Joe McNally has a new book

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Joe McNally, winner of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photographers, has released his new book. "The LIFE Guide to Digital Photography" offers personal tips from his 30 year career. Joe was LIFE Magazine's last staff photographer and the author of two previous best selling photography books. I have ordered mine from Amazon and very much look forward to reading it.

HDR Efex Pro is now available

Today NIK Software announced the release of their new HDR Efex Pro processing software.
Here is their site, take a look. They are pricing the package out at $159.95 but I found a 15% discount offer on Rick Sammon's blog. You can find that here. When you get to the page just scroll down to get the discount code. NAPP members can get a 20% discount. Just go to the NAPP site and click discounts.

Nik also offers a free 15 day trial and an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm going to download the 15 day trial just to see if it's what they say it is. I do love the "U" point technology they offer with their other software packages, so this may be a real winner. I'll let you know.

Photomatix and NIK Announcements

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This image was taken in an art gallery in Portland, Maine. I couldn't resist the temptation of asking the artist if it would be OK. He was very appreciative and let me take this and a few others. I must send him a print of this one.

Photomatix has a release a free upgrade of it's hdr processing software package. It pretty much looks and works the same way with a few additions that I found helpful.

1. Selective de-ghosting tool. This is very cool.


2. Better noise reduction.


3. Ability to tone map a single image in 8 bit.


4. Some presets. Not so cool. Well maybe they give you a place to start but I would rather do my own.

The new de-ghosting is a bit confusing at first but once found it works great. There are a few videos on the web. You can find a really good one here

I have heard that HDR Efex Pro will be available from NIK very soon. I plan to download the trial version to see if it's all they say it is. I'll let you know what I think.