Appletell

Here comes the weekend again, and with the flood of new apps on the App Store, there are a ton of ways to not put all that free time to good use. Here’s a short list of free apps you may have missed. They’re fun, probably useless, but, best of all, free.

Get the list after the break.

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Avenza Systems, a popular mapping plug-in developer for Photoshop, has announced the updated version of the well received Geographic Imager plug-in. This plug-in allows Photoshop users with the necessary tools to edit and work with maps and satellite images.  It provides users with the ability to import GeoTIFF images, automatically tile and mosaic images spatially, and find locations based on images.

Version 2.0 adds the GeoCrop tool, letting users crop images based on specific geographical coordinates. The upgrade is free for users who have a Maintenance Subscription from Avenza. For those who owned version 1.0 but don’t have the subscription, an upgrade is $319. For new users, the plug-in costs $699. The software runs on G5- or Intel-based Macs with Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Version 2.0 works with either Photoshop CS2 or CS3.

Via [Macworld]

In the last two or so months, there has been a myriad of 3G iPhone rumors.  So many, in fact, it has really become hard to tell the plausible from the impossible.  There have been supposed leaked photos, new shipping manifest items, and dates supposedly confirmed.  Here is one more thing to add to your list of possible 3G iPhone confirmation. 

A post in a MacRumors forum by mrat93 exposes a hidden file in the iPhone SDK that could be a preview of the next iPhone.  The poster found a document titled iPhone.icns (shown above in comparison to the current iPhone).  The basic design of the icon shows little overall design change from the current version, which brings up the question about a possible bad Photoshop job that somehow snuck into the SDK.  Whatever it is, it is hard to tell the intended size, as the image above comparing the icon found and the current iPhone shows the new icon merely enlarged to a similar size to the current design.  Or it could just be another hoax.  I don’t currently posses an iPhone SDK to test this on, but if you wouldn’t mind confirming the existence of said iPhone.icns located at Developer>Platforms>Aspen.platform>Developer>Library>Xcode>Plug-ins>AspenSupport.xcodeplugin>Contents>Resources, please be sure to notify us in the comments.

Although this possible design does look pretty sweet, its nothing compared to Isamu Sanada’s iPhone 0805.

[Forum Post] Via [MacRumors]

Pixelmator, which claims to be “Image editing for the rest of us,” comes full of all sorts of different features for a relatively small price ($59.00) compared to other graphic design/image software of this nature such as Aperture and Photoshop.  If what the app contained before wasn’t enough to cause you to buy it, the new update may help.  The Pixelmator team has now released version 1.2 Draftsman of it’s beautiful, GPU powered image editor that comes as a free update for people who already use the product.  One of the key features in this update is new rulers tool.  This tool allows users to have even more control of the alignment on the layers and includes many different units such as pixels and centimeters.  This update also comes with the usual bug fixes as well as an addition of some more Automator actions.

Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team says, “Pixelmator opened the door for all users to explore their imaginative side through image creation, editing, and enhancement.  Now with powerful, but easy-to-use rulers, guides, curves, auto enhance, color balance, and polygonal lasso tools, Pixelmator provides users with an even wider range of creative opportunities.” Sounds great to me.

If you own Pixelmator and have downloaded the new version, let us know how it is.  The new features sounds extremely great and useful, and we love to hear your feedback!

For Web designers who need to upload things they make in photoshop, there is a a new easy plug-in for Photoshop called SiteGrinder 2 that lets you convert documents directly to Cascade Style Sheet (CSS) code right in Photoshop.  Both the basic and the pro versions the ability to upload everything from videos and slideshows to flash animations and interactive menus directly to a website, while keeping the same layouts and design exactly as it would appear in Photoshop

“We’re very excited to be releasing SiteGrinder 2 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard,” said Thomas Summerall, co-founder and President of Media Lab, Inc. “SiteGrinder 2 puts extremely powerful and easy-to-use webpage creation capabilities in the hands of our customers, letting them focus exclusively on their designs rather than on confusing webpage code. SiteGrinder 2 lets customers take ownership of their websites like never before, and at an extremely reasonable price point”.  The program costs $129 and $349 for basic and pro respectively. Media Lab, inc. and Sitegrinder have quite the reputation (Media Lab’s products, including SiteGrinder, have been used in multiple Hollywood movies, along with productions at Disney World), so hopefully the product will live up to its name.

Via [MacMegasite]

Surely you remember Adobe’s new web-based image editor, Photoshop Express.  Why would Adobe release part of Photoshop’s power for free to the public?  Simple.  They want to allow users to familiarize themselves with some of the features of PS for free in hopes that they will then go on to purchase the boxed version.  Now, it just so happens that one of Photoshop’s main competitors, Aperture, is made by Apple.  What is Apple doing to drive sales of their image editor software?  Frankly, not enough.  The real question is, what can they do?  If you ask me, it starts with .Mac Web Gallery, but first some important changes must be made to it.

1) Obviously, add image editing features to it. The image viewing on .Mac Web Gallery is slick and easy as you would expect from an Apple product, but it could be so much more.  Allow users to edit the photo while online just like Photoshop Express does, except with an Aperture style twist, and you’ve got yourself one awesome platform.  This, like PS Express, could give users a chance to see what Aperture is like without having to install a whole demo.  It could also prove to the user how functional Aperture can be, even at a limited level.  Who knows, maybe they will like the online version so much they will buy the desktop version which would be the whole goal in the first place.

2) Open it up! Currently, the only way to have a Web Gallery is to purchase a .Mac Membership, a $99.95 a year package.  Why limit this great service to just a select few who are willing to pay for it?  Steve Jobs said it himself in a 2007 press conference, people are moving away from hard media and onto digital media.  Apple should be helping them do this by easing the difficulty of the transition (i.e. making a service like this free).  Giving them a free, easy to use, feature limited (compared to the desktop version) Aperture online would be a great start to opening up this service and getting some hype behind Aperture.

3) Build a community around it. Everywhere you go, you hear it, “Companies need to start embracing social media.” In my opinion, Apple hasn’t done much to that effect.  They could use .Mac Web Gallery as a social service that would not only allow for image editing, but a better way of sharing media.  Sure, you can share your Gallery now by sending friends and family the link, but I mean at a higher level, such as being able to add friends.  Mr. Jobs also mentioned in that same keynote that the point of this service was to make “send [your media] to the world.” If so, make it easier and more fun to do that.  “If you build it, they will come.”

As with anything. there would be roadblocks in tackling such a task.  For example, how do deal with the extra traffic to the servers and how much space to give each user.  However, Apple has plenty of money to make this work and the outcome would be worth it.  In summary, all Apple needs to do it open up .Mac Web Gallery (also, untie it from the .Mac package) and add some more features to it.  If you’re from Apple, this would be great to have by, let’s say, June.  Sound good?  Awesome.

For all of those who truly believe that Aperture is sub-par (such as myself), the amazing alternative, Adobe Lightroom, has been updated to version 1.4. You may be asking yourself, “what magical powers does this delicious upgrade bring?”. And my answer to you is “printer driver bug fixes”. Exciting, huh? If you’re printer has been buggy with Lightroom and, specifically, Leopard, this update might just help you.

Also released today alongside the Lightroom update is an update to the Photoshop Camera RAW plug-in. The update brings support to many RAW formats, including the brand new Canon 450D, Nikon D60, and many more RAW formats. The Photoshop Camera RAW plug-in works with nearly all Adobe Photoshop apps, including Lightroom, so new RAW formats should work seamlessly with Lightroom as well. You can grab the Camera RAW 4.4 update here, and the Lightroom 1.4 update here.

Product Page [Lightroom 1.4] [Camera RAW plugin] Via [MacMinute]

We’ve all heard about how good the iPhone SDK is, but what about the downsides. Some major developers have been wanting to create apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but Firefox, Java and apps that run in the background may not be allowed. These highly valued apps may not be allowed to Apple’s Published APIs agreement.

“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”

This could mean that unless an app is using webkit, it may not be able to run. Mozilla developer Rob Sayre wrote a blog post about how Apple is banning Firefox, SpiderMonkey, Lisp, Lua, Ruby, Python, Rhino, Java, Opera, .NET and all the apps that rely on those frameworks and several others. This would mean that popular apps such as Photoshop, Word, Excel, Flash, Freetype, Zork, Quake, Unreal and Second Life would not run on the iPhone.

Though we do have to remember the “Beta” part of the name. Let’s hope that Apple will fix this flaws to block many technologies to run on the device.

Via [AppleInsider]

Apple brought its store down this morning and relaunched with a “major upgrade” to Aperture, its popular photo editing and management software.  Apple crammed over 100 new features into this release.  From its streamlined UI to a new image processing engine, Apple believes it has the very best.  To show it off, the release quote image professionals touting the new version and how important it is to their work.

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Pixelmator has grabbed a lot of attention since its release not long ago. It seems everyone in the Mac blogosphere has been talking about it - and therefore it wasn’t surprising to see it included in the MacHeist 2 bundle. Pixelmator has just been updated to version 1.1.2.

The patch offers quite a few bug fixes, and a short list of interface tweaks and improvements. The selection tools have been improved along with the color fills. The colors now work in real-time rather than “fake-time”. This update should apply to MacHeist users too, as their licenses should apply for the whole of version 1 of Pixelmator. This app is a great shareware alternative to Photoshop. It definitely doesn’t have all the pro stuff with it - but for most people - this is by far enough for image editing. It is also designed beautifully, and loads much faster than Adobe’s Photoshop.

The update is available for download now from the developer’s website. Alternatively, you can check for updates within Pixelmator.

Via [TUAW]