With the London Show now so close you can almost taste it – okay, I might be confusing the show with my snack – another software update has been announced by R-Comp, with immediate availability via !Store, and the option to buy at the show. This time the update is to PhotoDesk:
It’s now less than a week until the inaugural RISC OS North show, and that means two things. Firstly, things are hectic here in the bunker as I prepare for the show myself – and to make matters worse, I will be temporarily relocating the bunker. And let me tell you, that is not an easy task. Secondly, it means all the announcements start landing in my inbox. To save time, I’ll be posting them as received, rather than writing about them. Here’s the first in my queue, from R-Comp:
PhotoDesk is a comprehensive photo editing package dating back to the 1990s, when it was first released by Spacetech. These days, the software is in the hands of Netherlands-based X-Ample Technology (XAT) with R-Comp handling sales and updates.
That’ll be the huge PDF manual! A new version of PhotoDesk will be available on CD at the Southwest Show on Saturday. If you want to get your hands on version 3.21 XAT, along with a new 200 page PDF manual, accompanied by an image pack to allow you to try out the techniques described in it, you’ll need to head for the R-Comp stand.
A new version of PhotoDesk, released by its new owners XAT with a little help from R-Comp, is now available to purchase from !Store. The software has a long history, dating back to the 1990s when it was sold by Spacetech. There were a number of versions available from the company, with the top-end version costing around £300, and there were even separate ‘plug-ins’ available.
CJE Micro’s has made a free patch available for photo editing and retouching package PhotoDesk, to address a problem experienced by some users of version 3.14 when using the application’s Special Effects filters. In some cases, use of the filters can cause what Chris Evans described as a “serious crash” – which, judging by a discussion on usenet group comp.sys.acorn.apps (before it veered onto the subject of whether the application should be called PhotoDesk or Photodesk1), looks as though it might specifically affect Iyonix, ARMiniX, and ARMX6.
A new version of leading bitmap graphics editor PhotoDesk will be available at the London Show on Saturday from 4D, the sister company of CJE Micro’s. The new version brings a number of changes, including better JPEG support and improved compatibility for a number of modern RISC OS platforms (with support for the Raspberry Pi 3 added) – but perhaps most importantly, it now supports those platforms on which the order of colour components are swapped, such as IGEPv5 and Titanium. Upgrades – which start at £12.00 if upgrading from…
R-Comp recently announced two new systems, both based around the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module – the 5idekick, and the Pi5erve – and on Monday, 21st July Andrew Rawnsley will be talking to the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) about these machines and other recent developments and updates.
No London Show again? Read about the last Wakefield one instead! Due to circumstances beyond the control of the organisers, last year’s Wakefield Show morphed into the Wradfold show – Wakefield, but in Bradford – and this year, the show carried on in the same location, for much the same reason. It took place on 22nd April at the Cedar Court Hotel in – well, yes – Bradford.
25th February 2023 saw the RISC OS Southwest Show return to the Arnos Manor Hotel in Bristol. This was the first time the event has taken place since just before the Covid pandemic hit the UK, with the last one pretty much on the eve of the plague landing on our shores in early 2020.