Recent Apps Articles
Luminar Now Available for iPad and Apple Vision Pro
It's nice to see Skylum offer the powerful Luminar tools for iOS and a version that runs natively on Apple's new Vision Pro headset.
DxO Introduces PureRAW 4: What Are the Changes?
Just when you thought raw images couldn't be improved any more with external software, DxO aims to show you they can make your raw files look even better.
What Is It Like Using Adobe Lightroom on the New Apple Vision Pro?
This week, the brand new Vision Pro by Apple has been released to the public. This spatial computing device is clearly a massive talking point around the world already, but what is it like to use for editing photos?
Long Exposures on an iPhone: No Tripod Needed
Mac Photo-Cataloging App Peakto Gets Major Speed Boost
Cyme is now updating its Mac Photo app Peakto to version 1.10, and with it come some impressive speed increases.
Unfold The Beauty of Layflat Photo Books
There are many options out there for printing and presenting your images. In this article, we look at the multitude of benefits of creating a Layflat Photo Book and shed light on why they are fast becoming a favorite amongst professional photographers looking for a budget-minded alternative to Flush Mount Albums.
The Boundless Creativity of Your iPhone With The Reeflex Apps
The iPhone 15 Pro Max could possibly be considered one of the best mobile phone cameras for modern photography and videography. With a sophisticated camera system, and when paired with the Reeflex Pro app, it becomes even more powerful. This app unlocks the full potential of iPhone photography, allowing users to have complete control over their shots.
Skylum Now Adds Even More AI to Luminar Neo
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.
The Best Apps for Planning Photo Shoots
Smartphones are incredibly powerful tools, and they offer a ton of apps and features that make them one of the most useful things a photographer can carry with them. With the huge number of apps out there, it can be tricky to know which is right for you and your work. This fantastic video tutorial features an experienced photographer walking you through some of the best options.
Radiant Photo Mobile Gives You a Powerful Editor in Your Pocket
We've looked at the Radiant Photo Editor for Mac and PC in the past. It was created by some professional photographers to speed your editing process by making some smart decisions about your image and making intelligent changes. It was infinitely variable, and some good improved photos could result from the process.
Peakto Announces Luminar Neo Advanced Compatibility
Luminar Neo is one of my top editors, and Peakto is my very favorite cataloging app. Bringing the two together is a win-win for editors because one of the weaknesses of Neo is their catalog/database. It's been improved some, but it certainly can't compete with Lightroom or even Adobe Bridge.
The 6 Most Valuable Smartphone Apps for Landscape Photographers
In today's digital age, there are numerous apps available that can significantly enhance your landscape photography experience. In this article, I want to take a look at the six apps that have proven invaluable for my own landscape photography.
Coming: Luminar Neo Adds a Panorama Extension With a Twist
It's been a while since Skylum has added any extensions to Luminar Neo, its sophisticated image editor. Now, however, there's an important feature coming.
Five Tips for Better Smartphone Filmmaking
A First Look at the Pixel Fold, Google's First Foldable Smartphone
The Pixel Fold is the first foldable phone engineered by Google. I had a chance to preview this feature-packed productivity tool that is actually both a phone, and a tablet in one. In this review, I will discuss the Pixel Fold from a photographer’s perspective, its myriad of camera features, and its use as a productivity tool for creative professionals.
A Game-Changing Search Update: Google Photos
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.
Mylio Photos Is Relaunching as a Free App
Mylio Photos is about to be reborn as a free app with some options that will have a price attached. Mylio Photos is a complete photo management solution that allows users to easily collect, organize, browse, search, and share their media files, including photos, videos, and documents.
Incredible Hand-Held 30 Second Exposures With an iPhone App
The Limitations of AI Art: Why Hands Often Look Unnatural in Art
AI art generators have made significant strides in recent years, capable of producing stunning pieces of artwork that mimic the styles of famous artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso. However, there is still one area where these AI algorithms struggle to accurately replicate, the human hand.
Skylum Updates Its Smartphone App With AI Portrait Enhancing and Slick Tools for Landscapes
Skylum's Imgmi for smartphones has been out for a while. Like Luminar Neo on the Mac and PC platform, it's an AI-based image editor with a host of features, including sky replacement, power line removal, and tools like saturation, exposure, shadows, and highlights for simple editing.
DxO Adds Some Powerful New Features to PhotoLab 6.3
DxO PhotoLab is well regarded as one of the finest raw editors available for pro and semi-pro photographers. Although certainly not as well known as the Adobe products like Photoshop and Lightroom, it offers very powerful tools that have gotten a lot of attention.
Capturing and Editing Epic and Timeless Imagery of an Iconic Welsh Landmark With Just Your Mobile
In this video, Glyn Dewis effortlessly explains how he manages to capture the iconic Prince of Wales bridge spanning the border between Wales and England. As a proud Welshman, this was intriguing to me, and as a photographer this is engaging and really shows the potential that mobile technology has to be able to improve the availability and quality of immediate photography.
Be Wary of Photography Phone Apps: They May Be Stealing Your Face
We cannot live without our phones. Furthermore, phone apps that access your photos can be a lot of fun. However, they have a dark side, and maybe we should start to be more cautious about using them.
Luminar Neo Adds an Extension With a Christmas Twist
Just in time for holiday photos, Skylum has a new extension for Luminar Neo. It's the seventh extension offered this year, and it's called Magic LightAI. The release is scheduled for December 15.
I Moaned About VERO on Twitter, So the Billionaire Founder Rang Me up to Ask What They Can Do Better
The other morning I posted an unnecessarily snarky tweet about VERO and a breach of my copyright. That afternoon, I found myself on an hour-long Zoom call with founder CEO Ayman Hariri after he got in touch to discuss what VERO can do to improve.
Luminar Neo Adds a Focus Stacking Extension
The fifth Extension coming to the Luminar Neo editing platform is Focus Stacking, a tool for achieving a deep depth of field in a photo by merging (or stacking) up to 100 source images. Now, creating photos that are in sharp focus from the front to the back of the image becomes much easier, whether you’re shooting macro photography, portraits, or landscapes.
Don't Miss This Seamless Object Removal Feature
There are a few reasons why you might want to remove an object from a photograph. Maybe it's distracting from the more important elements of the image, a person in the background who isn't supposed to be there, or a sign that you didn't notice. But what do you do when you want to move (or remove) a significant object from your image's foreground? You might have had to do this in the past, and you know it isn't easy to do well.
Skylum Has Created a 'Neo Jr.' for Your Smartphone
Skylum has been one of the leading software companies providing AI-based editors for pro and semi-pro photographers. Luminar Neo has been a big seller, and it has fans and critics, but it has moved the market. Even Adobe and some of the other "big players" are embracing AI.
Is It Time To Sell Your Camera and Improve Your Adjectives? The Camera Is Dead, Long Live AI
Imagine a world where words can create images. Now imagine what that would do for the art world and photography. Well, it's here and it's not going to go away.
Radiant Photo Can Make Your Photos... Radiant
Last August, I took a look at a preview of a new app, Radiant Photo. It promised to do some of the heavy lifting on your unedited images and greatly improve them.
Our First Look at Luminar Neo Noiseless AI
I've had a preview release of the Noiseless AI extension that will be offered for Luminar Neo users on August 30. It's not quite finished it terms of GUI, but basic functionality is there. My copy only runs under Rosetta on my Mac Studio, but at release, it will be Apple Silicon Native.
Luminar Neo Adds Another New Extension: This One Is for Noise Removal
Seems like only a few weeks ago, I was reporting on an extension for Luminar Neo. It allowed the HDR combining of different exposures. Now, another extension is on the way, this one for AI-based noise reduction.
Is the Arsenal 2 for Advanced Photographers?
You may remember my 2019 review of the original Arsenal hardware. It was a block box you attached to your DSLR or mirrorless camera and it automated many of the tasks photographers face on a regular basis. The Arsenal sold quite well. While it had some good points that could speed or improve a photographer's workflow, it left a lot of buyers unhappy and it seemed to wind up on a lot of shelves and in a lot of drawers, rather than in camera bags. Now we've got Arsenal 2.
Adobe Premiere Pro Has Some Good New Updates
Adobe is really trying to make editing videos on small screens a more enjoyable process. They've looked at ways to give us more screen real estate. They've combined some tabs and made switching between workspaces much easier. It's even possible to do everything you need to in one workspace, and the workspace can be customized and saved as usual.
Luminar Neo Adds Portrait Background Removal to Its Bag of Editing Tricks
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.
Should Product Photographers Learn 3D Modeling?
Most of the time, when it comes to photography or video of cars, beauty products, cosmetics, and even shoes, it’s made on a computer and not by a photographer. There are several reasons for this, but in this video, Karl Taylor, a renowned product photographer and educator, discusses photography versus 3D CGI and the advantages of each.
DxO PureRAW 2 Can Work From Within Lightroom, Increases Speed, and Adds New Cameras and Lenses
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.
Luminar Neo Gets an Update From the Middle of the Ukraine Invasion
The folks at Skylum put out a minor update to Luminar Neo today. That's not a big news item, but what is significant is that the Neo programmers are doing it from Ukraine while the Russians shell the country.
Luminar Neo Now Shipping: We Review the Release Version
Skylum has kept reviewers well stocked with pre-release versions of Luminar Neo, and I've reported on the results. Nowm we've got the release version, although it is still not complete, which I'll detail below. Here's our review.
Luminar Neo Gives Us a Better Preview of What’s Coming
Skylum has been heavily teasing its new editor called Luminar Neo for many months, and today, I received another working preview of the app, available on Windows and Mac platforms. The new version seems to run a little faster than the last preview, and it is fully native to Apple silicon. I tested it on my 16" MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chipset. The release version will be faster, but Neo was editing at a good clip.
We Review an iPhone App That Will Control Your Sony Camera
Everyone who owns a good camera eventually wants some degree of remote control. It may be simply to get in a selfie, to take a time-lapse, or to create bracketed images.
Why Weather Apps Are Not Accurate Enough for My Landscape Photography
Rain, fog, red sky, hoar frost, and clouds: all these things are predictable with using apps. The only problem is that the probability that forecasts match reality is embarrassing low. I found a much better solution than I have used for some years now. With this, I’m nearly always fantastically prepared for the weather.
3 Alternatives to Adobe for Editing Your Images
When it comes to processing your images, Adobe is the standard choice for a lot of photographers, and many creatives go years without even trying other options. However, nowadays, there are a lot of alternatives to Lightroom and Photoshop, and whether you just do not like subscriptions or you are looking for a different way to work with your photos, this helpful video will give you a brief overview of three different options.
Photoshop Isn’t King Here: The Speciality Programs That Are Just Plain Better
Just about every important image I publish or send to a client passes through Photoshop. It’s an essential part of my workflow, and if you’re like most photographers, I’m sure it’s a part of yours. There are, however, a number of cases where I’ve just found a significantly better tool for the job, one that’s worth paying for. Want to see why you should consider snagging these programs that beat Photoshop at their own game?
Simon Says Squid Game's Strategy Is the Future
How did Squid Game save Netflix? With a global launch on the same date with translations in over 130 languages. How can you adopt this strategy? Let’s look at Simon Says, an online transcription service that surprised me in a good way.
DxO PhotoLab 5 Arrives With Enhanced Features and a Powerful Library
We've got a new and improved version of DxO PhotoLab available today, and version 5 will be of interest to advanced photographers and serious amateurs.
Expect Better Auto-Tone Color Correction in Premiere Pro
Color plays a vital role in photography and video. I would say it gives the work soul. Premiere Pro is constantly updating their NLE, and although their color correction tools were good, it's getting even better soon. Lumetri is becoming intelligent.
What Is Maps.me and Why Should You Be Using It?
Nearly everyone today knows about the effectiveness of Google Maps for finding locations anywhere in the world and even perhaps saving them for reference later. There have been countless articles, written even here on Fstoppers, which exhibit its usefulness. However, many fundamental deficiencies arise upon using Google Maps when you take away the one thing it needs to be functional: an internet connection.
DxO Announces Nik Collection 4.2
Nik Tools (now called the Nik collection) has been around since 1995 as an Adobe plugin. Google bought the tools, then dropped them, and DXO rescued the popular photo-editing aids in 2017. They've undergone continuous upgrades since then, and this new version will please Mac users with the new M1 chips.