Adobe concentrated its Creative Cloud 2017 updates heavily in newer media areas as it announced an After Effects improvement to render 3D elements up to 20 times faster, a Premier Pro update that automatically detect and create settings for different types of virtual reality content, and a new project, Project Felix, to aid in the creation of photo-realistic images by combining 2D and 3D assets. Meanwhile, cloud-based document collaboration across Creative Cloud, universal search in Photoshop, and other new features improve usability across a number of applications.

There has been a disturbance. Have you felt it? Some astute photophiles (not a word I just made up) have noticed a change in quality in their posts when Instagram pushed a photo to Facebook after the most recent update, 7.5. So I decided to run a few comparison tests of my own to see if the quality really was different, and why my photos suddenly started to look so gritty.

Like it or not, Instagram is a viable tool for a lot of photographers to showcase their work and find potential clients. This great video will give you eight tips for increasing your likes on the app.

A few weeks ago, Instagram profiles displayed follower and following counts quite prominently, placing a heavy emphasis on a user's total number of connections on the app. Now, the company has vastly redesigned profiles, strongly deemphasizing numbers and giving attention to bios.

As Adobe continues to grow its customer base with its easily accessible subscription plans, other companies are looking to capitalize with their own software solutions. Luminar has been around for a while, but their new 2018 version introduces some amazing features. Regardless of how you look at it, at $69 for a perpetual license, it’s a steal. Nevertheless, how does it really compare to industry standards such as Lightroom or Photoshop?

Finally, it seems Instagram has pushed past its original 640x640 image resolution and made way in almost doubling that to 1080x1080 this week. First noticed a few days ago when posting over the July 4th weekend my iPhone 6 Plus had not left my images soft when hitting the 'share' button but rather closely maintained its original image quality. It took me a few days and some digging in the source code but I had noticed my photos breaking a much larger resolution by surprise.

DxO PureRAW is a permanent part of my photographic workflow. Before anything else, I take my raw files from my mirrorless camera and my drone through PureRAW first. It checks my camera and lens data and outputs a raw file with corrections that eliminate lens distortions, vignetting, noise, and a host of other issues specific to my hardware. Here's my review of what was a must-have the last time around.

Helped by great design, marketing, and a superb product to boot, Syrp’s motorized time-lapse aid, the Genie, became incredibly popular with photographers. As the product that launched the company on Kickstarter three years ago, it was a premium offering, though. And sometimes, it’s useful to have something fantastic in a “light” version. Enter the Genie Mini.

When buying a quadcopter, it’s hard to know where to draw the line on what accessories you should be buying with it. It’s already an expensive investment independent of all of the extras you’ll practically need. It’s even more painful to consider how a simple, inexpensive component can keep you from flying successfully. After adding a DJI Phantom 4 Pro + to my lineup, I complied a list of all of the hardware I found most valuable to help you get the greatest return on your investment.

Instagram's popularity with photographers is incomparable. What is essentially a free portfolio building app disguises itself as a powerful marketing tool to connect with prospective clients, but it suffers at times due to its sheer size and scope. Maybe you're bored of sieving through lame #goals and #inspiration posts, and want to know what mobile friendly alternatives are out there? Well folks, I'm here to tell you.

Adobe released an update to Lightroom CC for iOS. In addition to adding camera and lens support for the new Apple iPhone XS, XS Max and iPhone XR, Lightroom CC for iOS version 4.0.2 includes support for Apple’s new iPad Pro and second generation Pencil.

Photoshop for the iPad was touted as Adobe’s most important mobile application, with iPad owners very keen to use the image editing software. However, the app is lacking some key features, seems to have a horrific lag when using certain tools, and is now attracting shockingly bad reviews on the App Store. What happened?

First-person cameras, such as the ubiquitous GoPro, have been filming hours of footage from their owner’s journeys for years now. These lengthy uncut videos don’t hold much interest to most people, but a team of Microsoft Researchers are aiming to change that by using some remarkable technology they hope to release as part of an upcoming app.

Sharing your images on the web from point A to point B, in this case, from your desktop to Instagram, can be quite a hassle. You have to make a separate folder in your Dropbox, email it, or send it to yourself (there are a variety of ways), and clog up a bunch of storage on your phone. Yes, I know there several back door methods that have been discussed prior on this issue, and while Instagram has not yet made a plunge into the desktop world, we'll have to make do until then. But in the mean time, I came across this super user-friendly, free Lightroom plug-in that solidifies a solution!

As a relatively recent convert to Instagram, a former outsider-looking-in, there are a few things about the app that I don’t particularly care for or make use of. Like most people I know, I’m not at all tempted to make use of the built-in, over-cooked, HDR-gone-wrong filters. When I do post a photo taken on my phone, it’s been edited in VSCO Cam. I’m also not a huge fan of the user interface in Instagram. It’s a little clunky, oft overwhelming, and features a rather uninspiring design. For a better viewing, browsing, and exploring experience I’ve turned to a seemingly unknown app, Primary.

This is a wild claim to make. The camera is one of the most used apps on the iPhone, and most of the photos shared online are taken with one. So, why would this app beat the iPhone’s camera app? According to the video, Microsoft Pix is a smart camera, and looking at the features, it seems like they might’ve developed something quite great.

It was just a couple years into using Instagram myself before I noticed one name pop up regularly: Merek Davis. Having first been introduced to him as "The Mextures Dude," the fascination with him and the incredible inspriation he brought along with him had me hooked. I immediately began downloading free Mextures individually from his website and using apps like Image Blender to add them to my shots to enhance them with these magnificent colors, textures and custom film grains.

Today at Adobe MAX 2018, Adobe announced further updates to popular photo-cataloging and editing applications Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC.

A bug in a recent Adobe Creative Cloud update is currently deleting a folder on the root drive (Macintosh HD, by default) of Macs upon installation. This issue is affecting Backblaze users disproportionately due to the fact that the bug results in the deletion of the contents of the alphabetically first hidden folder on the root drive, which is often the folder ".bzbol" for Backblaze users.

Instagram is a really cool thing; it's chock full of amazing work that inspires. It's also a great place to connect with the people who make that work. However, when people create fake connections by following and unfollowing, I get quite annoyed.

One of the keys to running a successful photography business is to be constantly innovating and searching for the best ways to serve your clients. A month ago I made the decision to use Pixieset for my client galleries. Here are my Top 10 reasons why I feel it is a good choice for all professional photographers.

Today, Adobe has released several updates for their software, including a new editing interface for their mobile app and a new "Reference View" for the Develop Module in the desktop app.

Bro, sick shot! We all know those iPhone photographers (yeah, we are looking at you, Andrew Griswold) who may sometimes take their photoshoots a little too far. The team over at AwesomenessTV perfectly captured what it's like to get a cup of coffee with an Instagram Bro. Please Bro, quit embarrassing us, and just drink your coffee.

Score one for authentic interaction. Today, Instagress, a prominent Instagram bot service, shut their doors after being "requested" to do so by Instagram.

A major update is now available for Creatic, the free iPhone photo editing app. In Creatic 2.0, users now have access to many more editing tools, a preset manager, live filter camera, and a newly designed discover tab for browsing and interacting with the community. After using it for a few days, I found that there’s actually a surprising amount on editing control in this app not found elsewhere.

As one of the most popular autonomously flying apps on the market, Litchi is taking the complexity out of flying drones. Drone enthusiasts now can easily set waypoints and POI’s in Google Earth, before even leaving home. By using state of the art technology, Litchi is attempting to corner the market, by replicating features which were once only available through more expensive apps and providing them in a simpler and more affordable format.

Apps for working out the best times to shoot in natural light based on your location are not new, but the GoldenHour.One App by Hana Kusova brings together the perfect ingredient of features to compliment any photographer’s planning process for outdoor photography.

We're unfortunately living in the days of the algorithm, and that means working with Instagram is nowhere near as straightforward as it used to be. Nonetheless, it's still a powerful tool for creatives to get their work out into the world and network. This great video will examine three things that might be holding you back when you try to increase your Instagram following.

The popular Mac photography software company, Macphun, released a new application for the Mac that promises incredible noise reduction processing. Noiseless comes in regular and Pro versions, the latter of which include increased capabilities like RAW processing and included plug-in support for your other editing applications and both of which provide what is truly some of the best noise reduction available.

Apple started the WWDC17 event yesterday which is used to introduce the new features to the developer community, for them to use and create new apps with. So here we take a look at what Apple has introduced and what we can expect from our devices in the following months once they launch it.

Just a few weeks ago, Skylum added GenErase to the Neo platform, a smart AI erase and fill feature. Now, they are adding the second part of their trilogy of AI tech: this one is GenSwap.

Google’s Pixel has been hailed as one of the best on the market, some even calling it the best. I’m not saying the iPhone’s camera is lackluster, but is there something missing?

Besides your camera, your phone is probably the most important tool for a successful photography trip. So if your laptop was stolen, could you get by with your smartphone? Would it be handicapped without a cellular connection?

Luminar Neo from Skylum has added a much awaited feature: background removal in portraits. Removing a person's image from a photo is nothing new, but it's generally time-consuming if the background is not simple or solid. Luminar Neo does it usually in one click, and if you're a professional or an advanced hobbyist, it is a time-saver.

Google Photos is in the process of testing an enhanced search feature that allows users to perform complex queries, making it simpler and more efficient to find and manage photos within the platform. By catering to detailed and specific queries, users can locate their desired images with greater ease, thereby improving their overall experience.

Let me get to the point: Adobe Spark could be the company’s biggest release yet. For veteran Adobe users, it might not seem as exciting as a new Creative Cloud update; but the combination of its ease of use, ingenious functionality, and truly professional results give it the potential to aid far more people than Photoshop ever will — no, really. This is helped immensely by the fact that Spark’s launch is amongst the most impressive I’ve ever seen, as Adobe Spark launches today with the maturity of a decade-old product. And it’s completely free.

Created for the creative, MIOPS is a promising new accessory used to easily trigger your camera or flash unit for high-speed photography scenarios. The MIOPS team have launched a Kickstarter to acquire funding for their new high-tech device in which they declare is “not the first trigger in the market, but it is going to be the best.”

After Monday's release of Lightroom, many users were upset to find the release had seen changes that removed features and worse, had a tendency to crash, rendering it essentially unusable. Today, Adobe has released an update that corrects the crash issue, as well as an apology.

Last week Google released its DeepDream code to the public to play with. This code was created while attempting to enhance a computer's ability to recognize a certain scene or object. This code was capable of doing some pretty creepy things to your photos, and now it has become a web app.

As a landscape photographer I'm always looking for unique locations. Living in Arizona, I seek out ghost towns, abandoned mines, and old airfields, military or civilian.

Based on Instagram being so important and popular for photographers at this particular time, and as a follow up on some Instagram tips I wrote about before, we constantly look for ways to stand out and be different or better.

It's a big year for Apple. This is the year Apple finally introduces some major technological upgrades from augmented-reality and improved cameras to OLED screens in its iPhone lineup. And in doing so, they've released three new models alongside each other, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. Most importantly for us, however, is that the new iPhones not only feature the best cameras yet, but also more broadly represent the biggest leap in image technology in a single year thanks both to new hardware and software.

The next generation of cameras are going to be competing in a market that’s tougher than ever. While the launch of mirrorless camera hardware from Nikon and Canon may have prompted some to upgrade, the next round of camera purchases also needs to offer something new in software. Want to know what needs to be there?

Today, DxO is taking the wraps off their latest update to their PhotoLab series, PhotoLab 4. It's a major update of its multiple award-winning photo-editing software. This latest version features DxO DeepPRIME, a revolutionary demosaicing and denoising technology based on artificial intelligence and trained with deep learning.

Have you ever just wanted to transform your iPad into a graphics tablet? The ex-Apple engineer duo at Astropad HQ have done just that, over WIFI or USB to boot. It’s also 30 percent off for the next 48 hours.

Last year I shared my method of how I export my photos for sharing with clients and social media without losing quality. While that method is proven, it was always still a pain to share a separate file for full resolution, not to mention that full resolution photos can push 20 MB a piece. Thankfully, I was introduced to an app that overcomes all of this.

If you are a photographer, there is a strong possibility that you do a fair amount of work from home. With such an abundance of media and devices fighting for your attention, it can be a struggle to stay productive. Use the following tips to help you stay efficient so you can get out of your house and have a life!

Recently our own Lee Morris shot a model photoshoot entirely with an iPhone 6s Plus, showing that with proper lighting technique, a good model, and proficient use of editing software, you can obtain professional looking results with even the most humble of cameras. Andrew Weber, a professional sports photographer, decided to take it one step further by capturing the unpredictable environment of a primetime NFL game with only his iPhone 6s Plus in hand. Weber was kind enough to answer some of our questions and provide a great sampling of his photos from the shoot.

Smartphones offer countless useful resources for planning and shooting photos. With tens of thousands of apps, it can be difficult to know which are the best. Here are my top five.