Posted Thursday, May 26, 2005

Kodak Quietly Ships Updates of its Photoshop Plug-ins

Kodak isn't usually shy about issuing press releases, but the company is keeping a low profile about some new developments at its Austin Development Center, formerly known as Applied Science Fiction.

ASF—or KADC, depending on which Scrabble tiles you prefer—produces some exquisite digital imaging technology. If you have a mid-range or high-end scanner, you probably already have some of it: many scanner manufacturers license KADC's noise-reduction and color-restoration technology and build it into their products. These technologies include Digital ICE (built into many film scanners); Digital ROC (for color restoration); and Digital GEM (for noise and grain reduction).

KADC also produces a family of Photoshop plug-ins that provide many of these same capabilities, and today, the company shipped updates of its entire product line. The 2.0 versions appear to be modest updates: their improvements include larger preview windows, better memory handling, and faster performance.

I stumbled on the new versions while researching some upcoming projects. If you've never tried them out, you should. The free trial versions are fully functional but add a watermark to your images. They work in all Photoshop versions, and they're first-rate—highly recommended.