HP today announced three new additions to their Photosmart range of digital compacts. The most interesting of the trio is the R837 which features on-board photo retouching. The feature, which is called Photo Touch-up, enables the user to remove blemishes such as spots by simply zooming into the offending area, highlighting it using the marquee and pressing the okay button. For those familar with Photoshop retouching it’s like an automatic healing brush. From WDC’s brief demonstration of the feature it seems to work very well.
The R837’s other key spec includes a 7.2-megapixel sensor, large 3-inch LCD display with a 170 degree viewing angle, and a 3x optical zoom. It also offers HP’s other Real Life technologies, including a ‘slimming’ function, redeye removal (and an interesting new variation of it called ‘Pet-Eye Fix’) and HP SteadyPhoto (its software based shake reduction feature).
The HP 837 carries a suggested price of £179 and will be in shops in April.
HP’s other new cameras were the M537 and M437, mid-range cameras offering 6MP and 5MP respectively, plus redeye removal and HP SteadyPhoto, and will cost £99 and £79, also from April.

Full press release follows:

The Camera that Fixes Photos For You

Remove blemishes, slim down subjects and even fix glowing pets’ eyes with new HP digital camera

London, UK, 8 March, 2006 – HP today announced the HP Photosmart R837 digital camera – a camera that can touch up photos in an instant without having to connect to a photo editing programme, or even a PC.

The HP Photosmart R837 digital camera comes with a new set of HP Design Gallery features which include a tool for removing blemishes from the subject’s face. Now you can zone in on any blemish such as a spot, mole or scar and instantly remove it. Achieve the kind of effects that are normally only possible with sophisticated photo editing tools right in the camera.

The touch-up feature joins the now legendary slimming tool, which automatically takes pounds off subjects for instantly glamorous photos. Also new for 2007 is pet-eye fix – a version of HP’s red eye removal which removes the glowing effect caused by pets’ eyes, leaving cats and dogs looking cute and cuddly rather than demonic.

Snap and share

The features are all contained within a powerful but affordable 7.2-megapixel camera with large, bright 7.6cm (3-inch) screen that can be viewed equally well indoors and out. The camera includes 24x total zoom, including 3x optical zoom, for sharp, detailed pictures that can be blown up to poster size. The camera is housed in a smooth, curved, compact metal casing that slips easily into a pocket.

HP’s new digital cameras are making it even easier to prepare your photos for their final destination – whether they’re to be printed, stored or shared. HP’s Photosmart Express software now contains tagging, so you can earmark the photos you want to keep, categorise and send, right in the camera. Then, when you download the photos to a PC, they’re already sorted and ready to send or store. Email them straight away if you want to, save for later or instantly order prints from HP’s on-line photo sharing service Snapfish(1).

The HP Photosmart R837 digital camera comes with advanced features including:

* 7.2-megapixels for beautiful prints and enlargements up to poster size.
* Zoom for dramatic, close-up shots, using 24x total zoom – 3x internal optical zoom lens, 8x digital.
* Big, 7.6cm (3-inch) image display for framing and viewing photos and menus – indoors or out.
* First HP digital camera to offer HP touch-up for the removal of blemishes.
* HP steady photo anti-shake feature helps to prevent blurred photos in lower light accounting for hand shake and moving subjects.
* Enjoy quick photo organisation for easy sharing – simply tag your photos using in-camera menus.
* 32MB internal memory, or expand the camera’s memory using an optional SD memory card(2) and never miss a shot.
* High-quality VGA video with audio shoots at 24 frames per second.