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For 24 Hours Only, Light Crafts Offers Consumers the Gift of Aurora for Free

Palo Alto, Calif. – July 15, 2009 – Light Crafts today announced several updates to Aurora, its powerfully simple photo editing, organizing, sharing and storing software, including the addition of two photo editing tools and the availability of Aurora for Mac users. As a summer gift to consumers, Light Crafts is offering Aurora for Mac or PC for free for 24 hours only. Consumers can download and own Aurora permanently, for free, by visiting www.lightcrafts.com/aurora, selecting “Buy Now,” and entering FREE24 at check-out. The 24-hour promotion begins on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 9:15 a.m. Eastern and ends on Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 9:15 a.m. Eastern.

Following the free promotion, Aurora for Mac and PC will be available for $19.95 and can be purchased for download at the same link above. For existing customers, the latest version is a free update.

The latest release of Aurora includes several significant updates including the addition of Retouch and Punch photo editing tools to the visual photo editor, the addition of integration with Shutterfly to Aurora’s already easy-to use sharing and publishing feature, and accelerated software performance.

Aurora’s Retouch tool enables users to easily heal, or improve, areas of their photos in just a few clicks by copying textures from one part of an image to another. Aurora’s intelligent visual photo editor integrates the copied texture into the selected area and adapts the color for a natural-looking result. The new Punch tool enhances color contrast in the mid-tones without altering shadows and highlights in the image, resulting in a photo that is more pleasing to the eye and well-balanced.

“Our updates to Aurora reflect our focus on delivering powerful and easy-to-use software that helps photographers of all stripes bring out the natural beauty in their photos,” said Fabio Riccardi, founder of Light Crafts. “Retouching an image is traditionally a complex process and an editing tool available in more expensive software. We are thrilled to enable our users to quickly and intuitively retouch their images using our very affordable Aurora software. We are also excited to make Aurora available for Mac users for the first time.” (yeah, so are we!)

Aurora for Mac includes all of the photo editing, organizing, and sharing features found in the PC product with a user experience designed for Mac enthusiasts. Users can drag-and-drop photos into Aurora from iPhoto and other Mac applications, for example.

Aurora’s visual photo editor is powered by sophisticated algorithms that simplify the complexities of advanced photo editing by presenting suggested improvements to photos. A pop-up image selector lets users see a range of improvements and pick exactly how their edited photos might look simply by clicking on the desired improved image. In just a few clicks, users can Relight, Retouch, add Punch for color contrast, adjust color strength and warmth, tint, crop, straighten, zoom and adjust red-eye in a simple, intuitive and visual way.

Aurora’s powerfully simple solution not only edits photos, it also has sophisticated tools to help organize photos, has online back-up services to help keep photos safe, and makes sharing photos easy with photo publishing tools and photo sharing capabilities with sites including Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug, Picasa, Shutterfly, and TwentyThree.