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Mel Martin
Tucson, AZ

Articles written by Mel Martin

Color Theory Pro Will Help You Manage Color Like a Pro

Managing colors is one of the most important things photographers need to get right. It’s true for portrait, landscape, and wedding photographers—all of us. And there are a lot of approaches to getting the color right.

DxO Brings a Unique ReShape Fusion Tool to ViewPoint 5

DxO has continued to innovate with tools for serious photo editors, and today they are releasing a significant update to ViewPoint 5, their tool that fixes geometry, perspective, and shapes. Anyone who does architectural or city photography is going to want this tool if they don't have it already.

Cameras Ready? There's Time to Get Some Great Shots of Comet C/2023 A3

If you'd like to try some comet photography, tonight and the next few days are for you. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will be in our night skies just after sunset. Happily, you likely have all the gear you need on hand. No fancy tracking mounts, telescopes, or filters are required. A DSLR will do the trick. Yes, stacking and tracking are great, but I'm trying to keep it simple here so you can just go outside and bring back a good photo.

Luminar Neo Readying Fall Upgrade

The Fall upgrade from Skylum will have users excited, as it contains new features that add a lot to the program's many capabilities, but users will also see some long-standing requests granted. The fall update is available for download or upgrade on October 10.

Skylum Launches Aperty, a Portrait Editor With AI Offering Fast Results

Skylum, who made quite a splash in the image editing space with Luminar and then Luminar Neo, is setting out to conquer portrait photography editing with Aperty. The company says it's aimed at professionals and serious near-professionals, and it will be available on November 7.

Mylio Adds SecureCloud to Its Offerings for Photographers

We've covered Mylio products before; recently, they relaunched their Mylio photo manager. Think of Mylio as having some of the features of the Lightroom catalog, with some higher-end features as seen in Peakto. Now the company has just announced Mylio SecureCloud (powered by Backblaze), a cloud storage service the company says is born from a simple idea: our digital memories and important files deserve the highest level of privacy and control.

PanoVolo Is a Winner for Creating Panoramas From Drone Photography

Every so often, I find a new piece of software I was unaware of but that gets me excited when I discover and use it. Recently, I stumbled upon PanoVolo, a new Windows/Mac app for creating panoramas with a minimum of fuss that still provides very high-quality output.

Peakto Version 2.0 Gets Smarter, More Useful, and Searches Video

I've been a fan of Peakto image management software since it first launched. I find it indispensable for locating photos, and it offers advanced features that are missing from the "big boys" like Adobe Lightroom. It's Mac only, which will displease some photographers, but it's been that way since the first release.

U.S. Sues Adobe for Hidden Fees and A Confusing Cancellation Process

It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for software giant Adobe. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing the company for violations of U.S. consumer protection laws, what it deems "hidden termination fees" and an overly complicated process to cancel your Adobe services. The complaint centers around Adobe's Creative Cloud offering, which bundles various software products.

Dehancer Will Get You Into Film Emulation With a Clever Plug-in

If you're tired of struggling to get the "right" look on your still images, Dehancer is coming to the rescue with a solid plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Affinity Photo, and Capture One. It's available for Mac and Windows.

Peakto Search: A Lightroom Plugin Which Instantly Finds Any Photo or Video You Have

Here's something that should excite Adobe Lightroom users. It's a plug-in that will index your online or offline photo or video assets and bring them up in Lightroom instantly. It's a Mac app from CYME, the company that has a similar app called Peakto that's currently offered for Mac users. The difference is that Peakto searches those assets and they can be opened in any editor, including Lightroom, Capture One, DxO, Luminar, and others. Peakto Search is aimed at Lightroom users and appears as a menu bar item on your Mac.

We Review DxO PureRAW 4

Last week, I walked you through the features in DxO's PureRAW 4 but didn't have the software to actually test. Now I've had it for several days and have some observations and comments. For those not knowing about it, PureRAW is an app and plug-in that pre-processes raw files, cleaning up lens distortions, noise, sharpness, and optical aberrations as well as issues caused by the mosaicing process of all color sensors.