iPhone Photo Video » Aurora

Quickly fix your iPhone photos for free on your PC or Mac

Veit — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:53:23 +0000

We’ve been a fan of Lightcrafts’ Aurora for quite some time, mainly due to its best-in-class relight tool which allows you to adjust exposure in an image with the help of a very easy user interface. So I’m glad to see that Lightcrafts just announced Aurora Quick Fix, a free version of Aurora that allows users to quickly straighten, crop and relight an image and then upload it to their favorite social network.

Simply pick whichever of the 5 images on the top you like best to relight your image

Based on our experience with relight in Aurora and LightZone, we seriously recommend that you check out Aurora Quick Fix and add it to your arsenal of free photo tools. We’ve done so already.

Aurora Quick Fix is available for both PC and Mac.

A terrific iPhone picture made even better with some quick work in Aurora

Joe — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:32:51 +0000

Our good friend, Whitey Bluestein, is an avid photographer, shooting (up until recently anyway) with a Nikon D300 D-SLR, a Canon G10, a Blackberry and an iPhone. He is also a well-regarded strategic advisor to companies in the mobile application and services area and blogger on the mobile space. You can check out his blog and learn more about Whitey here. We hope he will grace us with some of his insights on the mobile arena and issues affecting the iPhone.

He sent us this iPhone picture he shot of the Sausalito marina at sunset. I figured I would use our sponsor’s software, Aurora, to try and do some quick edits. It literally took me less than 2 minutes to apply some edits to the contrast, lighting, color richness and exposure to get the ‘after’ image. I think you’ll agree that these edits make the picture even better.

Original Image:

And here’s the image after the quick touch-up in Aurora:

Great deal from our new sponsor: LightCrafts

Veit — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:56:34 +0000

We are very excited to announce that LightCrafts is sponsoring iPhonePhotoVideo.com during the month of August!

Why are we excited? I have been using LightZone, their photo editor for professional and serious hobby photographers, as part of my workflow for almost 2 years. While it has not replaced Photoshop as my everyday editor, I use it frequently for its excellent relighting capability on many of my images. Often, I also use Styles for applying certain image effects, such as high contrast or black&white.

Great News! Lightzone is now 20% off - see above for the discount code

If you are a more consumer-oriented photographer, you don’t need to feel left out. We have been a fan of LightCraft’s Aurora consumer photo editor ever since we first got our hands on it during its beta test. So give it a try!

20% off on Aurora, too - see above for the discount code

All discount codes are good through the end of August. So download your eval copy of Aurora or LightZone today!

3 great tools to edit/manage your iPhone photos on Windows

Veit — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:38:25 +0000

Friends often ask me about what tools they should use for editing and managing their iPhone and point&shoot photos on Windows. Here’s what I typically tell them:

1. Irfanview

If you try out just one free tool, this is the one. Irfanview is the best free image viewing tool on Windows. Viewing images, printing, converting them between different formats, slide shows, minor adjustments, thumbnails, image organizing, screen grabs – all of these can be done fast and easily. There’s hardly an image format that is not supported by Irfanview. Available in many languages. It’s not an image editor, though. For that, you should check out…

2. Aurora

I’ve been a fan of Light Crafts’ high-end LightZone editor due to its best-in-class relight tool. Aurora is their consumer photo editor which features relighting and much more in a very intuitive user interface. Rather than using sliders, curves or brushes, Aurora simply offers you to pick the best looking image from a series of 5 images that have the desired effect applied at various strengths. I like the approach for its elegant and very fast photo adjustments. In addition, Aurora handles everything from importing images to organizing, printing and uploading them to popular social networks. If I were to use a consumer photo editor, Aurora would be it. It’s a bargain at $19.95.

Simply pick whichever of the 5 images on the top you like best to apply the desired effect

3. GIMP

Do you need more than Aurora offers? Not ready to shell out hundreds of dollars for Adobe Photoshop, but want Photoshop-like functionality, so you are able to mask and do pin-point adjustments even on a per-pixel basis? Try GIMP, an open-source image editor. While its functionality is short of Photoshop’s, it is the best free Photoshop-style editor I’ve encountered so far. Plus, it’s available not only on Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix. It would be my image editor of choice, if I would go the free route!

Editing in Gimp almost feels like editing in Photoshop

What other Windows photo editors, viewers and management tools do you use and recommend?

Light Crafts’ Aurora for free for 24 hours

Veit — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:22:00 +0000

Update: The free promotion expired, so now you have to purchase your own copy of Aurora. Or wait until August, when we will give away a number of copies.

I’ve always been a big fan of Light Crafts, its original LightZone product and its new Aurora photo software. In fact, I dubbed it the iPhoto for Windows and that for a good reason – it is simple, good and very powerful!

But the news just got better – you can now get a FREE copy of Aurora for both Windows and the Mac.

From now through Thursday, July 16th 2009 at 9:15 a.m. Eastern, customers on both Windows and Mac OS platforms can obtain Light Crafts Aurora completely free of charge by visiting the Light Crafts website, selecting “Buy Now”, and entering the code “FREE24″ at checkout. If you don’t make it in time for the free offer, the program can be purchased at the regular price of $19.95. Existing customers can update to the new version free of charge.

So run, don’t walk, and get yourself a copy!