Thus far, I’ve come across 2 bags that look very good.

Lowepro Slingshot AW100 (and larger sizes in the AW200 and AW300) and the Tenba Photo Sling series, especially the new Gen 3 bag.

The Tenba has a nicer look than the Lowepro bags, and the Gen3 slots between the AW100 and AW200 in size. It’s a bit more expensive, but it appears it is better built. I haven’t seen the Tenba yet, but I will be looking at one before I make a decision.

Digital photo recovery – ZAR image recovery function

Add a lot of functionality to your Canon Powershot camera. RAW shooting, live histogram, more histograms, Depth-of-field preview and many more power features.

CHDK Wiki

PhotoRescue Home Page – PhotoRescue Wizard, PhotoRescue Expert, PhotoRescue Advanced

DIM: Digital Image Mover

This site is interesting because they provide some concrete examples with uses other than improving a group shot.

Interactive Digital Photomontage

The following is a utility from Microsoft for fixing group photos if you have multiple versions of the same photo, but with the usual variations from person to person.

I haven’t tried it myself yet, but will definitely be looking at it.

TPN :: The Digital Photography Show ? Blog Archive ? Great Free Utility From Microsoft.

This is demo software created by 2 PhD students at University of British Columbia. It currently only works with jpgs and doesn’t allow for defining the name of the output.

Looking at the pictures and the comments, it would appear to be very impressive, and well worth watching out for in the future.

I have a couple panorama shots, so I’ll have to convert them to jpg (as this is the only format currently supported) and see how it does.

AutoStitch

Extremely useful for reviewing individual photos to quickly check focus and other items to see if the picture is worth keeping.

Also very good for comparing multiple images of the same basic subject. Can have up to 6 images at once, and allows for zooming on all images at once.

A free version is available, but it doesn’t appear to support RAW. 30 day free trial, so check it out.

JottoSoft Pixort

This is one reason I like shooting in RAW format. The white balance isn’t set until I process the images on my computer, so I can set the white balance then. Obviously it would be best to manually set the white balance everytime I change locations, but in real life for the average person, this isn’t practical.

Also, based on a number of reports, Auto is very good outdoors, but doesn’t work very well indoors. So, if you remember, it’s a good idea to manually calibrate the white balance indoors if you aren’t shooting in RAW format.

PC Review – White Balance – Page 1

AnandTech

Mike’s Collection of Information – Software -&gt IMatch

They were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child’s toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy.

Perhaps surprisingly, all the cards survived these six tests

Most of them did fail to get through two additional tests – being smashed by a sledgehammer and being nailed to a tree.

Even then, data experts Ontrack Data Recovery were able to retrieve photos from the xD and Smartmedia cards.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Digital memories survive extremes

I’ve added 2 things to Elements recently. One is a book with tools. The other is a graphics tablet.

The book is The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2. The book goes into a lot of detail on image editing (probably more than the average person cares about, but I like to know more rather than less). The other great thing about the book is the included tools. They appear as How To items in Elements, and extend the power of Elements to become much closer to Photoshop CS.

It adds curves, Splitting an image into channels. CMYK support, and a number of other tasks that are commonly performed, but would normally require many steps to perform.

As far as I can tell, the author has written the tools using Photoshop CS’ scripting tools and then saved them. Elements is so closely tied to Photoshop CS that it recognizes and can use the scripts. It also has all the abilities and Adobe just hasn’t made some of them available.

For example, for Curves. The Power Tools Curves item runs a script to create a Curves layer. Once the layer is created, it cannot be modified in Elements. If you try to modify the curve, Elements tells you the layer is locked and can’t be modified by elements. If you really want curves, but don’t want to pay for CS, this is one way to get almost there.

The other thing purchased recently is a Wacom Graphire3 tablet. I don’t use it all the time, but for some tasks, I wouldn’t be without it. Complex selections and any other form of ‘painting’ task. It’s much more precise, easier to control and nicely setup. The pen has a toggle switch on the side that can be programmed to be 2 different keys. This way I can do most of my selecting/unselecting or cloning without having to touch the keyboard. Very nice!

Another very useful resource for Elements is the public forum hosted by Adobe. The users are very friendly (even to newbies) and helpful.

It can be accessed either via the web or with a newsgroup reader. The only thing is the group is quite active, and not always on topic. There are a number of regulars that are very helpful when questions are asked, but also have a tendency to ‘chat’ in threads too. Still well worth reading/searching/posting to if you have a question.

Finally, 2 other books that come highly recommended. I have skimmed them and certainly liked what I saw. The great thing about both of these books is they’re solution rather than featured oriented. Rather than telling you what each option in Elements does (which is basically a rehash of the users manual), they tell you what tools to use to solve a problem. They both provide step-by-step walkthroughs of handling common problems like red-eye, dark or light in portions of the image etc.

The books are:

1. The Photoshop Elements book for Photographers by Scott Kelby
2. Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography by Mikkel Aaland

Looked at a few. Adobe Photo Album, JASC Photo Album, and a few others. Decided to buy IMatch by photools.com.

I decided to go with IMatch because of its flexibility. It isn’t the prettiest, or the easiest to use (not that it’s hard), but it is very powerful and customizable. The scripting language allows you to do most anything you want, and the user community is also very good. It uses scripts for generating web galleries, so I was able to customize it to fit my web page requirements. Now I can generate the pages for my web gallery and not have to do anything to them afterwards.

Very well setup for categorizing images. Supports IPTC and EXIF information. User-defined properties for associating whatever information you want with an image. And a reasonable price too ($49.95 US right now).

It also recognizes and displays the various RAW formats used by the manufacturers, and he’s quick to provide support for new cameras.

Would have liked a point-and-shoot model, but they are too slow. Even the A1 is barely acceptable speed wise and it is significantly faster than all the point-and-shoot versions.

By slow, I mean the lag from when you push the shutter to when the picture is taken. How long it takes to focus. How long it takes to turn on. How long it takes to store a picture.

The A1 isn’t perfect, but it is quite good. It also has a very good, wide and long zoom on it. 28-200mm in 35mm equivalent, whereas most point-and-shoots are 35-110mm.

So far, we’re quite happy with it. Wish it’s built in flash was stronger, so we may have to purchase an external flash, but at least we have the option.

Also, it’s a bit larger than we would like, but we didn’t notice it too much when we were on vacation recently.