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.