Software

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.

Users of Adobe Bridge will be pleased to learn that the latest release of the software includes several performance enhancements and new features. Available today for Creative Cloud subscribers, Adobe notes that this release "will lay the foundation for future development."

I don't rate my photos nearly as much as I should. And part of it has been because I've been too lazy to look this exact tip up! Thankfully, Adobe has provided us with one of their now famous under-a-minute Lightroom Coffee Break videos to quickly explain how to auto-advance as you rate your photos. This trick also works for auto-advancing while flagging photos. The key to the trick? Caps lock.

Adobe launched a new YouTube series through their Lightroom channel to give Lightroom users some extra tips on features they may not have come across yet. While some highlighted features such as viewing masking for the sharpening tool are a little better known, others are more tucked away and might come as a surprise, like this feature that allows you to update the overall effect of a local adjustment with multiple sliders in effect.

CameraLends has been letting gear owners rent out their gear to peers when it's not in use since its inception three years ago. Until now, everything has been done through their website. The new CameraLends iPhone app, however, lets users manage the entire rental process from the ease and mobility of their iPhones. Making money on your gear when you're not using it is now easier than ever.

Product photography is a great way to experiment with lighting and editing techniques. For me, it’s a chance to shoot in a relaxed environment where I have complete control over the subject, lighting, and camera. I can set up something small in the living room and find solutions that can be applied to my portrait work or professional product photography. It also requires a lot of creativity. Homemade items or DIY solutions are abundant on sets. From light-shaping tools to methods of creating parts of a composite, a lot can be created simply and at a low cost. You may be surprised to see how minimal of a setup can create some stunning photos.

Adobe’s last quarter results are out, and they’re better than ever. Adobe’s Creative Cloud and media business rose 35 percent thanks to a 23 percent beat on subscriber expectations, while the company’s overall net income more than doubled from $88.1 million to a staggering $222 million. Adobe’s fourth-quarter earnings report shot its stock to all-time highs. On one hand, that’s good business. But what does this mean for creatives who have felt an increasingly rocky relationship with the software giant?

Phase One released Capture One Pro 9 just a little over two weeks ago and announced today its first update. This new version includes a couple of bug fixes and adds support for the DxO One camera.

A little over two weeks ago, Adobe released CC 2015.1 for most of its apps. The updates looked great on paper, but for photographers, there were a couple of glitches in the new Photoshop that turned out to quite be annoying. Yesterday, Adobe released a new update, CC 2015.1.1, meant to correct most of the issues.

Adobe released today the version 2.1 of Lightroom for mobile devices. It comes with a bunch of interesting new features making full use of the possibilities offered by iOS 9 and the iPad Pro. Some of the new features also could make one think that Adobe is becoming serious about making great apps for mobile devices.

MacPhun released Aurora HDR just a few weeks ago and touts it as the most advanced high dynamic range (HDR) software in the world. Certainly, veteran users of Photoshop and Lightroom might be skeptical. But if your sole purpose is to create HDR photos on the Mac, Aurora HDR might be the best option out there, seeing as it was created with the close consultation of HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff. In this video, Ratcliff dives deep in a first-hand look into how to get the most from Aurora HDR.

A little over four years since its release, Apple's Final Cut Pro X hasn't quite comeback to its prominence in the professional video editing industry it once held. To the point that even its creator, Apple, is abandoning the software in its workflow.

Earlier this year we teamed up with Elia Locardi to produce the most in depth photography tutorial on landscape photography: Photographing The World: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing. Today we are excited to release the next installment of Photographing The World.

Before Capture One 9, no raw editor software on the market could create a mask based on color. With their recent update, Phase One created something unique with the improved color editor panel. It is now possible to select precisely one color – or a range of – and then create a mask to adjust only the parts needed.

Serif released a new update today to its photo editing software Affinity Photo. It is the first major update, and it includes quite a few exciting features. To celebrate these welcome changes, Serif also announce a discount on the Mac App Store.

FotoClient is a new cloud based platform which aims to be a total business management solution for photographers and studios. From lead management to invoicing FotoClient wants to tackle it all. I put it to the test at my studio to see how it performs in the real world. Starting at just $10/month, could this be the solution you are looking for?

Since Adobe released Photoshop CC 2015, retouchers and photographers have complained about the revamped healing brush. However, Adobe promised their users that CC 2015.1 would offer an alternative, making the tool as good if not better than the one found in CC 2014. Photoshop was updated a couple of days ago, and the said updated healing brush setting can be found in the form of a diffusion slider. However, is it as good as the previous healing brush?

Storehouse launched with much fanfare on iOS, eventually moving onto Storehouse 2.0 and Storehouse on the new Apple TV. Android users have had to be incredibly patient to get access to what is easily the best and easiest way to lay out your content into a well-designed, easily digestible format. Today, Android users can download the app via the Google Play store for free and explore every feature Storehouse's iOS users have enjoyed for the last several months.

As announced at Adobe MAX 2015, Adobe released new updates to its professional Creative Cloud suite of applications. Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC, Audition CC, Dreamweaver CC, Photoshop CC, Fuse CC (Preview), Adobe Stock, and more have been updated. You can download the new versions from the Adobe Creative Cloud app.

The Syrp Genie caught everyone's attention with its contemporary design and advanced automation features that made it a time-lapse photographer's best tool in the field. Today, photographer Mark Gee shares tips on how to set up and use the Genie while offering a few great suggestions that apply to all methods of landscape photography, from what apps he uses on his phone to help him plan every shot to how to edit for final output. Need to shoot a time-lapse soon? Whether you're experienced or just starting, there's undoubtedly something in here for you.

It may feel like Capture One Pro 8 was just released not too long ago, but Phase One isn’t slowing down the development of their beloved raw converter and photo editing software. Today, Capture One Pro 9 was released and it is their best image processor ever.

I think the only thing that has changed photography more than the invention of digital cameras is the ever-growing involvement of photography and social media. Sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr are the perfect platforms for sharing not only your work, but also behind-the-scenes images and other content that draws interest towards your brand. Today it is easier than ever to take advantage of this. Not only have mobile apps changed the shape of the industry, but they have changed the way that photographers can work. Apps like Snapseed, VSCO, and Lightroom Mobile have made it possible for aspiring artists, or even those in a hurry, to create incredible content with relative ease.

For one reason or another, this has been the week of all weeks for those anxiously awaiting firmware updates. While some are rather mild updates to fix various bugs (which is still important, granted), other updates like the one for Leica's T camera boost things like autofocus speed twofold. Fresh updates! Come and get 'em!

I don't have specific numbers. I don't even have vague numbers. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me Adobe's mobile photo editing apps have seen a huge success. The biggest reason: they're free. And the second: they really work, which makes the first reason even better. Today, Adobe updated two of these apps, Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix, with support for split view in iOS 9, for the screen size of the iPad Pro, and for the pressure and tilt sensitivity of the Apple Pencil for use on the iPad Pro.

Luminosity masks are a powerful trick available in Photoshop. However, the way Adobe implemented them is not so great. It's a combination of playing around with the channels layers and keyboard shortcuts to get the mask you wish. Greg Benz has come up with something awesome called Lumenzia and it fixes almost everything that made using luminosity masks a pain to use.

Storehouse angered a number of power users in its big shakeup with the release of Storehouse 2.0 which ditched a number of features for a streamlined, more privatized system that made it harder to use the platform as a photographer’s social media marketing dream. But the numbers are out, and while it may not become the next Instagram of photo marketing and discovery, here’s why there’s a good chance it’ll find its way into your living room, regardless.

A few weeks ago Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 4, an updated version of the very successful Surface Pro 3. The day after the event they gave me one to test and I'm really enjoying it.

Every year's Adobe MAX conference marks the an obvious time to expect updates throughout Adobe's product lineup. So what's different this time? Mobile. Adobe has the monopoly in the area of creative applications for media editing, but for the first time in a while, it feels like they're competing with some unknown entity. This year's updates bring so many new features across the widest range of Adobe products ever that there's no doubt they're serious about their making customers happy with a huge concentration on mobile.

Retouching can vary from photographer to photographer. But it can also vary depending on the genre you are shooting. I know it does for me. My wedding retouching is far from being as refined and time-consuming as my portrait retouching. When dealing with hundreds of pictures, you have to find techniques that get you close to a perfect result, but as quickly as possible. One thing I had trouble getting my head around was maximizing my dynamic range in my wedding pictures without stacking multiple raw developments. That was until I made a lucky mistake when sharpening an image using a high pass filter.

While some physical improvements with Spotlight, Photos, Safari, and other Apple apps are definitely welcome with today's new OS X release, perhaps the most exciting aspect of El Capitan are the under-the-hood improvements for performance gains. There’s no need to explain how time-saving performance upgrades can be for working professionals — and for those reasons, everyone will want to update immediately. But there are some things to always take into consideration before an operating system upgrade.