Archives for April 2020

I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of Kuuvik Capture 5, our premium Canon EOS tethering app for macOS!

Kuuvik Capture saw the light of day on April 2, 2013, and some of its features are still unmatched after 7 years. Version 5 is by far the biggest update, elevating the app to a whole new level, all the while shrinking it to an almost unbelievable 3.9 MB.

I’ll cover the new stuff in separate posts, but let me go trough the most important bits in a nutshell. I also recommend to check out the release notes, plus the brand new Features and Screen Shots pages on the web site.

Adds the Most Requested Features

Number one is overlays. You can place an image overlay on top of both live view and captured images. It can be repositioned, resized, rotated, and of course can be made less or more transparent. And it works in magnified live view, helping in precise alignment. Overlays use our high-performance graphics engine, so you can expect the same swift and smooth operation as you are accustomed to with images.

Number two is hideable screen elements. While you were able to hide the browser in previous versions, people had asked for more. So now you can also hide the sidebar, the toolbar, and the rulers. Separately. Or you can quickly toggle the visibility of all bars (browser, sidebar, toolbar) by pressing Ctrl+Tab. Screen element visibility is remembered separately for full screen mode (where the default shows the info overlay with no bars and rulers). Ideal for culling or presenting images to a customer.

Number three is live view auto-rotation. Turning the camera to portrait orientation will automatically re-orient live view to match it. Well, it works in any of the four possible orientations. Manual rotation is disabled when auto is active, so auto is off by default. You can activate it from the View menu or by pressing Ctrl+A.

One Big, Plus One and a Half Dozen Smaller Things

Variable-step (or inhomogeneous) exposure bracketing allows you to disable individual frames. Just click the corresponding green (or yellow/red) square on the bracketing monitor. And click again to re-enable. This is a real time-saver in situations where you would only throw out frames in a part of the bracket.

Then there’s the AF feedback on the point of operation indicator – turns green on success, red on failure. Just like on the camera. And improved sliders with precise numeric display and entry. And the ability to disable user interface animations. And on and on…

Again, I would recommend to go through the release notes for the whole list.

Farewell to Legacy Technologies

There are times when legacy technologies get in the way of progress, and need to be eliminated. This is such a time.

The app no longer supports tethering with the 5D Mark II, as well as the previously obsoleted 1Ds Mark III and 50D. Files created with them can still be opened. These cameras used incomplete and buggy tethering interfaces that littered the code with – well – crap. On a side note, I got a mail from Canon a few months ago, noting that they no longer service the 5D Mark II. So its heydays are pretty much over.

We also moved forward with the minimum macOS version required, to 10.14. Mojave is a stable release (unlike Catalina), and works with each Mac released since 2012.

This is a Paid Upgrade

Free upgrades until eternity is unfortunately not a sustainable business model for professional apps. So to be able to provide the usual stream of new features and camera support updates, we had to change the model. But instead of going the “popular” and much hated subscription route, we decided to stick with good old-fashioned upgrades.

From now on, major versions will be a paid upgrades. We’ll continue to add new features to point releases, and these will be free updates. Without pre-announcing anything, I can tell you that very cool things are coming to Kuuvik Capture 5.x!

Kuuvik Capture 2.x-4.x users can upgrade with the Kuuvik Capture 5 Upgrade bundle on the Mac App Store. This is the usual “fair” upgrade provided by the App Store: the price is calculated from how much you paid for the previous version.

Kuuvik Capture 4.5 remains on the Mac App Store as it is required for upgrades to work. The price is reduced to make it a cost-effective solution to new customers needing 5D Mark II or older macOS support.