Apps

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CyberLink has an update for its long-available PhotoDirector image editor, which runs on Mac OS and Windows. This latest version is called PhotoDirector 13. New light effects and color adjustment features have been added. The company claims you can turn any photo into a "visual masterpiece with a comprehensive set of AI tools, including AI-powered Sky Replacement and Photo Animation effects."

Skylum created a bit of a late summer storm when it announced a new image editor, Luminar Neo. The complaint from users has been that Skylum drops development on an editor, only to release a new one, while essentially going end of life on the current software.

Photographers have gear, and gear needs to be packed without being forgotten. If you’re like us, you obsess about systems that will make sure you have everything you need to create the work you want. Packaroo is an app we have been using to streamline this process.

Imagine an application that can write music for your video with only some hints from you about the style of music and the length of the video. Imagine an app that will write music that fits with your dissolves or add a punchy note wherever you like for emphasis.

Frame.io, a leader in building software for collaboration, client review and sign-off, and cloud-based workflows in moving image productions, is being acquired by Adobe for $1.275 billion. Why is this such a big deal?

Adobe is pushing out an update to Photoshop today that includes some improvements to its Sky Replacement feature, and they are adding some features to the iPad version of Photoshop.

When comparing the two, Photoshop CC and CS6, it's clear that the CS6 users don't want to upgrade because of the rental business model Adobe enforces. But, what are the actual advantages, and, is it possible to be more productive and make more money when you deliver more work because it's easier to do?

There is often talk about how great smartphone cameras are now — and I'm one of the people saying it — but with modern apps, they are so much more than their camera for photographers. Here are 10 apps that can improve and aid your videography.

It's a massive time-saver if you don't have to write out text, get it into your video project, align it correctly, and make corrections. It's now automatic in Premiere Pro, and it's something that puts Adobe ahead of Final Cut and Da Vinci Resolve.

When I look at product photography and video in the fashion and beauty product industry, many of the shots are now computer-generated. It might be at a steep cost initially to get the team to create the products in 3D space, but once that’s done, the product can be used in any scene you need for the client. Are we beyond photography?

Non-Linear Editing software is rather simple. Footage clips are dragged into a timeline, and the editor can cut clips to shorten them and arrange them in an order that makes up the visual part of the video.

Photographers of Instagram, rejoice! We can now upload content directly from our computers. Check out how to add photos right from your desktop with this step-by-step guide.

For astrophotographers who use Photoshop, here's some interesting and some good news. A just-released plug-in called APF-R (Absolute Point of Focus) can do wonders for your images. Astrophotographer Christoph Kaltseis has developed APF-R in order to achieve high-resolution, ultra-sharp images that still look natural. As astro-imagers know, trying to sharpen point sources like stars can result in ugly halos and other unwanted artifacts.

Apps have undoubtedly revolutionized modern life and there are few areas untouched by them. Photography is no exception and with the help of the right app, your shoots and your workflow can improve tenfold. Here are four apps one photographer reaches for when planning his next shoot.

I shoot solely raw. However, I know some tremendous photographers whose cameras are set to record just JPEGs, and they will never change. I am envious because they spend less time in front of the computer. Shooting raw is worth learning, but maybe there's also a good reason to shun it.

It doesn't matter what type of photographer you are, having the ability to accurately document and locate hard-to-find spots is worth its weight in gold. This app is about to revolutionize how we all shoot on location.

President Biden brings sanctions against Russia for cyber-attacks. As cyber-attacks become ever more sophisticated, we photographers need to tighten our security and awareness of the risks, with twelve hints to keep you safe.

Today, a wide range of solutions are available for capturing a 360 degree still or video movie. You can even produce these on your phone.

A heritage website has found fame for its web app that can animate old photographs to bring the dead briefly back to life. But how effective and realistic is it?

Avalanche for Mac is an interesting product for Mac photographers, and it has one function: to get your images out of one application catalog into another. With all the changes in photo applications, it's easy to switch to something that seems more useful, but often, the catalogs don't come along with your move. As catalogs embed more and more editing metadata, it gets even harder.

If you have been around Facebook and other social media platforms, it’s almost certain that you have heard of Clubhouse. But what exactly is it and should you even be interested?

Nickelback’s 2005 post-grunge soft-rock hit “Photograph” has always been ripe for parody and now Nickelback themselves have joined in by creating a hilarious new advert to promote Google Photos. Is it my hair or just a ramen bowl?

I have seen a lot of uses of artificial intelligence in the editing of photos, particularly in the last couple of years. This app, however, might be the most impressive yet, albeit walking a questionable line of "editing gone too far."

My favorite editing software, DaVinci Resolve, has just released the newest version, and for a limited time, you can get a full license to the latest version and an incredibly powerful keyboard editing interface for just the price of the license alone. The Speed Editor bundle includes a purpose-built portable keyboard with a unique set of features, including dedicated keyboard shortcuts and a weighted search dial. Want to know what makes it such a good value?

I don't much like being wrong, but it happens and by degrees. Some years ago, I would scoff and tut at adverts and posts purporting to have found a brilliant new plugin for Photoshop, writing them off instantly as a waste of money. But are they?

Has it been 25 years? Amazing. I remember when Nils Kokemohr founded Nik Multimedia in 1995, which later became Nik Software in 2006. The package included plugins for color management and editing, another for enhancing or creating black and white images, sharpening tools, and later HDR software to help photographers increase the dynamic range of their images.

Adobe has announced early Black Friday deals for its Creative Cloud subscriptions packs, including more than 20 creative apps.

I don't know about you, but many of us, your humble author included, had a pretty horrific upgrade to Big Sur, the latest and apparently, not the greatest OS from Apple.

Earlier this year, Apple announced its two-year timeline for a transition to its own silicon — to Macs without Intel, that is. With that shift come many questions about the future of our pro applications, so we reached out to Adobe to get some answers.

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.

ACDSee's brand new edition of Photo Studio Ultimate has arrived on the scene and offers a powerful new tool to revolutionize color editing in your photography workflow. With plenty of fantastic new features, upgrades to old favorites, and a few time-saving innovations, this software is a strong contender in the world of photo editing.

Fall is here! The leaves around you have hopefully taken on some great colors, but you might not be getting the draw dropping pictures you want. Fortunately, there’s 5 easy tricks you can try and they all work with your phone.

The new venture fund of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has made its first investment, in that of a disposable camera app. Known as David’s Disposable, users take photos but must wait until 9am the next day to see them, in order to replicate the real effect of getting disposables developed.