Corel is adding several new features to its Pinnacle Studio for iPad video editing app. What will you get? New fast-and slow-motion creative effects, updated title styles, faster performance and greater stability.

The Studio app costs $12.99 in the apps store and the feature upgrade will be free to current Studio app owners. Using the app you can perform some sophisticated edits to your video footage, such as arranging clips, adding effects and music, without having to import it into your computer.

Corel is also launching a new online forum for those in need of some help with the app.

As our virtual photo collections pile up, it’s getting increasingly more complicated to find, view and share the ones we want (unless, of course, you’re hyper-organized). ArcSoft’s Photo+ software helps you tame your photo collection: it’s a photo viewer that quickly and easily lets you see what photos are in a given folder by dragging and dropping a single image into the viewer (doing that will instantly make all the photos in that folder viewable).

Photo+  is now available for Macs in the Mac app store for an introductory price of $0.99 (usually $9.99).

Photos are automatically oriented correctly in the viewer (no neck-craning here) and can be viewed in full screen or as a slideshow which you can customized with transition effects or music. You’ll also be able to make some basic edits, such as cropping, to images in the viewer. Photo+ supports over 35 image formats, including RAW files and Gifs.

Of course, no software would be complete without an option to share. Photo+ is integrated with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, so images can be shared from within the program directly to your social circles.

Looking for a quick, easy, fun and inexpensive way to take your images to another level? Check out  PhotoFunia, literally an online photo fun house with hundreds of one-click photo templates that can do everything from place your image on the side of a city building to snuggling up close with your favorite celebrity.

You could spend hours rolling through all the templates and effects available but the site has them neatly categorized so you’ll find something to your liking fairly fast. Uploading the image of your choice is quick and easy, as is the time it takes for the final creation to appear.

Once completed, you can save  the image to your desktop at a resolution that can work as a printable 4 x 6 or you can create an emailable postcard on the site to send to family and friends or post to your cyber-social world.  Best of all, the site is free of charge.

In Hollywood it’s all about the look.  While today’s hottest celebs spend thousands of dollars and endless hours on perfecting that look, you can mimic all of them in seconds at InStyle.com.

Using a head shot of yourself you can try on the newest celebrity hairstyles from short cuts and bangs to long party styles and updos, and then even find out how to get it all done for real (if the final image gets you going enough). Along with the latest hairstyles the site also provides complete photographic Hollywood makeovers including lips, skin, eyes and makeup. Simply upload your image and the site walks you through the myriad possibilities for a new you.

To sign up and play around a bit is free and once you register you’ll be urged to sign up for a subscription to InStyle magazine, but if you’re looking for a new you, this might be the place to begin the search.

(For the record: we like you the way you are.)

I’m sure you’ll agree that photo mosaics — on large photo comprised of dozens or hundreds of smaller ones — usually produce a very cool effect. You’ll probably also agree that the notion of creating one of your own seems a bit daunting.

A site dubbed PicArtia can help you turn the trick in a three-step process (see this video tutorial as well). Perhaps best of all: you can create one on the site for free.

The free version of Photo Mosaic that you can play with on the site produces a lower resolution final mosaic. While you’ll be able to print this version out you’ll have to keep it relatively small – and with a mosaic that kind of defeats the purpose (there’s always a catch).

If you’re interested in printing a large version the site offers up higher resolutions at a nominal fee – check out the pricing tables here.

The site will even create a mosaic for you from all the images you’ve been uploading to your favorite social network. As a general guide, the price for 500 photos from Flickr starts at $14.99 and the site will automatically download all your photos, create your mosaic and send you the result through email from which you can order a print. We think it’s a very cool service and chances are this is something that you’d never do on your own.

While smartphones are great for taking photos, it’s a lot harder to do any editing on their small screens.

To address this problem researchers at the Adobe Imagination Lab have teamed with the University of Michigan to develop something called PixelTone – an app that would allow you to speak image editing commands to the computer screen and have them performed automatically.

PixelTone actually combines speech with direct manipulation: you speak the command, and then are given a sliding bar to fine tune the adjustment.

At this stage, it’s just a demonstration of the kind of technologies Adobe is working on (and capable of) so there’s no app to speak of. But it does point the way to a future in which we can merely utter commands and have software editors do the rest.

Check out a video demonstration of how the software works below.

Publishing and image software developer Serif recently updated their popular photo editing software program dubbed PhotoPlus X6 opening the $89 title to a broader range of photo enthusiasts.  The new version now allows photographers of any level to quickly and easily produce some truly unique and original image creations with a just a few clicks.

Compatible with Windows 8, PhotoPlus X6 features a smart edge refinement tool which selects and adjusts the more detailed parts of photos such as hairs and leaves; non-destructive crop; tilt shift effects with Depth-of-Field filter; vector masks; and improvements to noise reduction, zoom range and guides.  Also, with its new 64-bit engine, PhotoPlus X6 edits very large images without slowing down.

For under $100 Serif has brought an inexpensive software program that offers a nice balance between quick fixes as well as more advanced editing features for those that want to delve a bit deeper.

There’s loads of image editing apps out there that allow you to instantly turn your images into some fairly interesting looking works of art and the latest that has crossed out paths is dubbed PicLab for iOS.

The app lets you easily add typography, masks and other effects to your photos and share them across the social sphere. We’ve seen a few apps over the last year that offer similar features (Over comes to mind) but PicLab offers a free and fairly robust look-see with the ability to take the app further for just $0.99.

In what we thought was a very clever move, the developers of PicLab also posted a bunch of samples on their Instagram account to illustrate what the app can really do – going a bit beyond just simply adding text to your images, as you’ll see at the link.

A fun addition to your mobile photo editing app collection.

Digital photography has opened the door to all kinds of creative possibilities, even for those who don’t think they’re particularly creative or all that tech savvy. One such possibility is your own personalized coloring book. That is – a coloring book that uses your own photos as the subject. Kids love coloring books (as the pile of half-used ones under my feet attest) and they love looking at photos of themselves or friends and family. You can combine these two passions quite simply. Here’s how:

Photoshop

Via PhotoJojo, you can create your pages using a photo editing software like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Using the “photocopy” option in the “filters” menu will turn a normal photo into a pencil sketch. Simply save that filtered image, print it out, and there’s your coloring book page.

If you want, you can go a step further and blur out offending pieces and distracting background with the paint brush tool. This will give the book a cleaner look, but it entails more effort. (Personally, I like a minimalist approach and I’m sure your kids won’t mind a few extra lines to deal with.)

When you’re ready to print, be sure that you use plain paper – not a glossy photo paper – and give the print a minute or two to dry completely before handing it over to eager children.

What If You Don’t Own Photoshop?

Don’t despair, there’s still a coloring book in your future. You can download FotoSketcher, a free program that lets you convert your digital images into sketches. It can actually create a wide variety of cool sketch effects, but for our purposes, its black-and-white option makes for a good coloring book base. After you’ve converted your images, simply follow the steps above: save, and print on plain paper, giving the prints a few minutes to dry completely.

There’s another very simple  - and kid friendly – way to do it via Crayola’s Lights, Camera, Color web application.  The site allows you to upload an image and convert it into a sketch. You can save that sketch to your computer to print it out. The catch: to print, you’ll need to enter in a code from Crayola (it’s on select boxes of their crayons).

Another alternative, if you’re artistically inclined, is to draw your own design and scan it into your computer. Better still: have your kids drawn their own sketches, scan those in, and print out as many copies as you like.

If you own an Epson printer, you can make a coloring book no matter what software you own with the printer’s on-board templates. They function a bit like FotoSketcher, in that they can instantly convert regular color images into black-and-white sketches. This video shows you how it’s done.

Alternatively, if you own an Olympus camera, check to see if it has an “art filter” option in the menu. Some higher-end Olympus digital cameras can instantly convert photos into sketches, so you don’t have to do any of the converting yourself in software.