Software

First, let me just preface with the fact that I have been outsourcing my album design for the past four or five years now. While I took the time to learn and use this product myself, I do still believe in outsourcing your non-photography work. But, regardless of whether you outsource your album design or do it yourself, you want to have the best and fastest designer.

Image processing has always had very specific tools for very specific jobs. You have your raw processor for the basic editing of images, but for things such as layers and cloning, you had to jump to Photoshop. Then we have software such as Nik, On1, and Alien Skin that can be used for creative effects, film simulations, etc. But the new On1 raw processor is looking to combine all these elements into a single platform with no need to jump from program to program.

Photoshop is an amazing tool that most photographers find themselves using on a daily basis. It has countless features, and with the new Photoshop CC, more are added with each update. As a beginner to the program, it can get a little overwhelming on where to start learning all of the complex elements. In this, video you will see 10 of the features you need to know.

As Photokina is kicking off, almost every brand is releasing new products. The Danish medium format manufacturer is no exception and is introducing a new digital back, the IQ1 100MP, along with two new Blue Ring lenses and Capture One 9.3. One might wonder why Phase One decided to have two 101-megapixel backs in its product line, so let’s dive into the specs and see what the reason(s) may be.

Today Macphun launched Aurora HDR 2017, their latest version of the HDR photo editing software for Mac. The new software features an improved user interface, faster performance, and more features that Macphun claims will provide “more versatility and higher quality images than before.” Aurora HDR 2017 will officially release on September 29 for $99, but there is special pre-order pricing plus bonuses for new and current owners of previous versions available if purchased before then.

What if you could change the focal length of your lens in post-processing? Princeton has figured out how to take a regular selfie and warp it to look like it was shot with a portrait lens. Their research allows for all sorts of possibilities, but above all, it’s fun as hell to play around with.

Everything about this short video by Russian designer Misha Petrick fills me with desperate nostalgia for the 90's. Some people will mock Windows 95, but for me it was a coming-of-age operating system. The first computers I built myself ran Windows 95. Windows 95 is how I discovered Weezer. Windows 95 gave me Hover, the greatest built-in OS game until Space Cadet Pinball rolled out with Windows 2000. All that to say, I think that Instagram on Windows 95 would have been amazing.

Serif has announced that a big update is coming to their Affinity Photo software in early autumn. In a sneak peek video showing off version 1.5, we are shown the software’s new abilities such as HDR image merging, a new tone mapping workspace, and a new way to view and work with 360-degree images. The new update will arrive in early autumn, but today through July 21 you can get Affinity Photo for 20 percent off.

Photoshop can be both a blessing and a curse. Undoubtedly, for many of us, it is a necessity to create the kind of images we desire. Like every piece of software, however, there are things that make our life easier and things that drive us insane. Nathaniel Dodson from Tutvid has made an extensive video exploring the top 10 things he hates as well as loves in Photoshop CC.

Last year we teamed up with Elia Locardi, one of the most followed landscape photographers in the world, to film "Photographing The World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing." This is a 12-hour video tutorial on landscape photography, and today, we are releasing the first lesson for free.

As photographers, we have a never-ending, ever-perpetuating growth of photos piling up on our hard drives. Inevitably, whether that work is professional or personal, our photos end up taking space on cloud storage accounts that we keep upgrading whenever we reach the limit. But what if you could cut the size of these files in half without losing any visible quality? You could save a lot of headache, not to mention, money.

Adobe has released Premiere Pro CC 2015.3. The new welcomed features are something I haven’t yet seen implemented in any other NLE. If you use Premiere, here is a look at what’s new, and if you’re not a subscriber, this might make you consider switching.

Phase One just announced Capture One 9.2 making the already excellent raw converter even better. This new iteration adds support for a few new cameras, but most importantly comes with a bunch of fresh features to improve professional workflows. The primary goal of this new version is to make professional photographers’ lives easier.

Adobe updated its Creative Cloud Suite today with new features for many of its apps. In addition to a number of new and refined features across several applications (including some not mentioned in the title), this update focuses on improving performance in Photoshop, while it also offers a return to an old favorite.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to send an invoice to a client, but you were not home? Maybe you are out on another job, shopping, hanging with family, at a friends, or in the other room watching TV. Hopefully you aren’t doing that last one, but Alto is here to help us out. If you don’t have QuickBooks or any other invoicing software, this is the tool for you.

I've always heard that Adobe Photoshop will not allow you to import pictures of U.S. currency because you could potentially be using the software to "copy money." Today I ran across a video that also claims that all current copy machines will not copy currency due to a hidden pattern on the bills. I decided to put this to the test.

Adobe has launched their latest update to Lightroom and Photoshop in the 2015.1 update. In the Adobe Camera Raw module and Lightroom, they have developed a new feature that is something photographers in the travel, architecture, and cityscape photography industry will really find useful. It can actually change some of your old previously unusable images into great images.

Adobe Lightroom was a game changer for me when it was introduced. I used to spend hours in Photoshop tweaking this and that, creating actions to batch a set of images I had shot, and output different resolutions from the giant PSD files I was working in. Lightroom gave me 90 percent of the control I use in PS anyway, and allowed me to do it quickly, easily, and without an ever-growing collection of PSD files. I was in love.

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.

For those of you who don't know who Pratik Naik is, you're missing out on an extremely talented and witty retoucher with immense talent. Known by many as Solstice Retouch, his work is seen around the world in many a marketing campaign and commercial work. A little over a year ago now, Pratik started his youtube channel, under the name 'Solstice Retouch' and has posted a variety of different video types ranging from time-lapse videos of his retouching of work, some gear reviews and thoughts, and additionally some downright comical videos. Just recently though he posted a video of his review of the demo of 3D LUT Creator.

In the comments section of my last article, I remarked that "I always liked the rendering of X-Trans files on C1 more than Lightroom anyway, so maybe this is just the reason I need to make the switch back." A longtime contributor to the comments, Pete Miller, asked if that was indeed the case. Good question! Let's find out if the reputation Lightroom has gained for inferior Fuji X-Trans processing is still warranted.

Lindsay Adler is a high end fashion photographer and educator. She has been named one of the top ten fashion photographers in the world, so when she shares her insight, it’s probably best to take notes. In this free one hour webinar, Adler goes over five things that can ruin skin, and how to fix them.

Videographer and photographer Daan van de Westelaken was on a quest to find the perfect camera app for his iPhone. It's one thing to have all the features you want, but it's another thing to also not have the features you don't. Frustrated, he created his own, and after using it for almost a week, I'm hooked. It's certainly a tour de Force Touch.

Nik software is one of the heavy hitters in the Lightroom and Photoshop plugin world. They are so big that in 2012, the company was bought up by Google. After Google's acquisition, they lowered the price for all the desktop plugins and made their mobile app (Snapseed) free of charge. Now, four years later, Google has decided to bring their desktop plugins into line with their mobile application by making all of them free.

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.

Phase One has dropped two new software updates today including Capture One Pro 9.1 and a camera firmware update for its medium format XF system. Version 9.1 of Capture One Pro is focused on workflow tool improvements aimed towards working fashion and still life photographers. The XF camera system update brings interesting new software tools and autofocus improvements, as well as two new “blue ring” lenses.

Whenever we've written an article mentioning Affinity Photo, people have commented and complained that it is not compatible with Windows. But this is about to change in the next couple of months. Affinity just announced that they are working on Windows versions of their different apps.

Creating a music video for a national act is one of the most intense tasks for a modern day filmmaker. Sure, the tools are more affordable, but declining budgets and insane turnaround times can turn your production into a sprint. Last month, my company, McFarland & Pecci, was tasked with creating two new music videos for the Grammy-nominated metal act, Killswitch Engage. My partner, Ian McFarland, and I drop everything when these guys call.

We've all been there at one point, watching an in-depth Photoshop tutorial to help hone and develop your skills. But if you're not fortunate enough to have multiple monitors, it can be a real pain in the ass going back and forth from the video and Photoshop to follow along. Isn't there an easier way to do this? Introducing the new Fluid Browser app.

When Pixellu came out with its too easy to believe drag and drop album creator that synced with every popular album company's layouts, those who were not Mac users were certainly bummed to hear they would be missing out. But today, after Pixellu released SmartAlbums 2 for Mac, the SmartAlbums version for Windows is here and it comes at a generous $50 discount for those who have waited so patiently.