Recent Software Articles

The Photography Business Just Got Easier Thanks To Some Clever New Software

A sign at the flea market read "Creative Minds are Seldom Tidy." Do you ever feel this way? Do you ever wish you had a program that would help you organize your thoughts, your to-do's, your contacts, contracts, invoices even bank information? As a creative, often we get so caught up in our work that we forget to run our business like a business. Fortunately a new program recently launched that will help you get everything organized and automated in your business making more time for you to actually do the things you love.

Finally Released: A Program That Allows You To Schedule Instagram Posts

One of the big things lacking in my workflow was the ability to schedule Instagram posts. I have a personal Instagram as well as two work focused Instagram accounts and remembering to post on each one is time consuming and frustrating. About once a month I'll check to see if Hootsuite has added the ability to schedule instagram posts, but unfortunately it still does not. This month, my Google search led me to Latergramme and I was instantly smitten.

Red Giant Audio/Video Sync Program Pluraleyes Makes Editing a Lot Faster

If you aren't using some sort of software to sync audio, you're sitting in your edit bay manually matching audio to video queues, be that sounds, video hints or timecodes. But what if you could just dump all your camera footage from an interview and all the audio from your recorder into one program and hit one button to sync them all quickly and accurately? You can with Red Giant Pluraleyes, and it's nearly perfect.

Change the Time of Day in a Photo? Remove Haze? What We Saw at Adobe MAX "Sneaks"

Last night we were treated to an annual event where Adobe encourages their developers to think differently and solve problems they perceive and present them to the world. This event takes place every year at Adobe MAX and is called "Sneaks." Sneaks has led to innovations like Content Aware Fill and Shake Reduction, but not everything revlealed at Sneaks is guaranteed to make it to a final consumer release. But what we saw looked pretty amazing.

POLL: Do You Approve of Adobe’s Choice to Focus on Mobile? Let Them Know!

Though it’s easy to think Adobe, being the giant company that they are, doesn’t pay attention to the opinions of the average layperson, it has been my experience that the opposite is true. At the very least, the developers and project managers at Adobe indeed read Fstoppers, so this is your chance to tell them: is their direction the right one for photographers and filmmakers?

Storehouse: The Best Media Sharing App in the World Adds Lightroom Support

Every day, people are taking more and more fantastic photographs. The only problem is that they’re all stuck in the Camera Roll or Lightroom. What if there were an easy — I mean, actually EASY — way to share multiple photos and videos from your shoots along with text in a clean, media-centric, easy-to-view format for your followers to enjoy? Enter, Storehouse: the app that I, personally, am going to use exclusively to share my own content from this point forward. It’s that good.
List of Every Adobe CC Desktop Application Update Available Today

We got a fleeting glance of all the updates being made available to creatives today during the Adobe MAX keynote, but Adobe spent a majority of their time talking about mobile and connectivity. We managed to get a complete list of software updates that are coming to your desktop apps too and have it here in one place for easy perusal.

Why it Matters That Adobe and Microsoft Just Gave Everyone at MAX a Surface Pro 3

Adobe Max is a creative conference where artists from around the world the chance to interact with beta designs, see great speakers and learn from professionals and of course, see what new software and hardware advancements Adobe is adding to the fold. This year, Microsoft made a surprise appearance, and at the end of the keynote they gave everyone attending MAX a Surface Pro 3. This is a big deal, and not just because it's a free 2-in-1.

Updating Live: Adobe MAX Announcements

Adobe MAX is Adobe's major creative conference show that takes place annually in Los Angeles. We got a bit of a peek into what they would be announcing, which we shared with you already, but they held back all their information when it came to the desktop applications. Updating live, here is what they have revealed.

Adobe Announces Series of Mobile Apps with Plenty of Innovation

Announced this morning to kick off Adobe MAX, Adobe has released a series of applications for mobile devices that are designed to increase productivity, especially when on the move. They were able to show me some of these pieces of software during a briefing last week, and I must say, these look to have incredible potential for photographers, videographers and graphic designers.

Adobe is Hoping to Realize Their Dream of a Connected Creative Professional, Expands Cloud Functionality

Originally, the idea of a “creative cloud” was difficult for many to grapple when it was first announced. When I spoke to him about a year ago, Photoshop mastermind Jeff Chien understood how we felt: Adobe couldn’t just put the software in the cloud and actually expect it to be an improvement. It had to mean more. Since then, Adobe has been trying to get to the point where the public would be on the same page as them in this regard. They might be getting there with today’s announcements, which are expanding the connectivity of your accounts in CC in ways that finally make the CC model begin to make sense.

New Online Service Aims To Tackle Copyright Infringement

In the fight against online image theft there is a new player and they are coming into the arena with a bang! Pixsy is a new copyright infingement software that looks to help photographers around the globe tackle an issue that plagues the industry and for the most part goes unresolved. Fighting copyright infringement can be a long and costly ordeal and Pixsy hopes to be your one stop solution for fair compensation.

Tips To Becoming A Better Traveling Photographer

I'm always moving around, which can make doing work on the road an absolutely nightmare. Between travel for photography, workshops and the general need for some decompression, I find myself packing for travel much more often than I expect. After years of just shutting off while on the road, I've finally developed to ways to make traveling as a photographer easier.

Capture One Pro 8 Released with New Features and Faster Performance

Phase One has officially announced the release of Capture One Pro version 8 with a host of new features and a new purchasing model option. More than just minor enhancements, version 8 brings with it truly useful features that allow you to perform more of your work within it and not have to turn to Photoshop or additional plug-ins.

Blackmagic Also Announces DaVinci Resolve 11.1 Update and Videohub Software

Along side the announcements of the PL mounted Cinema and Production Cameras, Blackmagic has also supplied some updates and new software for videographers everywhere, including an update to their DaVinci Resolve system - a multi track color correction system for videographers. Alongside the announcement of the update to DaVinci Resolve, is an all new software suite, entitled Blackmagic Videohub.

California In Four Minutes: Explore America's Finest Natural Wonders and Urban Landscapes

The state of California is simply unmatched when it comes to beautiful, picturesque imagery in the United States. As the birthplace and home of timelapse photographer Hal Bergman, it was his goal to compile as much of the visual wonders California has to offer in to a tight four-minutes time. His newest video, aptly titled “California,” combines four years of filming in to a marvelous treat for the eyes that any citizen of the world can appreciate. Beyond the video, Hal also speaks to Fstoppers about the behind-the-scenes work and equipment used in the making.

Prolost Bespoke Vintage Presets Are Like Instagram Filters For Lightroom

You might have heard of Stu Maschwitz before, possibly from his work on these Red Giant video projects, or perhaps the Plastic Bullet app he made a few years ago. His latest creation is a custom set of presets that integrate with Lightroom, and gives the user a set of vintage photo looks to choose from.

The Top Five Nik Color Efex Pro Filters For Superb Landscape Photos

The Nik Collection by Google carries some of the most powerful image editing applications for photographers. One of these applications, Color Efex Pro, has the ability to dramatically enhance the stories inside your landscape images. Out of the 55 filters available in Color Efex, there are five that I come back to using time and time again. In this article, I will show you what these essential filters are and explain how they make processing my images much less draining.

Blackmagic Upgrades Firmware for Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera

Blackmagic Design today released Camera v1.9.3, a firmware update that adds histogram, audio meters and media time remaining indicators to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera. These features were also recently added to the Production Camera.

Make Quick Selections for Basic Compositing on Your iPad Using Photoshop Mix

Though there are other programs out there that say they can quickly cutout objects from the background via masks and leave you with a clean end result, I've tried a few of those programs and they just don't seem to cut it. The process to create these masks also seem very awkward. Now you can quickly create (pretty darn good) masks on your iPad using Photoshop Mix, a mobile offering from Adobe we told you about earlier this year.

IMGembed Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Fund Growth Spurt

IMGembed has been around for a while now, giving creatives a way to allow their images to be shared while governing what content users pay to use those images. One of my personal favorite companies as it applies the "Fair Trade" ethic to image use online, IMGembed is looking to grow as it asks for $100,000 over the next 28 days through a Kickstarter campaign.

DSTRUX Brings Control to the Way You Share Your Images Online

DSTRUX launched a new iOS app of the same name yesterday that changes the way content owners control their images' usage across the web. A universal Snapchat of sorts, DSTRUX brings private and controled viewing of images to anyone with an Internet browser.

How to Quickly and Easily Edit Video in Photoshop CC

Scott Kelby over at KelbyOne recently shared this video showing you a quick and easy way to edit video in Photoshop CC. I personally tend to lean more on the still-photography side of things and am not entirely versed in video post production. This tutorial gives me and photographers / videographer like me a simple option and alternative to the under-equipped iMovie for quick video edits.

Optimizing Photos for Maximum Quality and Minimum Size

What's the best way to optimize photos so that I can deliver quality to my clients while reducing the file size for faster uploads into the cloud? This has been a question I’ve been thinking about for sometime. I have tinkered with settings in Lightroom to try and find the right export recipe but it wasn’t till another photographer told me about JpegMini that I finally felt I had the solution. Using image optimization technology they developed, JpegMini was able to deliver maximum quality at minimum file size. I ran it through some tests and here are my results.

Disney Develops an Automatic Editing Tool For Footage From Multiple Cameras

Smartphones have undeniably taken over our lives in the past few years and most of us carry one everywhere we go. One of the most-used features on a modern phone is the camera, and it's being used all the time. In many cases, more than one person is taking photos or videos of what is going on and each person gets different angles and maybe a different part of the action. There has not been an easy way to edit it all together, but Disney Research announced the development of an automatic editing tool that takes the different videos from a scene and intelligently combines them.

New Free Software Allows Real 3D Manipulation Of A Single Image

Artists all over the world use Photoshop to retouch images and for graphic design. Because of that, Photoshop has become the #1 image editing software out there. We know Photoshop has put a lot more implementation into its 3D capabilities, but that's not what Photoshop is really for and it still has a long way to go. So it's great news that a group of Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and University of California, Berkeley have come out with software that allows for full 3D manipulation of objects in a photograph.

Adobe Develops Guide To Move From Aperture To Lightroom

Last month, Apple announced that they were ceasing development of the beloved Apple Aperture. While the software is still usable and available for purchase and download, it has a timeline on how long it will work, as new camera profiles will no longer be supported. Fortunately, Adobe has made the transition a little easier, with a simple transition guide.

Move Your Image Library From Aperture to Lightroom With Just A Few Clicks

With the announcement of Aperture's retirement, many of Apple's software users are seeking a new home for their image libraries. One of the most obvious choices is Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom. But moving those images from Aperture to Lightroom can be a little tricky. A new app has made it out of Beta and hit the app store that may provide an easier solution.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Started with Capture One Pro

Over the years, Capture One has evolved tremendously in its feature set, and has steadily become one of - or arguably the best - raw processor available. Despite all it's advantages and praises, many remain hesitant to adopt it, largely due to its seeming complexity and the intimidation factor associated with a truly professional tool. In this tutorial I'll be guiding you through the key aspects of Capture One version 12, and demonstrating that it's actually quite intuitive and straightforward to use.

Bulletproof Backup Strategies For Digital Photographers

As your photography archive grows, so does the need to handle and protect that data. What happens if your computer doesn’t boot, or an image file won’t open? What if your home or studio gets robbed, or worse, catches fire? What if your backup drive fails, or your laptop gets stolen? These are all questions I ask myself when planning my backup strategy.

How to Brick Your MōVI and Then How to Restore Its Life

Last week FreeFly Systems sent out a rather critical announcement stating the new firmware (version 3.08) had been released with a new Configuration App, and it was imperative to update your devices by August 1st, 2014 because..."If you do not upgrade by the specified date your MōVI could cease to function." What follows is how despite my best efforts, I still managed to brick it.

Lightroom or Capture One Pro, Which Raw Processor is Best?

When it comes to raw converters and photo library managers, our choice of products has recently become more limited with the demise of Apple’s Aperture. My impression in the past was that one’s choice is largely based on features and ease of use with little difference in image quality between them. That opinion was quickly changed when I started digging into Phase One’s Capture One Pro 7.

Fstoppers Reviews the FoCal Autofocus Calibration Software

There are few things we, as photographers, are more OCD about than tack-sharp focus. We invest so many of our hard-earned dollars into nice glass, painstakingly focus, then spend hours in post afterwards pulling our hair out when the eyes aren’t sharp. While of course sometimes OOF images are due to user error, small variations in the lens and camera can result in less-than-sharp images. These discrepancies in camera / lens combination can be dialed in to get perfectly sharp images more consistently. Enter FoCal, a [semi]automated focus calibration software.

Challenge: How Much Retouching Can You Finish In 6 Minutes?

Jeff Rojas is challenging you to see just how much retouching you can finish in 6 minutes. Dubbed the Dirty Edit Challenge, Jeff explains that sometimes you don't need to go overboard for certain clients. Maybe you're not getting paid enough, or maybe you have a ton of images that need retouching. In either situation, this is a great way to see what your strengths and weaknesses are in Photoshop.

New Adobe Camera Raw 8.6 Release Candidate Announced

Adobe has just announced the latest release notes for Camera Raw 8.6 which updates Photoshop CC and CS6. The release candidate adds bug fixes, lens profiles, and support for new cameras including the recently released Nikon D810, Panasonic LUMIX AG-GH4 and the Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ1000. The release candidate also includes improvements for batch processing and color matching profiles for the Sony DSC-RX100 III, Sony A7S, and Sony Alpha SLT-A77 II.

The Fastest and Easiest Way to Learn Adobe Lightroom

Back in 2004 I was given the Nikon D100 digital camera for Christmas and I started making money with the camera within a few months. I fell into wedding photography and within 2 years I was making almost 100% of my income shooting them. In the last 10 years I never learned how to process a RAW file (effectively) or use Lightroom until last week.

Nikon's New Capture NX-D Software Available Today for Free

We said it was coming, and now it's here: Nikon Capture NX-D is available for download completely free of charge. If you're a Nikon shooter just starting out and don't have anyting you love for RAW processing, it certainly doesn't hurt to give this a try.

“Nimia” Offers Videographers A Venue To Store, Share, And Sell Their Footage

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got hard drives full of footage from personal or other non-commercial projects, that don’t serve much use once the project they were shot for is completed. I’ve considered trying to license it as stock footage, but never really taken the time to do it. After checking out the site Nimia and interviewing one of their staff however, I decided to give it a try.

Adobe Allows Continued Access to Lightroom After Creative Cloud Expiration

Late last month, Adobe released updates to their Creative Cloud applications and one interesting discovery was recently made pertaining to Lightroom. As The DAM Book reported, Lightroom continues to partly function even after subscription to the Creative Cloud ends. Adobe has now officially released a statement making it clear exactly what happens to a user's photographs post-membership.

Fstoppers Server Setup: How Did We Do It?

As some of you may have already known, we were off to somewhat of a rocky start when we launched this new website. For a recap: we ran into a few load issues right before our switchover deadline, so we decided to postpone the launch for nearly 22 hours before launching it again. We have been monitoring the servers very closely and working nonstop to squish all the bugs ever since. Now that the dust has settled, I'd like to talk to you guys about how we set up our servers on Amazon Web Services - the cloud.

Nikon's New Capture NX-D Software to Be Released for Free in One Week

While the beta has been out since February and can still be downloaded here, according to a June 26th press release, Nikon will be releasing its new Capture NX-D software July 15th for free. The previous version of Capture NX-2 still goes for $140, so it's nice to see more value added to Nikon's products for us Nikonians out there.

9 Apps to Enhance Your Business Workflow

For my inaugural post on Fstoppers, I want to run down of a few of the apps that my studio manager and I use almost daily to help manage the studio and keep things running smoothly. Many of these you’ve probably heard of, others may be new to you. The list is actually endless, but I’ve narrowed it down to these nine to get us started:

Free iOS App Turns Your iPhone into a 3D Scanner

Earlier this year, Nikon unveiled a 3D photo booth that used a system of multiple DSLRs to render a 3D model of a subject. Just months later the technology to do so now fits in your pocket — free.

Farewell Aperture: Apple Discontinuing Development of the Software

Though this probably won't surprise many of you, Apple is reportedly discontinuing development of their once-popular photo editing and organization platform, Aperture. Aperture was once considered on a level playing field with Adobe Lightroom, but Adobe's continued development and advancements to the software obviously have affected Apple's software, and today's announcement basically confirms that Apple also believes that Lightroom has since catapulted it beyond Aperture's reach.

Lessons I Learned From My Time Spent With a PhaseOne

This past week I've been sleep deprived, socially inactive, and holding a camera in my hands for more than I ever have in my entire life. You see, this past week I've been working with PRO EDU to film my first tutorial series to go on sale at the Fstoppers store this summer. Though learning a lot about my own work and process, I think I learned the most when I used a rented PhaseOne IQ250 system for one of my shoots.

Adobe Announces New Features for Photoshop CC

Adobe has announced a great number of updates to the entire Creative Cloud set of applications (every single application is being updated in some way), but let's focus here on just what's new in Photoshop CC: New Motion Blur Effects, Focus Mask and improved Content-Aware color adaptation along with a set of other updates and enhancements to the entire experience.

Adobe Makes $9.99 Photography Plan Permanent

That's right, the highly popular Photography Plan that Adobe seemed to continually threaten was going to be a limited-time deal, is finally a permanent pricing fixture. They are removing Behance Pro Site from the bundle, but it does contain Photoshop, Lightroom (on desktop and mobile) and now integrates the newly announced Photoshop Mix.

Adobe Lightroom Mobile Now Available on iPhone

Adobe has made Lightroom Mobile available on iPhone, and has managed to keep all aspects of the software intact despite the much reduced screen size. The application works exactly the same as the iPad app, just on the smaller profile of your iPhone.

Mobile Access is Behind Adobe's 2014 Updates, Introduce 3 New iPad Apps

Adobe was very clear that the 2014 updates were mainly focused on what they have seen to be a rapidly evolving market: Mobile. Adobe is seeing a rapid pace of change, explosion of mobile, and a world that is continually and incredibly connected. But their software, for real-work at least, is still tethered to a desk. Adobe thinks this is a problem, and sought to solve it.