If you are using an Intel-based Mac or a Windows operating system, you do not need this update as it only addresses a PowerPC specific bug.

So for many of you who have just updated to the Photoshop CS5 compatible versions of our plug-ins, you don’t see the onOne menu that you are so accustomed to seeing and you’re wondering “how do I access my plug-ins?”. A quick trip to the Filter menu shows nothing from onOne. That’s because, technically, our plug-ins are not filters.

Where you will find them is under the File > Automate menu. What? Where? Why? The reason is that beginning in Photoshop CS4 ^{2} most of our products were converted over to Automation plug-ins so that they could be used in a batch process or as part of an action.

Starting in Photoshop CS4, we knew that eventually we’d no longer be able to use the beloved onOne menu so we took advantage of the new panels that Adobe introduced in the CS4 release. The new onOne panel gives you all the functionality of the older onOne menu. But how do you get to it? In Photoshop, go to the Window menu and then to Extensions. There, you’ll see onOne. Select onOne from the Window > Extensions menu and you’ll get the new onOne panel. The onOne panel can be docked along with any of the other panels in Photoshop so you can customize your workspace.

So now you have two options, either the onOne panel or the File > Automate menu. Good luck! If you’d like to see a video of this, Dan Harlacher, our senior product manager recorded one to show you how to access the onOne panel.

1. there were hints of this in some instances of Photoshop CS4 as well, but it’s really gone for good in CS5
2. maybe it was CS3, I can’t remember for sure

Here’s what you need to know about these updates.

1. If you are a registered user of any of the current versions of our plug-ins, these updates are provided free of charge.
2. Even if you’re not using Photoshop Cs5 but are still using Photoshop CS2, CS3 or CS4, you will benefit from these updates as we’ve fixed several known bugs in this release.
3. This release includes our official support for Aperture 3, specifically running in native 64-bit mode as opposed to running in 32-bit mode as was previously required for our plug-ins.
4. This release includes preliminary support for the public beta of Lightroom 3. Official support for the shipping version of Lightroom 3 will be available after Lightroom 3 officially ships. ^{2}
5. The safest, most foolproof way to do these updates are to visit our Software Updates page and download the appropriate installer and then run it. Please note, if you are a Suite 5 user, be sure to download the Suite 5.1 installer/updater and not the individual product installers/updaters.
6. If you have any of your own custom frames that you have created and imported into PhotoFrame, be sure to make a backup copy of your User frames folder BEFORE you install the Suite 5.1 update and then re-import your custom frames. Unfortunately, if you do not, you may lose these frames as we have seen where the database installer may wipe these out. Also, any ratings you’ve given your frames will be lost.

So if you’re ready to download the Photoshop CS5 update for your particular product, please visit our Software Updates page and get the installer you need. If you’re wondering, here are the official most recent version numbers for each product as of this release.

• Plug-In Suite 5.1
• Genuine Fractals 6.06
• FocalPoint 2.0.1
• PhotoTools 2.5.3
• PhotoTune 3.0.2
• PhotoFrame 4.5.1
• Mask Pro 4.1.8

1. Windows users have had 64-bit compatibility already since Suite 5 was released back in December 2009
2. Seems obvious, but I thought I should mention that.

Also, this is the best way to be alerted if you’re waiting for 64-bit compatibility for Aperture 3 as well.

As I mentioned the other day, we don’t have all of our plug-ins ready for Photoshop CS5 just yet ^{1}. However, we do have Genuine Fractals 6 (both Professional and Standard Editions) completed and Photoshop CS5 compatible and it has now been posted on our Software Updates page (scroll down on the updates page to find Genuine Fractals).

One thing that I thought you might be interested in is the speed improvements we’re seeing internally here with Genuine Fractals 6.0.5 running in the 64-bit Photoshop CS5 compared to running in the 32-bit Photoshop CS4.

The chart on the above tells the story, but in summary, Genuine Fractals 6.0.5 running in 64-bit Photoshop CS5 is up to 2 times faster than it is in the 32-bit version of Photoshop CS4. Your exact results may vary depending on original file size, destination file size and your computer hardware setup (RAM, processor, operating system, etc), but we’re seeing anywhere from a 36% speed increase up to twice as fast.

1. Getting Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended compatibility remains our highest priority and we’re still targeting the end of this month to have them available

Anyway, the long and short of it is that we have been working on making 64-bit versions of the Mac OS X versions of our plug-ins for a little while now and are entering the home stretch. When released, these 64-bit updates will be free of charge to registered owners of the current versions of our plug-ins. So if you’re not registered, now would be a good time to do that.

So the date. You’re probably asking “when will Aperture 3 support be coming?”. As of today, we’re looking at May 15, 2010 to have those free updates available. Sooner if possible, but with what we’re currently working on, it’s looking like May 15, 2010.

Essentials 3.0.1

To install any of these updates, you can go to the Help menu in any of the products and choose the “Check for Updates…” menu item. The update will automatically download and install. Alternately, you may download the update and run the installer manually by going to http://www.ononesoftware.com/support/software_updates.php

If you are a Plug-In Suite 5 user, it is important that you get the 5.0.1 update that is for the entire Suite. In other words, do not download and try to install the PhotoTune 3.0.1 updater, the PhotoTools 2.5.1 updater or the Mask Pro 4.1.7 updater. Those individual updaters are intended for those users who only use those products outside of the entire Plug-In Suite 5.

Since this was brought to our attention, we have spent over 240 hours collectively between 3 employees of onOne Software and 2 external contractors that we have worked with for over 4 years looking into this incident. Clearly, some of you received these spam emails to addresses that were only made available to us, and since we didn’t send them (the original emails were sent via exploiting the Share This feature at Flickr as discussed here) that would imply some sort of breach of our database. During our investigation, we found that a php file that we did not create was somehow copied into a temporary directory that was used by a php-based site search engine that we had been using for over a year. In that php file were many links pointing to another site that in turn had a set of links formatted in the same way that pointed to yet another web site based in Russia. It appeared to us that this Russian-based web site had done this in an attempt to increase their Google search ranking as there were very specific calls in the php file to try to get picked up by Google search engines.

However, just writing a file to that temporary search directory would not have given anybody access to our database. Additionally, we realized that this file had been placed in this directory within 24 hours and removed it and the search engine immediately. We have since replaced that search engine with one that we have licensed from Google.

Aside from this temp directory being written to, we could find no other evidence of a server or database breach. This is frustrating, but I can’t provide a concrete evidence of how any email address could have been stolen from us. I could speculate, but it would be just that. Regardless, here is what we’ve done to try to prevent anything like this from happening again.

1. We’ve updated all of our servers with the most recent security patches available and have double-checked our existing plan to have updates applied on a regular basis.
2. We’ve contracted with two separate consultants to perform a security audit of our site and have implemented their recommendations.
3. We have recently renewed our Verisign SSL Certificate using their 256-bit encryption to meet their Extended Validation requirements which is their highest level of SSL Certificate they provide ensuring a secure environment for any e-commerce transaction.

I’d like to thank everybody who sent the emails they received to us to help us try to figure out what happened. I’ll be following up with each of you individually after this blog post. Further, I’d like to thank Kevin C. from Yahoo! who helped clear up some confusion of mine about how the spammers had taken advantage (ever so briefly) of Flickr’s Share This feature. If you have any questions or comments you can share them with me using our Contact form.

I need to clarify my comment below about “the flickr/yahoo servers were breached in some fashion”. I received an email from a Flickr employee today to let me know that the flickr systems WERE NOT breached. The spam is occurring due to an abuse in the share this feature of the flickr website. No systems were breached. My apologies for my earlier inaccurate statement below. There are two posts about this here and here.

We are still investigating what could have happened on our end for an email that was registered only ever with us to have gotten out. When we find out what happened, we’ll post something on the blog here. In the meantime, if you have received one of these emails using an address you only ever submitted to onOne, I would appreciate it if you could contact me so we can ask a couple of questions to help narrow down where and how this could have occurred.

Specifically, we’re looking to see (1) when you submitted that email address; (2) what kind of form did  you submit  your email on? Was it a trial download request? product registration? product purchase? tech support or customer service request? forum sign up? blog sign up? photo contest entry?

Thank you in advance for your assistance and patience.

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I received a couple of emails from some onOne customers today because they received some spam emails from what appears to be the flickr domain. Apparently the email address that they received the spam email to was only ever used at onOne Software to register for a demo or purchase. We take this very seriously as we do not, have not, nor ever intend to sell, share or otherwise provide any information you provide to onOne to a third-party.

We have had our IT engineers examine our systems and there is no evidence that any of our systems, or customer databases were breached. Further, there is no evidence that our customer databases were exposed to anyone outside of onOne. Additionally, there is no evidence that any of our email service provider databases have been breached either. From what we have read online, it appears that the Flickr/Yahoo servers were breached in some fashion and allowed the spam to occur, likely sending to a large number of email addresses that may or may not have been associated with Flickr accounts.

I have received two of these “flickr” spam emails to two of my personal email addresses that I know for a fact, are not in any of the onOne customer databases. Neither of those email addresses are associated with Flickr either, so I’m not sure what is going on, but I can assure you that we at onOne Software have not sold or otherwise made available any email addresses that have been registered with onOne Software via our web site.

Here is a link on the Flickr help forum about this topic as well: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/110000/?search=spam

I apologize for what now looks like a teaser yesterday. I got ahead of myself and the rest of the team here. However, this plan of waiting to push the updaters out on Monday after additional testing “in the wild” really benefits  you. If for some reason, even though our tests look good, we roll this out on a Friday, you download it and install it on Saturday and have problems, there won’t be anybody in the office here to assist you.

Sorry for the pre-mature post yesterday. I’ll post more later as I hear feedback from users coming in.