Photobot erases all those photo snafus

Recent surveys show that less than 4 percent of us systematically perform backups.

We all know that if a disaster strikes, we'll be cooked — but we still don't back up our computers.

However, backup software that works in the background is becoming more and more common because software developers now know that we are willing to back up if we don't have to bother with it manually.

But what about more mainstream applications that work in the background? They're beginning to surface as well.

Take digital photographs. There are more photo-manipulative applications out there than you can shake a stick at. Adobe's Photoshop continues to be the $695 gorilla at the top of the heap.

But even the most simple of consumer-orientated photograph software still requires you to run it, then load in the images you want to enhance or fix and then you have to probably read the manual on how to operate.

So wouldn't it be nice if there was a background application that would just go and find every digital photograph you have on your computer's hard drive and go about fixing them all without your doing anything? Well, there is now.

Photobot is billed as the world's first "Zero-Click" picture correction software. It works by doing everything in the background. After you install Photobot, you just go about whatever it is you normally do on your PC. Whenever it can, Photobot will seek out all of your digital photographs and begin to make them better.

By "better," I mean correcting them in three ways: red-eye reduction, brightening dark pictures and color correction. With most red-eye correction applications, for example, you first have to identify each eye with some type of perimeter tool and then apply the correction. Photobot automatically identifies faces and corrects any red-eye problems.

The process of brightening images and color correction is done by examining the information in every pixel in the photograph and making tiny adjustments in each of them.

This is a far more sophisticated and complex process than just applying a blanket of lightening and darkening, which is how so many of the other photo-manipulative applications do it. The same holds true with color correction.

Photobot is squarely aimed at everyday, casual digital-camera owners who just want the best pictures possible without having to do anything. Just offload the pictures from your digital camera to your computer as you normally do, and now they will all look a whole lot better.

You don't burn any bridges with Photobot since it also automatically makes backups of the original images, just in case you don't like something it did. Simply right-click on any image and Photobot will undo that image to its original state. You also see a before and after image to compare.

Finally Photobot is including a free "Swiss Picture Bank" feature that uploads your images to the same secure data facility that provides data storage services to Swiss banks. If you lose a photo, you can easily reclaim it over the Internet.

Photobot (www.photobot.com) sells for $29.95 and is available for Windows computers only.

Pandigital Digital Photo Frame

Pandigital

www.pandigital.net

$120 to $300

You can enjoy your favorite photos while keeping track of the time with Pandigital's new picture frames.

Besides displaying digital images, each frame can be set to display the current month and time. Using the frame's calendar and alarm clock, the frame can be set to play music and display images and video clips on specific days at set times. Each frame includes a built-in speaker, a headphone jack, a six-in-one media card reader, a USB port and a remote control.

Prices range from $120 for a 6-inch PAN-602B model with 128 megabytes of memory and a resolution of 410 by 234 pixels to $300 for a 15-inch PAN150-B model with 256MB of memory and a resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels.

Accessories include a Digital Photo Frame Bluetooth connector/adapter that wirelessly transmits images to the frame via a Bluetooth device for $40 and a Digital Photo Frame Wi-Fi connector/adapter that sends images to the frame through a wireless network for $50.

— Deborah Porterfield

Gannett News Service

NuMetrex clothing

Textronics

www.numetrex.com

$56 to $190

You can track your heart rate while working out in special shirts from Textronics.

As you exercise, special fibers knit into the fabric sense your heart rate and send the data to a compatible watch or exercise machine via a tiny transmitter snapped into a pocket on the shirt.

The NuMetrex Cardio Shirt for Men alone costs about $60 while the NuMetrex Heart Sensing Racer Tank for women is $56.

Packages that include an exercise watch and transmitter also are available.

For instance, a Racer Tank with a transmitter and Polar FS1 heart-rate-monitor watch costs $121 while a Cardio Shirt with a transmitter and a Polar RS200 watch is about $190.

— Deborah Porterfield