« Freak Eye for the Easily Scared Guy | Main | Dishpan Theology (Updated) »

This is an outdated page we've kept in place for your convenience. Please do not link to it as we can't guarantee it will still be here in the future. If you're looking for something specific on PuddingTime!, please use this search form, which will return results on the new site:


March 08, 2004

Mac App Watch: Get PixelNHance While You Still Can


I've been back in the world of the iBook for a few weeks now, gradually reacquiring/reconfiguring assorted apps I used quite a bit. One I tracked down again today borders on indispensable. Caffeine Software's PixelNHance is the answer to 90 percent of the work I do with digital images in Elements, and it's free (as in beer, not speech).

It doesn't have the fancy filters of Photoshop, doesn't allow the user to add text or do a lot with the image in terms of cropping or heavy-duty manipulation, but it does offer a fine collection of basic color correction tools that clean up a lot of basic photo problems quickly and easily. The very best part is the way it handles change previews: The preview screen commonly seen in apps like Photoshop and the GIMP is integrated into the main window (click that screen shot thumbnail for a full-sized example). So as you make changes, they're reflected in real time by a selectable preview area you can drag around the window.

This time around, my use of PixelNHance has unearthed an added bonus: It has noise reduction that rocks. I hate shooting with a flash, and I'm lucky to have a digital camera that offers a simulated ISO 400 setting so I can do a lot more available light shooting than my old Canon S10 allowed. But the G5's ISO 400 setting also involves a ton of noise. PixelNHance cleans a lot of that out without the dramatic blurring and fogging that other apps create.

iPhoto offers a configuration option to select which app gets opened when a photo thumbnail is double-clicked. PixelNHance is my default app: Fast, simple, effective, and it handles most of what I need on the spot.

The closest thing there is to a catch is that Caffeine Software has "suspended operations," which might mean the software's on the endangered species list. The company site points to a 56MB archive of the company's offerings. Worth every second of the download.

Posted by mph at March 8, 2004 10:38 PM

Comments

It is now 24 May, 2004, and PixelNHance is no longer at the defunct caffeine site, nor does the redirect site respond. Do you happen to know where there might still be a download available? I Googled a bit without success; everything pointed to the old caffeine site.

Thanks

Posted by: Kevin Harris at May 24, 2004 09:15 PM

Version 1.5.10 came on my PowerBook G4 Software Restore DVD - I believe most PowerMacs and PowerBooks over the past couple of years had it preinstalled. MacAddict 74 had version 1.5.9 on the CD. Searching around, it seems that 1.5.11 was the final version, but I found, as you did, only links to Caffeine's site or the missing archive.

Posted by: Daver at June 13, 2004 09:04 AM

I'm tempted to just roll my copy into a dmg and offer it to folks who ask. Seems to qualify as orphanware at this point, and it's not very big on its own (2.5MB or so in a gzipped dmg).

So... yeah. Just write if you need it.

Posted by: mph at June 13, 2004 09:11 AM