Photography Software

The rollout begins today, so you'll see the updates soon if you haven't already. Adobe is calling this a major set of updates, and I'll highlight the ones that apply to photographers. 

As you get more comfortable with editing, you’ll probably come across color spaces. Just picking a random color space to edit or export with can cause major issues with your photos, however. Want to know which color space to use and when? 

Photoshop Camera, the new free app from Adobe, is chocked full of filters for selfies, food, and scenery snaps.

Lightroom offers a ton of useful features, but some are pretty well hidden. Want to see some of the best editing tools you might not be using? 

Most Lightroom users aren't taking advantage of this simple feature that literally organizes your photos for you, and it only takes around 30 seconds to set up in Lightroom Classic. Save time, and keep your library organized by following this tutorial. For each photographer I meet, I find out new ways they organize their photos.

We all know that culling steals a lot of our time that we could have spent shooting, focusing on the next project, or simply relaxing. No doubt, we all want less time spent on this painstaking process, which is why I'm excited to review Narrative Select, a smart culling tool that promises to help us get through this process quicker. 

Pro photographers are time-limited, so anything that can not only streamline your workflow but save you time has got to be a worthwhile investment. In the competitive world of digital asset management, how does BatchPhoto stack up? 

Mac users with a need to migrate image catalogs to another hosting app have found that process difficult to impossible. Help is here, in the form of a new app called Avalanche Unlimited from CYME Software. The app can deal with migration from Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, Luminar 4, Capture One, and Apple Photos. The latter two are coming soon as a free update.  

The wonderful thing about creativity is that there are no real right or wrong answers. There are plenty of artists that regularly break the rules in order to produce something compelling or beautiful. Nonetheless, there are still certain practices that can be widely disliked and preferably avoided.  

It was about a year ago I reviewed the NIK Collection 2, a rebirth of popular Adobe plugins that laid fallow while its new owner, Google, tried to figure out what to do with them until DXO bought the software in 2017 and continually upgraded the collection. They have now added a feature that is really going to excite photographers.  

A new pack of presets, called Crush, has just been released by SLR Lounge and DVLOP. With a "bold and vivid" aesthetic, this pack combines DVLOP's technical background in preset development with SLR Lounge's professional style. Want to see what's included? 

While it's important to get things right at the source, if you've made that age-old mistake of not changing your camera settings before taking the shot, is it possible to recover the photo? Or is it destined for the recycling bin? 

Just a few weeks after Canon announced the beta version of its highly welcomed software to allow its cameras to be used as webcams, Fujifilm is following suit. Fujifilm X Webcam means that you can use X-series and GFX-series cameras as high-quality webcams. 

Luminar 4 has brought with it some advanced AI features that can save a lot of time in edits and enable new creative avenues. How does it hold up against Lightroom when it comes to editing? This great video shows a photographer processing the same image in both apps and what you can expect from each. 

In the past few years, serious alternatives to Photoshop have started to crop up, with Affinity Photo being one of the most comprehensive options. If you are looking for a subscription-free alternative to Photoshop, check out this great look at using Affinity Photo to edit a beauty image. 

Adobe surprised everyone with a Photoshop for iPad announcement when they said it was "full Photoshop." Creatives were elated, but then later disappointed when that apparently meant the algorithms were the same as on desktop (good news), but the features were not (not so good).

Noise is one of the most common issues photographers have to deal with, and there are lots of different ways to deal with it in post-processing. This excellent video review takes a look at one of the most advanced pieces of specialized software for the task and how well it can take care of noise in your images. 

It's very likely that during isolation, you have had to resort to video meetings, whether to talk to a client, host a live webinar, or to attend the weekly family meetup. So, how can you improve your video presence and quality of the recording? 

The newly announced Microsoft Surface Book 3 is reportedly their most powerful laptop ever. So could it be good enough to destroy the competition? Namely, the new Apple Macbook Pro 2020. Photographers and creatives alike love Apple products for editing workflows, but could this be the beginning of the end for Apple's domination of the creative market? 

A developer is in the process of developing an app that will allow you to “grab” an object using your smartphone and drag it — almost physically — straight into a digital document. 

Lightroom is a great piece of software, when it works. In my case, it's an essential piece of my workflow for photography. Unfortunately, it's got some major quirks. Some can be particularly frustrating to solve — here's 3 weird tricks that helped when I ran into an issue. 

We are currently locked down in Puerto Rico, and it's literally illegal for us to go outside to take photos, but we found an old lesson we filmed in Alaska that was never released.  

In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how to use the Portrait Enhance features in Luminar 4.2.  The update of Luminar 4.2 has cool features called Portrait Enhance. Using the program you can completely retouch portraits including using the software AI to smooth the skin. The amazing thing about this is, unlike most other skin retouch filters, Luminar keeps the pores intact.

ON1 has teased the launch of ON1 360°, a new software platform that blends in cloud functionality with its raw editing capabilities. 

Setting up your DSLR, mirrorless or compact camera as a webcam can be a bit of a fiddly process involving weird workarounds or even extra hardware. However, Canon has just released a beta version of software that will make the process incredibly straightforward for owners of its cameras. 

Last week, without any fanfare, Canon released a piece of software that could have far-reaching implications for the future of digital photography. Forget the EOS R5 news. This is bigger. 

For boudoir photographers, getting skin to look perfect is incredibly important and there are various software options that offer automation and simplicity instead of spending endless hours in Photoshop. In this video, check out how Luminar 4 performs. (Models in the video are wearing lingerie — possibly NSFW!) 

Shooting while tethered is probably the best way for many photographers. It's obviously not ideal for certain kinds of photography, like events and weddings; however, for those that shoot on a tripod, being tethered to a larger screen can make all the difference. 

Without any fanfare, Canon appears to have launched its new mobile device application and cloud service, canon.image. Like most manufacturers, Canon does not have a great record when it comes to mobile applications. Will this new service be an improvement, and is it about to change the way that camera apps operate? 

With lockdown, we're suddenly all on Zoom 24/7. It's great that we can remain connected even when we're working from home, but not so great that we have to see ourselves on screen every time we speak to someone.  

If you want to manage a major production with multiple moving parts and a multitude of contributing creatives, you'll be excited about Adobe's release of a tool that will shift how you use Premiere Pro entirely: Productions. 

These days, there is a vast range of post-processing software available for photographers, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. This excellent video takes a look at five of the most popular options to help you decide which is right for you. 

In this tutorial video, watch as I show you how to use the Luminar AI Augmented Sky tool.  

Filmmaker Mark Bone has just discovered that some free software from Sony can stabilize footage from his FX9 to the point that he’s wondering how often he will ever need to use a gimbal in the future. Check out this short video. 

If you're looking to try out Skylum Luminar, or just want to own your editing software outright, check out this promotion! By signing up for Skylum's mailing list, you can get a full copy of their editing software, Skylum Luminar, for free. 

For hardened Lightroom users such as myself, Capture One Pro can feel like a bit of a mystery. What are the advantages and why would you consider changing? Ignoring for a moment the pros and cons of payment models, here are some excellent reasons why Capture One Pro might be worth investigating. 

One area a lot of photographers can focus their quarantined free time is updating their portfolios. Unfortunately, taking new and fresh photos is probably not part of that process, but that doesn't mean you still can't find new images to add to your website or social media stream. 

Many companies are creating some fantastic deals for creative people who are faced with losing a lot of work and having a lot of time on their hands. Affinity has just announced some excellent offers that will allow you to learn some new software and also save you money. 

It's always best to get it right in camera, but sometimes, there are cases where subtle things may go unnoticed but become visible later during the retouching process. Having the right set of tools is crucial.  

During the next few months, we all may need to tighten our budget a little to get by. Luckily, there's a quick and legitimate way to save money on your Adobe subscription and keep using the same products you had before. 

Adobe has revealed it will be providing free access to its Creative Cloud apps for students, so they can still work and study at home. The move comes in response to growing pressure from teachers, who were appealing on behalf of their students who will otherwise be missing out due to school closures. 

The company said:

Benjamin Franklin once said: "for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned." 

Depending on how many photoshoots you've had, or how long the event was for, you could end up with an abundance of photos to cull through. What if you could use artificial intelligence to help you speed through culling your photos? 

On the road today, but got a bit of news that should make fellow Capture One and Fuji users quite happy. 

If you store your videos and photos in the cloud, or at least in Google’s version of the cloud, you may want to think twice about that. A recent privacy breach may have sent your videos to the wrong person. 

Over the years, 3D has come and sort of gone, then come back again. We've seen it in the movies and in photography. After digital imaging got popular, I had a 3D Fuji camera, which was fun, but you either had to make expensive lenticular prints or watch on a 3D TV. Not a fulfilling experience.  

With the release of Luminar 4, it has become amazingly easy to replace a boring sky with something more appealing. You only need to pick the sky of your choice, and the artificial intelligence part of the program does an amazing job in masking out the sky and changing it into something else. But should you use it? 

Photolab 3.1 from DXO has been out a couple of months now, and early looks from photographers have been positive. It's a complete raw editor and has many features photographers will expect to see and adds some very worthwhile enhancements that will highly interest editors at every skill level. 

These days, there are numerous options for cataloging and editing your photos, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. This excellent video will give you an overview of the different programs to help you decide which is right for your style and workflow. 

Earlier this year, Adobe ditched the option to buy Lightroom for a one-off fee, forcing customers to take out annual subscriptions with monthly payments, and annoying a few people along the way. However, this subscription model does present a few opportunities to save money. Check out this simple trick.