The month is not yet over, but, since Christmas is near and I have to bake cookies, he’s a short list of the most important software updates and releases that might be of interest for digital photographers.
LightZone for Linux
With LightZone First Professional Photo Editor for Linux Users, you have all the powerful LightZone tools [...]

This is about firmware but not the usual one.
Whappo sent me an email to let me know about an open-source program called CHDK, which can be used to update the software for your Digital Camera. - Chris Pirillo
Still, this is only available for Canon Cameras…

DxO Optics Pro 5
Headlining the new features in DxO Optics Pro v5 is a brand new RAW conversion engine including a breakthrough demosaicing algorithm which produces images with much more detail and fewer unwanted artifacts. In a second major breakthrough, DxO Optics Pro v5 now applies its noise reduction techniques prior to demosaicing—before noise has [...]

The latest version of this professional photo slide show maker (version 3.2) brings exciting improvements.
With Version 3.2 photographers can share their slide shows in virtually any format and on any device making it easy to connect with clients or co-workers at home or on-the-go. There are no complicated format conversions, the fully-integrated system has dozens [...]

Douglas Software understood that there are allot of geeks out there who would like to calculate the exact value of some photographic parameters (useful for camera comparison and understanding the photo technology). Therefore, they released Camera Module for Windows. This software calculates various optical equations such as depth of field or hyperfocal distance to let [...]

Adobe made a major update by adding new features to more than one product under their license. I’m talking about the widely used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Camera Raw.
One of the reasons for this update is the fact that the new versions, Lightroom 1.3 and Camera Raw 4.3 include raw file support for seven additional [...]

Plugin Galaxy 2 is a plugin for creating special effects and enhancing images with the help of more than 160 basic effects. Compatible with dozens of graphics applications including Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, PhotoPlus, Photo-Paint, IrfanView and PhotoImpact, it provides filters for transparency manipulation, blurring, texture and pattern generation, noise creation, mirroring and [...]

Microsoft Corp. launched this week the next generation of Windows Live with a new set of tools and services.
Now you can share your media data with anyone, from anywhere, who have Web access across multiple devices. This release was based on a Harris Interactive Inc. study commissioned by Microsoft, a study that came out [...]

OLYMPUS Studio 2 supports professional photographers and engaged amateurs to get perfect results out of their images within a minimum of time. The software provides various functions and powerful tools to assist your workflow, such as examining and selecting the best shot from a large number of images, searching for a desired image from folders [...]

Color Efex Pro 2.0 for Capture NX
Most Nikon camera users process their images with Capture NX software that provides direct control over any region in a digital image and enables selective editing or enhancements without complicated layer masking techniques. Capture NX works with TIFF and JPG files and provides superior processing of Nikon’s [...]