The WestLicht Photographic auction is now available for online bidding. The auction is Saturday, May 23rd 2009. You can view all the 950 lots in high resolution-images and leave bids through their secure server. They also have an online facility for you to apply for telephone bidding. For detailed information please visit their 'Information for Bidder' section on the webpage.

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I receive all too many reports from people who have purchased a new dSLR camera that they cannot open the camera Raw files, or their computer doesn’t recognize the file format. The same thing with Adobe Photoshop, Elements and even LightRoom users, they can’t access the images from the Raw files their camera saves. Sometimes it as simple as downloading the latest upgrades of Adobe Camera Raw from the Adobe web site. But too often it’s is not that easy. Older Photoshop versions for instance do not support the latest versions of upgrades to Camera Raw, or even the computer operating system will not support these newest dSLR Raw file formats.

Nik Software and Shutterbug have teamed up to bring you a chance to use the wide variety of Nik software products and to enter one of the images you create in a contest that offers some very nice prizes.  In my way of thinking the contest is the gravy; the real  treat here is getting to use demo versions of software like Nik’s Viveza, Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro on your images. Let’s see how all this works.

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For this year's auction WestLicht has succeeded in being able to offer a selection of around 900 lots of the highest quality in their Vienna auction house. As with previous auctions numerous unique cameras and classics of photographic history that will appeal equally to institutional collections, dealers and private collectors with a feeling for something special are to be auctioned.

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Phase One A/S and Mamiya Digital Imaging, Ltd. are proud to announce that Phase One is making a significant financial investment in Mamiya Digital Imaging, thus becoming a major shareholder in the company behind the Mamiya brand of medium format cameras and lenses. Terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.

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Internationally acclaimed photographer, Harry Benson, will be the featured speaker at the May meeting of PAI (Photography and Imaging) at the landmark National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, in Manhattan.  The luncheon meeting will be held on Thursday, May 21st from 12 noon to 2:00 PM and is open to PAI members and their guests.

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Olympus was kind enough to lend me a 150mm f2.0 Zuiko lens for some personal shooting. I recently bought a new E-520 at an incredible price because it’s a discontinued model. Even so, it has a rich feature set, Image Stabilization and weighs slightly more than a well-dressed chicken taco. It also offers Live View, Dust Reduction and Wireless Flash. On close-out, this DSLR body cost me about the same as a high-end point-and-shoot.

I have been preoccupied now and for some time by the challenge of defining an affordable platform for inputting digital photographs and then printing them with matched color and density to an LCD display image. There are quite a few LCD display choices at $1,500 and up which support both color and density print matching with a color managed workflow. But an affordable consumer LCD display ($300) has been the elusive goal of a lot of searching. And from what I have heard from industry insiders is that the major display manufacturers in the immediate future are cutting back on their support for high-end, niche pro-graphics market displays.

Nik Software announced today that Color Efex Pro 3.0, its popular digital photographic filters for retouching and creative enhancements, is now available for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and higher. The update is free to current owners of Color Efex Pro 3.0.

“We are very pleased to offer for Lightroom users two of our most popular products, Viveza and Color Efex Pro 3.0,” said Michael J. Slater president and CEO of Nik Software. “Now photographers using Lightroom can utilize our unique Color Efex Pro filters and take advantage of our U Point technology to selectively apply enhancements without the need for any complicated masks.”

Color Efex Pro 3.0 installs as a plug-in for Lightroom 2.3, itself a free update from earlier versions and available for download at www.adobe.com/downloads/updates. Once installed, Color Efex Pro 3.0 is accessible via the Lightroom Photo>Edit In… menu. Edits made using the plug-in within Lightroom are non-destructive in nature, with edits applied automatically to a newly generated TIFF file and not the original. It also takes advantage of Lightroom and its efficiencies for every day tasks, like the ability to edit multiple images in one session, saving time for photographers.

Color Efex Pro 3.0 filters are the leading photographic filters for digital photography. Widely used by many of today's professional photographers, the award-winning Color Efex Pro includes U Point technology for precise selective control and offers 52 traditional and stylizing filters that let users quickly and easily perform high quality retouching, color correction and creative enhancements. For more product information including video lessons visit: www.niksoftware.com/colorefexpro.

All Nik Software plug-in products now feature Nik Software’s patented U Point technology which revolutionizes the way photographers edit. U Point powered Control Points give photographers precise selective editing functions without the need to create complicated selections and layer masks. This innovative technology is easy to use and works directly on the image, empowering photographers to make selective enhancements in a fraction of the time needed by using other methods. 

Nik Software also announces that all of its remaining photographic filter products are being updated to support Lightroom. The next plug-in will be Silver Efex Pro. As these Lightroom-compatible versions become available, current owners will receive updates free of charge. All products are expected to be available by the end of the second quarter of 2009.

ACD Systems International Inc. has developed a new, convenient way for consumers to work with their digital picture frames, as well as other portable image devices, with the release of ACDSee Picture Frame Manager, a user-friendly software program that provides a better overall experience for digital picture frame owners. Compatible with both PC and Mac computers, Picture Frame Manager allows effortless management of digital frame images in just a few simple steps:

Picture Frame Manager connects the computer with any removable memory device such as a picture frame, SD card, USB drive or other portable display that mounts as a mass storage device. Once connected, drag-and-drop features make loading, moving, changing or deleting images a snap.To increase memory capacity, the software optimizes images for frames of any size or resolution, even for today's high-definition television screens. Because each image is set to the correct resolution for each frame, up to 10 times the amount of images can be stored and displayed.

Picture Frame Manager makes waiting for photos to display a thing of the past. All types of decodable image files, including TIF, GIF, PNG and RAW-format files from today's DSLR cameras, are converted automatically to JPEG format, ensuring smooth, professional transitions every time. Users can manage multiple

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