Yahoo is buying Ghostbird Software, the makers of the PhotoForge 2 editing app and KitCam, an iPhone photo capture app, to improve Flickr. According to a report at PetaPixel, the apps are being pulled from the App Store and won’t be updated. If you own them already, they can still be used. It sounds like Yahoo is buying the company for its engineering talent, and technologies from the apps will probably find their way into Flickr apps.
I almost chose PhotoForge 2 as the example program for the editing chapter of the book, but at the time I was writing it (late 2011), the app’s results just weren’t very good. I liked its interface and approach, but that doesn’t mean anything when the adjustments it makes are sub-par. Instead, I turned to Photogene, which I stuck with in the second edition as well.
I’ve liked Flickr’s resurgence since Marissa Meyer took over at Yahoo, and hope this means even better software for Flickr. But it’s also too bad the apps are being mothballed. When Google acquired Snapseed, I feared that it would also die, but so far it’s still available (and free!). However, the company killed the Mac version, so I can’t completely rest easy that the iOS version will survive long-term.
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 