Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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The Digital Photographer's Software Guide
DIGITAL SHO for fixing exposures, DIGITAL ROC to restore color balance, and the
related DIGITAL GEM Airbrush Professional for removing skin blemishes. As well as
noise reduction, DIGITAL GEM offers soft-focus effects and image sharpening, and lets
you remove line-screening patterns from scanned images, and JPEG compression artifacts.
The professional version of DIGITAL GEM is twice as expensive but adds a new
grain/noise reducing algorithm, 16-bit support, and an improved user interface with a
bigger noise preview screen.
Comments
DIGITAL GEM was developed originally by Applied Science Fiction of Austin, Texas,
which Kodak acquired in 2003. There is always a danger that a small product (or even
a whole product line) might get lost in a multi-billion dollar company, and certainly
the branding of this one reduces it to the standard Kodak style. It should be more distinctive,
having won both the DIMA “Innovative Product and American Photo Editor’s
Choice Award” (Software) in 2003. Tests and reviews have shown it to be both effective
and easy to use.
Version: Kodak DIGITAL GEM 2.0 (2008)
Plugs into: Photoshop 5.0 and up; Photoshop Elements 1.0 and up; Windows only—Paint Shop
Pro 7 and up
OS: Windows 98 and up; Macintosh OS 8.6 and up
RAM: 256MB
Supported file formats: As host
Price level: Approx. $50, Pro edition $100
Address: Kodak’s Austin Development Center (KADC), Austin, TX, United States
www.asf.com
Neat Image
Vendor: ABSoft
Purpose: Highly automated noise reduction software with device noise profiling
Description
Neat Image has some of the most advanced algorithms for noise reduction. The vendor
claims it goes beyond even the relatively new wavelet-based methods offered by other
vendors. The Neat Image software builds “device noise profiles,” thereby adapting noise
reduction to the specific imaging device such as a DSLR or a scanner. These noise profiles,
not unlike the concept of color profiles, are now available for many different devices
including cameras from Canon, Casio, Contax, Epson, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Kyocera,
Leica, Konika-Minolta, Mamiya, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Ricoh, Samsung,
Sanyo, Sigma, Sony, and Toshiba.