Elizabeth Kartchner walks you through a few tricks to give your photos a ‘dreamy’ effect in Adobe Photoshop. Check it out!

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Alternatives to Adobe’s iconic software programs are a dime a dozen but legitimate solutions for those of you that are a bit more serious about your photo editing needs, but who may still sitting under a budget conscious umbrella, are a bit tougher to come by.

We think Corel may have exactly what you’re looking for with their new AfterShot  Pro software. The company has essentially produced an affordable ($100) program that offers a fairly powerful alternative to programs like Adobe’s Lightroom or ACD Systems ACDSee…

Well, we’ve raved in the past about the fun, creative and easy way the online video service Animoto allows you to create personal videos with your stills and video clips and now these geniuses are giving us a free mobile app for creating these masterpieces on the fly.

While creating and editing video on the iPhone’s small screen would seem to present some challenges, the Animoto app does all the work for you. All you need to do is pick the style, song, photos, and text you want…

Far be it from us to suggest you need some photo-retouching, but on the off chance you want to give your Facebook portraits a little makeover, Arcsoft has released a free app that does just that. Perfect365 is a Facebook app that delivers a few “one click” portrait fixes, plus the ability to make several manual corrections to your pics if you wish. You can apply make-up effects too.

The app is free for Facebook users and available on  iOS devices for a fee ($4.99 for iPad, $1.99 for…

NOTE: This is the second of a two-part blog post that provides a glimpse inside a research lab at Xerox where scientists and imaging specialists are developing the latest technology.  You are invited to play with technology currently being developed and provide valuable feedback directly to the research team. The first post can be found here.

Guest blogger Craig Saunders manages computer vision research at Xerox’s European research lab in Grenoble, France. Craig’s primary research interests lie in Machine Learning and the development and application of algorithms to a…

The phrase, “in less time with half the effort” is appealing not matter what you’re doing (ok, there are some exceptions). But when it’s attached to a photo editing program, we’re definitely interested. That’s what Topaz Labs has done with their update to the Photoshop plug-in dubbed Adjust 5 that focuses on advanced color and detail techniques.

Among the improvements in Adjust 5 are a “1-click workflow” with 107 new presets split into 7 convenient effect categories; a 4-in-1 selective brush used to dodge, burn, smooth, and brush out adjustments;…

If you are you’re in luck as DxO Labs recently announced their new DxO FilmPack v3.1 software that brings to digital “all the emotional impact of silver halide photography.” This silver halide simulation software adds 25 creative renderings and an improved user interface.

FilmPack actually applies the characteristic tint, grain and rendering of a traditional silver halide film type to any digital image, regardless of its source according to DxO.

This latest version of FilmPack also adds a resizable filmstrip-style preview system that allows you to better visualize renderings before…

Often spoken of as an alternative to Yahoo’s Flickr, the Toronto-based photography community 500px has released a free plug-in to work directly with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom image management and enhancement software.

The site says its tool lets you publish photos to a public profile or a personal portfolio; create and manage portfolio collections; edit titles, descriptions, and other metadata and sync it with a 500px profile or portfolio; read and write comments for photos from within Lightroom; and see individual photo statistics, such as views, favorites, votes and rating.

The developers note they made…

Even with the best image stabilization technology, your camcorder and camera videos can suffer from some stomach churning shake. Normally, there’s not much you can do about shake other than endure it but software dubbed Mercalli Easy from proDad promises to fix that. It’s a $15 program and you can download a free trial here.

The software uses a drag-and-drop interface and it makes the corrections automatically, so you don’t have to make any fine-tuned changes yourself (though there is some ability to do this…

Anyone who’s picked up a newsstand magazine knows (even if implicitly) that some diligent photo editor was at work smoothing out wrinkles in that fabulous looking model. Now, researchers at Dartmouth have created a tool that measures just how much retouching has been done to a particular photo.

Writes Brandon Keim:
The researchers started developing their model after learning of the British government’s plans to label photographic alterations in advertising. Psychologists have become vocally critical of such images: By employing an arsenal of retouching techniques, from unnaturally slimmed limbs to…