Drawing tablets have always been a necessary tool for photo retouchers but just about everyone can benefit from incorporating one into their workflow. Now the new Huion HS64 is a great affordable entry-level option. I first started using a drawing tablet in high school as a graphic artist and it took me a long time to get used to it.
Retouching is an essential part of the photography process. A photo does not get published without some finishing applied in post production. Automation tools such as presets and actions help speed up this process, but there is a danger in using them. This article discusses the problem with presets.
As a fledgling YouTuber myself, I'm always interested in tips and tricks that can make my videos more professional looking. If you're like me and struggle with keeping your "set" neat and tidy, this video from Drone Film Guide may be just the ticket!
This is the second in this series of posts highlighting some of the differentiators between Capture One and Lightroom. As with the first, if you’re reading this, the likelihood is that you are or were recently a Lightroom user and are curious about a better software solution with which to treat your images.
Capture One is one of those programs that, once learned, is hard to do without, but due to the common experience of learning post-processing software within an Adobe ecosystem, anything different like Capture One can appear less intuitive or more challenging, even if it isn’t.
My colleague Ryan Mense just gave us the announcement from Topaz about their new AI based filters called Topaz Adjust AI, and I wanted to give them a try.
If you’re reading this, the likelihood is that you are currently or were recently a Lightroom user and are looking for better software with which to treat your images. That quest to find the best software is not necessarily an easy one, but it is necessary.
For many photographers, the Adobe software suite is the main suite they use for editing and to manage their content. Over the last few years, however, many creatives have become dissatisfied with the monthly subscription model that Adobe has now opted for. For this reason, many photographers have been looking for a viable alternative.
From contemporary to classic in one breath, in this installment of the A to Z of Photography I outline the current, and oh so trendy, hyper-lapse technique before showcasing the work of the classic, and brilliant, photography of Horst P. Horst, including his signature work the "Mainbocher Corset". Read on for more!
Sometimes as you sit down to edit an image, it comes across flatter than you'd like it to be and you wish you'd gotten just a bit more depth of field. If you didn't capture that blur in camera, all is not lost.
The latest Topaz Labs release to leverage the power of machine learning is Adjust AI, a photo editor that can automatically bring out color and detail in your images.
Jeff Whitlock’s work as a high-end retoucher has been gaining notice for the last several years, and just about every time I turn around, Jeff is sharing some amazing project he’s just worked on. From the "This is not Magritte" series to his work on portraits of celebrities, Jeff has been knocking it out of the park with great regularity.
Ask yourself a simple question, it's 2019 and digital pretty much everything is and has been in full swing for a while now, do you still watermark your images? I do, I have no plans on stopping, and apparently it really upset someone on Instagram recently.
ACDSee recently asked to sponsor a video where I use their new Photo Studio Professional software. I thought it would be fun to do an entire portrait session from start to finish.
Capture One has evolved over the past few years to become the powerhouse it is now. With its newest release, it turns into even more efficient software, thanks to the addition of Capture One Studio.
What is Capture One Express? Simply put, it’s a totally free and simplified version of the Capture One editing software that still offers the same superior raw handling ability as the Pro version.
You use Lightroom to process batches of images because you know how important efficiency is. But if you're not fully utilizing Lightroom's available rating (and sorting) options, you're not running as tight a ship as you could.
As I continue to add content to my YouTube channel, I thought it would be fun to try something new and screen-record myself while doing an edit. During this process I remembered the importance of trying edits like this to familiarize myself with the programs I use on a day to day basis.
"That's been Photoshopped" is something you hear often but have you ever heard anyone say "that's been Lightroomed"? Does your answer to that question tell you which form of software is better, or which you need more?
Some photographers obsess over color, spending thousands on calibration equipment and high end monitors. A recent popular news story showed why this might not be worth it.
Laptops have severe limitations when it comes to throwing graphics around, lacking the big, fan-cooled processors that are often a feature of desktop machines. What if you could keep the mobility of your laptop and plug into an external GPU when you need to render graphics or export your content? Could this be a game changer when it comes to your workflow?
Many of us remember the debut of NIK Tools in 1995. They were a powerful set of plugins for Photoshop that did color adjustments, created lovely black and white images, and could sharpen images and lower noise in them. Just about every photographer I knew snapped them up at $500.
You might not be considering dropping the cash for this thing, but the target customer might.
If you’re out of the loop, Apple announced a brand new Mac Pro. It’s an overdue replacement for the previous trash can model, and I think Apple is getting back to their Mac Pro roots. It’s more cheese grater than ever.
Hiring retouchers is something often talked about but I’ve never considered until recently as it has always seemed out of reach. Canadian company, The Image Salon, recently allowed me to try their portrait retouching services and I was excited to give them a whirl!
One of the best pieces of advice I have been given in recent times was to not be a firefighter. Before you all jump on me and tell me I'm a dummy for saying something negative about people who are clearly more heroic than I am, let me explain. What I mean is to not be proactive in how I operate.
One of the most popular videos we have produced in the last year was with Mike Kelley and Lee Morris as they battled it out in the Amateur Vs Pro Architecture Photographer Shootout. This week Mike and Lee have set their rematch, and you our audience will be the judges!
It has been some time since Adobe last released a new control to Lightroom, and as such, I was very keen to try out their latest addition — the “Texture” slider. Since a good majority of my work is underwater, I was of course interested in what value it could add to underwater images.
In a perfect world, raw files would be as light as JPEGs. Even better yet, every camera manufacturer would use a similar and open format such as DNG. Unfortunately, as we all know, we don't live in a perfect world. However, one company named Dotphoton is about to change it all!
Today I'll be going over the NBP Ultrasharp plugin and how to use it for your workflow. Normally I am not too excited about new apps or plugins unless they really do provide something I couldn't previously do, or makes something I can already do faster and easier.
Full disclosure: this plugin is developed by long-standing Fstoppers writer, Nino Batista.
Architectural photography is an exacting discipline. Consequently, small mistakes can make a large impact on your body of work. In this article, I cover five common mistakes that I’ve observed in architectural photography.
The Retouching Toolkit is, without a doubt, the best Photoshop extension I have tried yet. It helps streamline one's editing workflow, improves Photoshop's interface, and with the latest update, it's getting one step closer to becoming the only Photoshop plugin you could ever need.
If you are a wedding photographer, then at some point in your career you will be faced with the challenge of making great images with conditions that are less then ideal. These tips can help you make the best of any situation.
If you're fortunate enough to be somewhere in the world where you have the chance to photograph the northern lights, you'll want to be prepared to take some beautiful images. Hopefully, the tips and tricks in this video help to set you up for success.
Adobe's updates to apps across the Lightroom lineup today include a new Texture slider under the Presence pane for a finer alternative to clarity, tutorials created by photographers you know so you can follow along with their edits, additional tools that help others collaborate to add images to albums with you online, and more.
There aren’t many things photographers unanimously agree on, but the desire to improve post-processing results and reduce the time required to do it is one. With so much of a photographer’s time spent behind a computer, anything that not only expedites but enhances the experience is welcomed with open arms, and using a Wacom pen tablet is one such thing.
I hope I'm not the only person who does this, but up until recently, I had not used any of the cataloging features from any image editing software. This isn't because I thought any of them were particularly bad; instead, I just have my own way of managing files and their locations. However, ACDSee has changed my mind about this.
With the digital age stacking techniques make it possible to shoot a star trail in the middle of a city. But when I got my hands on a great medium format camera, I also ran into a problem: the star trail had strange patterns in the stacked image. Fortunately I found out why this is, and how to avoid it.
What part of the photographic process are you operating at a world class level? This article is about owning what you’re great at and outsourcing the remainder of the process to specialists.
The Apple versus Windows discussion tends to get some strong opinions from both sides. Many creatives swear by Apple and consider them to be the only option, and this is mostly due to the operating system. Preferences aside, it would seem that Macs are sometimes the slower and worse option for creatives.
For my latest photoshoot I decided to use harsh light to photograph my buddy Bart in two different ways. If you've wanted to learn how to get that vintage movie style look, you'll enjoy this full tutorial.
With popular software in a perpetual state of change, it's always useful to keep an eye out for videos which offer tips and advice for things you may have missed. I'll admit it, I use Lightroom to about 10% of its capacity. I primarily use it for structure and order of my library of photos and shoots so I can quickly locate images when I need them.
Often we scroll through other photographers' Instagram feeds, wondering "How the heck did they get that shot?" We now have the unusual opportunity to learn exactly how one photographer captures “that shot,” and what we learn is surprising.
Trying to create an overall feel or style for a collection of images can be challenging, especially if there is a large amount of diversity across a set that you want to present together. In this short video, photographer Julia Trotti explains how she uses Lightroom to create a cohesive collection of images.
One of the fundamental issues in astrophotography is the general lack of light. To combat this, many serious astrophotographers turn toward equatorial mounts to allow them to get more light, but this can create difficulties if you have a foreground subject as well. This helpful tutorial will show you how to composite a foreground shot with a tracked night sky shot.
A lot of cityscapes and cinematography of urban settings are moody and it's a very popular aesthetic. Here's how you can achieve the look with your own images using Lightroom. The YouTube channel Matt 'n' Seb is an interesting one for me. It hasn't got a massive following (and as people who read my work will know, I love sharing lesser known content creators!) but it's slightly different.
It’s amazing what mid or entry-level hardware can deliver when you pair it with great software. The best software will be able to make up for some of the weaknesses and exploit every ounce of its strengths – ideally with relative ease. That's what we'll see here with Capture One's Luma Range tool.
Photographer and YouTuber Irene Rudnyk hired two retouchers through Fiverr, the marketplace for freelancers. Paying one $2 and the other $10, she revealed what both of the low-budget retouching services provided.
Sharpness: it's what we all want from our photos and it's something many of us obsess over. If your shot out of camera isn't quite as razor edge as you'd like, there are quite a few ways to get more sharpness in post-production. This method is by far my favorite.
I once tried to color calibrate my monitor... It was a disaster.
Making the switch to Capture One from Lightroom is easier and quicker than you think. There’s this perception that given the two pieces of software are from different companies, moving your Lightroom catalogs to Capture One is some arduous and protracted process, that you’ll have to start from scratch with all your images, re-edit, re-rate, and create whole new folder structures.