CameraBag 2 Update Released – A New Way To Work With Photos

The CameraBag 2 photo app for Mac and PC with a whole new approach to editing was recently redesigned from the ground up, and a new update was released this week.

CameraBag 2’s Analog Engine pairs a full suite of photographic tools with the high quality filters and vintage simulations we’re known for. Its key innovation is a stunningly straightforward approach to layering, rearranging, and endlessly tweaking all of these effects in realtime. The 100+ fully-adjustable filters and 25+ professional controls CameraBag 2 ships with are only the beginning, forming the palette from which you can find, and create, your own styles.

With CameraBag 2, you don’t have to know what look you want to get started. CameraBag 2 lets you see all the possibilities at once: old-school instant film or modern high-contrast portrait, subtle color adjustment or complete artistic overhaul. Choose from side-by-side comparisons with the fullscreen Quicklooks, or get large, instant previews on mouseover; the emphasis is on creative exploration. Once you’ve chosen a filter, its components are all in the tray to tweak and adjust non-destructively with large, interactive sliders. The Remix slider in particular brings back the “happy accidents” of analog film, smoothly transitioning between infinite natural variations for each style.

Advanced Control

The new CameraBag features a full suite of photographic tools, from simple exposure and cropping to advanced vignetting, color correction, and curves. The built-in styles also now have full control over their strength and variation. Since every adjustment appears as a tile in the tray, it’s easy to see everything affecting the image at once, as well as rearrange tiles or edit amounts without compromising image quality. Adjustments and styles can be freely layered to create new looks, which can be saved right into the interface as new filters. When you load a filter, you again have full control of its tiles. You can batch process a folder, or use arrow keys to browse with the current look.

The Analog Engine

At CameraBag 2’s core is the brand new Analog Engine: high-fidelity, 32 bits-per-channel, non-destructive, multi-threaded image processing. In other words, it’s fast and smooth. CameraBag 2 matches the power of high-priced software, yet it’s light on its feet and starts up instantly. Its old-school looks are particularly high tech: recreating the natural blemishes and random variations of the analog world is one of the hardest digital challenges, and that’s where we’ve devoted much of our research. Even the most heavily-modified photos retain smooth, film-like colors (especially with the extra color information in RAW files).

Key Features
• Use the 100+ built-in styles and filters or create and share your own.
• Full suite of 25+ photographic tools including advanced curve editors.
• Attractive new interface.
• Fast image processing via the all-new Analog Engine.
• Add any look to the toolset as a fully-adjustable filter.
• 32-bits-per-component color depth.
• Non-destructive editing (active history).
• Easy layering of styles and adjustments.
• Quicklooks and previews for visual decision-making.
• Large, precise controls.
• Laptop- and touch-friendly design.
• Batch saving.
• The Remix slider, which smoothly transitions between endless variations.
• RAW format and metadata support*.

In-Depth: Selected Features

• CameraBag always works in 32-bits-per-component color depth. This is higher than the default in Photoshop, for example, and matches the highest precision you can work with in Photoshop.

• There are actually many ways to adjust the color of an image, each with different and useful results, but most image editors force you to use just one. CameraBag includes many and puts them side-by-side, including Tint, Color Balance, Colorize, Color Filter, and Dye.

• The unique Color Corrector tool offers targeted color adjustment, a brand new approach to precise color corrections and modifications. It’s curve-based, so you can target different brightness ranges using all of our built-in color adjustments.

• The sliders in CameraBag are big, but it’s not just for style: big controls give you precision unmatched in other apps. The developers have carefully thought out what each slider range should be, and what should happen at the end of each slider’s range. It can be frustrating in some photo editors when adjusting exposure, for example, and the software doesn’t let you make your photo as dark or as light as you want it.

• Arrow key navigation makes it easy to quickly view lots of photos with different filters. Use left and right to go between files, and up and down to switch filters.

• There are three ways to browse possible looks for your photo in CameraBag: you can use the full-screen Quicklooks, mouse over each filter in the side panel to get a hover preview, or you can use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to view each filter in the main window. Each is best in different situations.

• You can also get inspiration when you don’t know what look you want by pressing the spacebar, which calls the Random Remixed Filter command from the Edit menu. This will choose a random filter from the built-in styles or from your saved favorites and randomly set the Remix value for any tile that has a Remix slider. Keep pressing it until you find something you like.

• Filters are easy to export as files to share online. Just drag and drop a filter file to apply it in CameraBag. Once applied, its tiles are fully editable.

CameraBag 2 sells for $29.95

For more information, visit:
http://www.nevercenter.com/camerabag/desktop/

For my full ‘Book Mystique review of CameraBag 2, see:
http://bit.ly/JuXwDU