’s LCD menu and it got now a metal shoe. According to Canon the 430EX II also boasts 20% faster recycling times and is more silent while doing this. In Europe and in the USA the Speedlite should be available from the end of July.

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The All-in-one Aperture adjustment plugin bundle from Human Software is now called Edit for Aperture or just Edit. The new version 1.2 can now apply multiple layers of curves correction at once and the interface gets a new split image view. Also “different compatibility issues for PowerPC users” were fixed according to the release notes.

The ApertureEdit plug-in is a bundle of 12 different modules for denoising, lens fixing, framing, light effects and many more. All effects can be applied to one image at a time or to a whole set of images at once and according to Human Software Edit offers more than 4000 professional effects. Just head over to the product page to see all effects and features this plugin bundle is capable of.

The whole bundle is priced at US$ 299.95 and it’s available from Human Software’s Online Shop. Or you can buy just one single plug-in too which will cost you US$ 69.95 for each. There’s a trial version available too and if you don’t want to mail Human Software for the trial version you can download it from MacUpdate.

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Finally it’s here: Mozilla released the new Firefox 3 browser today while trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours.

Mozilla’s servers seem to be collapsed at the moment but you can download Firefox 3 within the next 24 hours to participate in the world record. After downloading you can create a personalized Firefox 3 Download Day certificate.

And if you wonder why you should download Firefox 3 right now this article might help:
Why You Should Download Firefox 3 Right Now

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Have you ever looked for a way to quickly add text to your images without photoshopping a watermark image first?

There’s a simple editing plug-in available for this task called Borders & Titles and as the name says you can add simple borders and text to your images within Aperture 2.1. It’s a sample plug-in provided by Apple and it’s fully functional. You can download it from Apple’s Developer Connection website without registration:

Aperture Edit Plugin - Borders & Titles

The downlaod package includes the source code too so you can adjust the plug-in if you’re able to code Cocoa. After downloading put the BordersAndTitles.ApertureEdit plug-in into /Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins and access the plug-in from Aperture.

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Here’s my DeliciousLinks list with my favorite links from the past weeks.

Be sure to subscribe to my RSS- or Atom-Feed so you won’t miss the next DeliciousLinks.

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According to Mozilla’s Developer Center the official release date for the Firefox 3 will be Tuesday, June 17th. The release day is also Mozilla’s Firefox Download Day where they try to set a Guiness World Record for the Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours and you can help them to achieve this goal simply by clicking or partying.

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Apple released a developer preview of the upcoming version of its web browser Safari to registered Developers. The Safari 4 Developer Preview is available for Mac OS X Tiger/Leopard and Windows. While the main changes are not visible to the user the most significant visible new feature is the overhauled Web Inspector.
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