New Versions of Kodak Plug-ins

It's nice that the hot news of the week is all about useful stuff, like new software, not the usual news about stuffing more pixels onto a tiny point and shoot sensor.

Kodak has announced upgrades to its suite of Photoshop plug-ins. There are four plug-ins:

• Gem Pro - for noise and grain reduction. I've used Gem in the past and it was quite inferior to Noise Ninja, but I'm game to download a free trial and look at it again.
• Gem Airbrush - a tool for portait photographers aimed at smoothing skin imperfections.
• ROC -- for restoring colour balance in old photos or slides where fading has occured. I sure wish I'd had this when I'd worked on some 50 year-old slides of Kenya for a friend last month.
• SHO - a contrast and exposure tool that claims to reveal details in highlights and shadows.

I'm going to download the free trials this week and give 'em a test drive.