We took a look at CameraBag for the iPhone in June. It's a nifty little app that applies several pre-set filters to your photos. Now, the developers have released an almost identical app for the desktop.

Users got hooked on the ease of adding filters and altering photos, and they wanted it on their desktops and laptops too, so now it's a reality.

CameraBag Desktop for the Mac gives you 9 basic filters, 7 vary the color to match various films, and 2 filters provide gray scale filters.

The filters can be layered one on top of the other if you desire, and with the 'reprocess' command. Every time you press it you get a variation on the original filter.

As on the iPhone app, you can choose a border for your picture, and then output the picture at the original size or you can scale it down.

The filters mimic the look of old instant camera films, and a host of other camera, film and lens combinations.

CameraBag is not for the advanced digital photographer, but if you want to take an image and quickly apply a filter and a border this is a welcome tool.

I'd like to see some more things added, like saturation controls and sliders for color temperature and sharpness. Adding those features combined with the filters would give a user almost unlimited control of the look of the images. As it is, your starting point is always what the designer of the filter had in mind. While you can reprocess, you have no control, and the parameters change at random.

In the gallery I've included some variations on a single photo to show you some of the possibilities. You can also visit a web page to see how customers have used the CameraBag technology.

CameraBag is US$19.00 and can be ordered direct from the developer.

Blue Crowbar Software is a small Belgian Mac development firm that is quickly making a name for itself for its innovative iPhoto and Aperture plugins. We've previously covered iPhoto2Twitter here on TUAW, and now Blue Crowbar has announced a new iPhoto plugin for adding watermarks to pictures in your iPhoto library.

Watermarks are those faint, transparent designs that websites often use to mark exclusive photos when breaking a big story. For example, many of the great fake iTablet "photos" that we've received during the past few weeks have been emblazoned with a watermark for one Mac site or another. Impression (€9.90 -- about US$14.10) works in iPhoto to put watermarks onto your iPhoto pictures. If you're worried that a watermark might ruin a perfectly good picture, don't be. Impression makes a copy of the picture, then creates a watermarked version which is also saved into your iPhoto library.

Many of us are forgetful in some form, and this trait is especially magnified when one proceeds to show others an "awesome photo" on your iPhone that, sadly, didn't get synced. Instead of telling your friends that you'll show or email them the photo later -- assuming you even remember to -- you can use Simplify Photo to view your entire iPhoto collection.

While increased megapixels in digital photography brings with it the promise of better picture quality, in most cases it comes at a file size premium. And because storage space on your iPhone is a finite resource, you can choose to set aside dedicated space for those really important photos and use Simplify Photo for those that are not as important but would nonetheless like to have access to just in case.

Simplify Photo is available for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store, while the required desktop client (available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) is available as a free download at the Simplify Media site. The desktop app allows you to not only specify which iPhoto albums and events to sync, but the people as well -- via integration with the app's "Faces" facial detection feature. And if you're not exactly sure which album or event a photo is stored, you can use the app's search feature, which searches your photos' tags, titles and comments.

But the standout feature of Simplify Photo is its geolocation support. Like iPhoto '09's places feature, Simplify Photo displays a map with various dropped pins; and tapping on the pins will display the photos taken in the vicinity.

If a picture can say a thousand words, then Simplify Photo's desktop syncing capabilities have the potential to make your iPhone speechlessly filled with photos.

Flexibits has just released Cameras, an application designed to manage multiple camera hookups on your Mac. With Cameras, you can direct which programs launch when you connect any number of photo-related devices to your computer; including digital cameras, the iPhone or a digital media reader.

Cameras installs a preference pane in System Preferences. The first time you connect a new device to your Mac and start to sync it, the device will show up in the preference panel. From there, you can choose what that individual camera does when connected. It's a simple, great application for managing different cameras and keeps unwanted programs from opening when you connect them and works well when multiple devices are developed.

Cameras is a free download and requires OS X. 10.4.11 or later.

Pix Remix isn't yet on the App Store, but I'm hoping it lands soon. If you've ever tried the Ken Burns effect in iPhoto to move photos around during a slideshow, you know how frustrating it is when the effect chops off the faces or other important parts of your photo while moving. Pix Remix does this better, plus more, all on your iPhone with your photos.

With Pix Remix you choose the photos you want (on your iPhone or iPod touch), put them in order, then create a slideshow using a path for the camera. You control the zoom as well, so instead of cutting off faces you can zoom into them instead. As you can see in the video, it's quite simple. This is the "pan and zoom" type of slideshow.

Pix Remix features a collage mode that reminds me of Microsoft's Surface technology -- a set of photos sit on a virtual table, and you can zoom, move and rotate them with your fingers. It looks like someone placing photos on a flat surface, except you can animate them.

Those are a couple of the slideshow options, and there's the option to add captions as well, or you can create a simple slideshow with nothing but transitions and captions. The final piece of the puzzle: export. You can send your slideshows to Twitter or Facebook or via email. I noticed the other day there were inactive links for a "reader" app, presumably to watch Remix slideshows on another iPhone without the full app, but that has been removed.

We'll keep an eye out for when Pix Remix hits the store, so check our Twitter feed for the latest updates.

3D photo apps are not new to the iPhone platform, but a new app from Juicy Bits looks promising in terms of making those pictures with depth a lot easier to take and view.

3D Camera 1.1 [US$1.99, click opens iTunes] is now available for iPhone OS 2.2 and 3.0 devices, and it lets you take photos that use one of three methods to create the illusion of 3D: red/cyan anaglyphs that require those funky 3D glasses, stereograms that create 3D images when your eyes look at them a certain way, and wiggle stereograms (or wiggle-grams) that use animated GIF images to provide the "depth". If you need a place to buy the goofy glasses, Juicy Bits lists several sources on their website

To take the photos, you use one of two methods. If you're planning on taking an anaglyph or sterogram, you take one picture, move the iPhone camera slightly to the right, and take another photo. To make a wiggle stereogram, you point directly at the same object from two slightly different vantage points. The app provides instructions on exactly how to take the two photos each time you launch it.

How are the results? Well, I haven't tried a red/cyan anaglyph yet, but if you use "crossviewing" (crossing the eyes slightly so that the two images overlap and form a third 3D image) you should be able to see depth in the test image seen below. If you use 3D Camera or any of the other 3D photo apps for iPhone, be sure to send some of your best pics to our Flickr pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/tuawrigs/pool/

LittleSnapper from Realmac Software has been available for OS X for quite some time (and was one of the apps available in this year's Macheist bundle), and a few days ago they released a trimmed-down version that runs on your iPhone. While it lacks the basic photo editing and annotation available on its desktop counterpart, LittleSnapper for iPhone is no slouch.

One of the things about LittleSnapper that first caught my eye was the interface, which is extremely slick and shows great attention to detail on the part of the developers. The real jewels of this app, however, are a bit less obvious. In fact, after just a few hours of use, it has supplanted the built-in Camera application on my home screen.

Using the default configuration, when you snap a picture, it's immediately added to your Camera Roll (hence the replacing of Camera). After you've taken your photo, you can then upload it to QuickSnapper (Realmac's companion photo sharing site, which is free to use). Once that's done, you can then email a link to it or post it to Twitter (via Tweetie, Twitterrific or Twitterfon) right from within the app. I don't know about you, but whenever I take a picture with my iPhone, there's a very good chance that I'd like to email it immediately afterward. For me, being able to do this within a single app is huge.

The other killer feature of LittleSnapper is the ability to screenshot any web page from within the application. The only downside to this feature is that you don't have access to your Mobile Safari bookmarks and you must type in the URL manually (or browse to it via another URL, like a Google search). Obviously this issue will be history once iPhone OS 3.0 is out in June (which includes system-wide copy-and-paste), so it's understandable that they didn't bother getting to crazy with the cheez-whiz in terms of browser integration and whatnot. LittleSnapper's chrome is also removed from the webpage snap, which is a nice touch.

Of course, no application is perfect, and LittleSnapper has a few (small) warts. For one, I'd love to see a subset of the annotation tools available on the desktop version, as well as a more iPhone friendly view of the QuickSnapper site when browsing your uploaded photos. Tighter integration with the OSX application (like syncing photos and their metadata) would also be pretty sweet. These aren't anywhere close to deal-breakers for me, but I can see them being becoming popular feature requests.

I'm very impressed with LittleSnapper and, given the amount of half-baked throwaway apps that seem to be cropping up lately, it's nice to see one with a good bit of polish. LittleSnapper [App Store] is available now for $2.99US.

Our friends over at Pixelmator have released a new update, and while it's not quite as big as their point versions, it does add a few new features and a nice online guide to the program. The main new feature in-app is a noise filter that allows users to add random specks and pixels to an image, creating a little more realism and mess to whatever shapes they're working on. But the bigger addition is out-of-app: they've created an online Learning database with tutorials, tips, and lessons on how to make the most of the image-editing app. There's actually quite a bit of stuff there now, from text and video tutorials to even third-party tutorials submitted by users. If you are interested in learning more about how to use Pixelmator, definitely give it a look. They've also updated the user manual, too, so if you haven't seen that in a while, that's worth checking out as well.

There are also a few performance updates and bugfixes -- here's the list if you want to check it for something you're interested in. I still don't see my personal issue on there: it seems like whenever I switch between the Spaces on my Mac that hold iTunes and Pixelmator, the OS doesn't want to stay put -- it keeps jumping back to the iTunes Space while I'm trying to work on Pixelmator. Of course that might be an iTunes issue, but hopefully the Pixelmator team is looking into it.

Other than that, it's still a great app for editing and resizing images, and at $59, is definitely cheaper and simpler than investing in a big Photoshop suite. The 1.4.1 update will show up automatically for current users, and the app can be downloaded as a free trial from their site.

One of the first applications I used and enjoyed on my iPhone, Sketches, has updated to version 1.5. New in this version is the ability to change the alpha settings for colors (so you can change the opacity of the drawings you make on photos you take), and an edit mode for the corkboard view, to rearrange your drawings with. Additionally, they've moved uploaded photos off of a third-party server and onto their own page, so (for right now, anyway) no ads to get in the way. Not new in this app: a quality, fun, and surprisingly robust photo and image editor designed for the iPhone.

We've heard from the devs that there is a version 2 on the way as well, and both this version and that one are free to anyone who's purchased the app. But if you haven't picked it up yet, it is available for $4.99 over on the App Store, well worth it if you often take and share pictures with your iPhone.

The folks at iPhon.fr have got what appear to be two photos of iPhone 2.0 in the wild. It's in keeping with the other photo we saw of a black iPhone, though the logo appears grey this time, as opposed to the bright white, and the rear of the case seems less rounded.

The only thing we dislike about this shot is how scratched up the rear of the unit appears to be. My own phone is (I assume) older than this model and not nearly as scratched - and I don't use a case!

Of course, we could be comparing fake photo #1 to fake photo #2 here, so take all of this with a grain of iSalt. We'll all see the real thing soon enough, and we can look back on Photoshop jobs like this and laugh and laugh.

[Via Engadget]

I am, admittedly, a fan of desktop apps that keep me from having to wade through immense websites, especially when said desktop apps are significantly better looking than said websites. Photonic, which was just released as an open beta, is one such application. It brings beauty and class to Flickr and, at least for me, makes it more enjoyable.

We covered another cool Flickr app recently called FlickrFinder, which I fell in love with for its simplicity. Photonic raises the bar by adding an uploader that is as good or better than Flickr's own Flickr Uploadr, and decidedly more Mac-like. Meanwhile, the alluring interface and a dash of Core Animation make it a pleasure to use.

My raving aside, it's definitely still a beta. I had a few strange problems with the upload date that resulted in an image getting lost in the pile, and fairly frequently entire streams came up as "currently unavailable" pages. But I'll put up with a lot of growing pains for a tool this cool.

You can download the beta at the Photonic website.

Click To Play

It's no big secret we love the funky look and wonderfully simple apps that come from the Plasq team. And there's no denying that Comic Life was a big hit for them. To follow that act they've been working on Comic Life Magiq, which we only had a taste of so far, but it looks just as funky and useful as you'd expect from these guys. Check out one of those age-old photo tasks: cutting a person out of a background. They actually make it look fun.

Also on:
YouTube, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Viddler and Crackle

Leopard isn't the only fun we'll have this weekend. Wednesday is Halloween in the US, and Apple lovers everywhere will spend the next few days constructing their Apple-themed costumes. If you're planning to make one, we want to see it!

Will you be "iPod Family," with poppa iPod Touch, Mom iPod Classic and nano kids? Maybe you'll grab a black shirt, jeans and New Balance sneakers. Perhaps you'll be a giant Sad Mac or a vintage bomb icon. So scary!

Whatever you create, send a photo to us at the address below. We'll pick our favorites and post a special gallery on Halloween (Oct. 31th). Now get busy! We can't wait to see what you've made.

PLEASE NOTE: Be sure to read and complete our little photo release. Complete "rules" (this is not a contest or giveaway of any kind, but we still gotta have some rules) after the break.

A few months back, we wrote about reader Dylan's iSight autocapture project-- he rigged up the code to have his iSight on his MacBook Pro snap a photo every time the lid was opened (and even released all of his work as open source). At the time, he mentioned eventually combining all of the photos together into a timelapse video, and seven months later, here it is.

Unfortunately, he says the Sleepwatcher daemon he was using doesn't work as of 10.4.10, so the project is over until it gets updated, if ever. But he did share with us how he compiled the images together into a timelapse-- he punched out a Perl script (which is reprinted after the jump) to rename all of the pictures into sequenced filenames, and then squished them together with Quicktime's "image sequence" feature. Very nice.

I use Walmart's online photo service quite a bit; it's cheap and quality is rather good for the cost (if a bit too dark). The best thing about it is that that you can upload your photos from home and pick them up an hour later at most Walmart locations for 19 cents each (4x6). The downside is the web browser form-based uploading. You have to select the images one by one, which obviously takes forever if you have a lot of pictures. Naturally enough they have desktop software for Windows, but not Mac. However, I recently had a lot of photos to upload and started digging around their site for a better solution. After a lot of clicking, I finally came across a deeply buried and hard-to-find little gem: the QuickUpload plugin for Safari. If you download and install it (I've only tested it with Safari 2), it will allow you to select and upload an indefinite number of photos much more easily. So what I do is export the photos I want to print from Aperture to a folder on my Desktop, then select that folder with the QuickUploader and let it do its thing.

The QuickUpload plugin only works with Safari, and frankly is rather slow. The iPhoto option you see above also does not actually read the library, but merely lets you drill down into the folder structure. Nonetheless, if you're uploading more than a handful of pictures at a time it's a real time-saver. The only thing I can't figure out is why Walmart makes it so hard to find on their website. They feature the Windows software prominently, but you really have to dig to find the Mac version of QuickUpload. It's a free download from Walmart.