LaCie’s Rugged external hard drive series has long been a favorite for many photographers. Despite the dorky orange color, they are offered with single (USB) and triple (USB, Firewire 400 and 800) interface, can be operated in bus-powered mode, are fast and hold lots of pictures with capacities up to 500GB.

Recently, LaCie announced the LaCie Rugged XL hard drive with a capacity of 1TB. Suited for speed-intensive applications or for large-scale backups, the LaCie Rugged XL is compatible with both Mac and PC environments. In addition, it supports two key interfaces: Hi-Speed USB for universal compatibility, and the extreme speed of eSATA 3Gb/s. The new drive also includes a complete software bundle for easy formatting with LaCie Setup Assistant, as well as Genie Backup Assistant software for Windows users and Intego Backup Assistant software for Mac users.

Price:
LaCie Rugged 500GB: 165.99, Amazon: 147.99
LaCie Rugged XL: to be announced

CameraBits released version 4.6 of its popular PhotoMechanic software from beta at PMA today. The long list of changes since 4.5.x include a slick folder-watching Live Ingest function, a full-resolution loupe in the Contact Sheet view, additional upload templates for Amazon S3, Flickr, SmugMug and others, expanded GPS support, an option to export all program preferences for import into Photo Mechanic on another computer and much, much more. It is still very good at fast imports of images from your camera to a PC or a Mac. In addition, it allows for quick sorting, tagging and the creation of contact sheets in a color managed environment. The new version also adds support for the latest DSLRs.

Price: $150

Today, SanDisk announced the release of new versions of its popular ImageMate card reader line, featuring higher transfer speed, upgraded software applications and smaller and sleeker designs.

The All-In-One memory card reader can reach speeds of up to 34 megabytes per second (MB/s)1 when using a SanDisk Extreme® IV 45MB/s CompactFlash® card, and the Multi-Card reader is capable of up to 30MB/s2 read and 27 MB/s write data transfer rates when using a SanDisk Extreme® III 30MB/s Edition SDHC™ card. Sporting a stylish glossy black and metallic silver design, each reader’s tripod base is detachable, creating instant portability. In addition, SanDisk’s updated ImageMate software bundle enables customers to utilize the advanced features of both readers, simplifying the most common tasks that they want to perform—transferring photos to a PC, archiving and sharing them.

Having had very good experiences with previous versions of the ImageMate, we will acquire some and post a Field Tested review!

Price starting at $20, Amazon from $14.60

Here’s a very nifty program: Vincent Cheung released version 2 of his ShapeCollage program, which allows you to easily create a collage of different photos which you can then arrange in the shape you want. Simply pick your images, drag them into shape collage, choose your shape or create one and you are done. Upload the collage to your blog or website, save it as a separate image then import it into Photoshop — there are no boundaries. Let your creativity reign.

Sure, there are other ways to create collages and shapes of collages, but not as easily as in ShapeCollage. Give it a try and see yourself how easy it is to be creative!

Highly recommended!

Price: free

Tiffen released version 2 of its Dfx software, which allows you to reproduce many of the most popular filters you used to use in the field. Overall, the new version includes more than 2,000 standard and special-effects filters, which can be used as-is or even customized and saved for future use. Some of these filters have been part of our workflow and have consistently produced superior results without going through a steep learning curve. While not inexpensive, these filters can save you endless hours trying to re-create a special look or effect in Photoshop.

Some filter examples: Ambient Light, Close-up Lens, Hazem High Contrast, Warm and Cool Polarizers or Wide Angle Lens.

Highly recommended!

Standalone price: $99.95, Amazon: $99.95
Photoshop plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $299.95
Aperture plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $274.85

Today, Western Digital announced a new version of its My Book World Edition. Featuring sizes of 1TB and 2TB, these My Books are ready to be plugged directly into your router. With the click of a few buttons, the storage device can then be configured. As always, it comes with bundled backup-software that can be installed on your Mac or your PC. Given the good experience we have with our Western Digital drives, we have high hopes for this one.

Price: $449.00 (2TB), Amazon: $393.33

Digital Foci’s Photo Safe II is now available in three sizes (80/160/250 GB). It is the near-perfect travel companion: small, lightweight and with only two buttons to operate, you don’t have any excuses any longer not to make backups of your memory cards in the field. You don’t need a computer – just plug your card into the Photo Safe, hit the copy button and you are done. Once back from the trip, the device can be used as a USB drive to copy its content to your Mac or PC.

TidBITS’ in-depth review of the Photo Safe II can be found here.

Price:
80GB: $119.00, Amazon: $97.72
160GB: $149.00, Amazon: $118.08
250GB: $199.00, Amazon $169.00

Drobo has established its data storage robots as one of the premier providers of redundant data storage. This is exactly what photographers need and thus, a lot of different sites (TWIT, TWIPphoto, Digital Outback Photo, Luminous Landscape and others) have praised it. Having used it here for almost 6 months (Drobo USB with 3 1TB drives), we can confirm that it deserve the praise that is heaped on it. We use it mainly for backup, much of it autmated. It’s easy to use (connect the unit to a PC or Mac, install software and plug in the drives) and very reliable. The USB unit we have is a bit noisy, but that does not bother us, since the backup unit is connected to our file server and tucked away. Drobo listened to the complaints – the noise problem has been alleviated in the newer USB/Firewire units.

Our verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $499, Amazon $374.95 after rebate

Maximum Output Software released version 4.1 of its FileBack PC backup software which is one of our favorites for backing up on a Windows PC. The main new feature is support for multiple users on the same Windows PC. In addition, support for file and folder names with more than 256 characters has been added, while performance improvements have been made and bug fixes were applied. The Enterprise edition also allows for simultaneous compression and encryption of backups.

The upgrade is free for all registered users of version 4.x

Price: $55.00

Recently CameraBits released version 4.5.3.1 of its popular PhotoMechanic software, which is optimized for very fast downloads of images from your camera to a PC or a Mac. Various metadata speed improvements were implemented in addition to speed improvements in the Navigator. As always, a number of bug fixes were implemented as well. The new version adds RAW support for the Canon Powershot G9, Nikon’s D3 and D300 as well as the Sony DSLR A-700.

This is another development of image transferring software from CameraBits. Various changes have been implemented such as improved file reading speed and a re-acceleration of image transplantation from your camera to computer.

From previous tests of this new software, this new and highly developed gadget is able to download images from O2 mobile phones as well, most specially the latest units.

Price: $150