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.
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?
Until recently, HSS and HyperSync were considered gimmicky features available on either expensive PocketWizard or cheap Chinese triggers. With Profoto, Elinchrom, Priolite, RiME LITE, and other brands catching up on these techniques, it is slowly becoming more popular. However, are these sync modes as reliable and useful as the brands try to make us believe they are? Moreover, is one better than the other?
Phase One just acquired Mamiya Digital Imaging and took over their factory as well. This will strengthen the Danish company by making them the only medium format camera company that has full internal control of all critical components in a world class imaging system.
Adobe just updated a couple of their CC applications, one of which being Photoshop. Amongst the new features, it was almost inevitable that a few bugs would show up. One that can be quite annoying is the liquify tool lighting or rendering problem. But there is a quick and easy workaround.
I remember reading an article here on Fstoppers three year ago about a couple using a GoPro in a bouquet to film their wedding. That might have been a trend back then in 2012, but now in 2015 forget about the bouquet. This couple may just have started a new thing! They hired their dog to film their wedding.
Social networks are a good way to advertise a photographer's work. Sometimes, with all the different platforms available, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything. Tools such as Hootsuite are great to make that easier. However, when it comes to Instagram, there aren't many solutions for scheduling and uploading photos from a computer. But there is at least one, and it works great.
Priolite just announced the addition of a new flash unit to their HotSync lineup, the MBX300HS. This slightly smaller and lighter, but much cheaper, unit is a welcome addition to their current line of products. Alongside the already available 500Ws and 1000Ws strobes, this new compact unit looks like a solid alternative to more well-established brand's battery powered system.
When speaking of retouching, most people think of cleaning skin and altering the body shape. However, retouching goes further than that. Colors play such a significant role in an image, that forgetting about them would be a great mistake. Just like a good makeup artist shouldn't limit their job to the model's face, a good retoucher shouldn't stop the job with cleaning skin.
A couple of weeks ago, Elinchrom released the Skyport HS, a new iteration of the very old and rudimentary Skyport. The Skyport HS seems to have everything a strobist could hope for, from the laser grid to focus in low-light conditions to the Hi-Sync mode. This new radio trigger is a welcome addition to Elinchrom's product line. At least, it is on paper. The Swiss company was kind enough to lend me a unit before it was even released so that I could play with it and review it for you.
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.
Capture One has been known amongst high-end retouchers and commercial photographers for quite some time, the main reasons probably being its powerful tethering and color editing tools. Wedding photographers seem to think Capture One is not tailored to suit their needs. At least, that is what I thought. After a full year using only Capture One to process my raw files, I wanted to share with you why I stopped using Lightroom.
Recently, the game of artificial lighting, including flash, has started to change. LED lights have become more common, but also TTL and HSS have become available to studio strobes, not just hot shoe flashes anymore. Today, it is Elinchrom's turn to join in this new era. The Elinchrom Skyport celebrates its 10th birthday this year, and over 400,000 units have been sold since its launch. However, it was time for an update. But Elinchrom did not just update the Skyport, they made a whole new version introducing a range of hi-sync products.
When I started out photography professionally, I only wanted to do weddings. It was what I loved (and still love). I thought studio work was so boring. With time, I was convinced to get my own studio and started doing portraits, beauty, products, and other genres. It was great. However, after two years, I am about to terminate my studio lease and will not take a new one. While I love shooting in a studio, I think the cons outweigh the advantages. Perhaps they will not for you. Nonetheless, let me show you what I learned from my two-year experience of having a studio.
When I started out my photography business, I was always told how important it was to have a strong and personal style. At the time, I did not understand what that meant. I knew all my pictures were too different to make for an impactful portfolio. I also knew that my retouching was inconsistent. But no one told me how to create that sought-after "photographic style." Even the word "create" was probably wrong. Rather, it appears that a style is developed and refined shoot after shoot, job after job. It is a neverending process. However, there are some points to help develop an impactful style.
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.
Wedding photographers often tell me how annoying it can be to get a consistent white balance across the images of the day. Shooting weddings almost every weekend during the summer myself, I used to have that problem as well. With a white dress for the bride and a white shirt for the groom, it should be easy though. The problem is I like my images to make my couple look good. Meaning I like having the same skin color and tone on every picture. During the day, their skin might change color a bit because of the sun, the emotions, and the alcohol. Switching to Capture One this year I found the perfect solution to avoid this issue: setting my white balance based on skin tones and not on a gray card anymore.
Dodging and burning for cleaning skin is very common amongst high-end retouchers and for a reason: when mastered, it gives you natural, yet almost perfect results. The downside of the technique is that it can eat up a lot of time. When I say a lot of time, I mean up to a couple of hours for a single image, depending on the problems that need corrections. While spending this much time on big projects or perhaps on personal projects is conceivable, for someone that shoots portraits every day and has to retouch quickly, this is simply not viable. A couple of tricks exist to help you go faster, while retaining a high quality and natural-looking image. I have listed four of them here with the hope that they will save you as much time as they do for me.
When I started out in portrait and beauty photography, I tried to have a makeup artist for most of my photo shoots. Why? Because I had always been told it would help my retouching. This is true in most cases. As long as you work with talented makeup artists, you will shorten the time spent in front of your computer. However, this is not the only advantage. Since I learned to do the makeup myself, I have discovered how having makeup done can help your photography reach another level. Noticing these benefits, I do everything to upsell my clients to get makeup done at the studio rather than having them doing it themselves. Here is why.
The Elinchrom Indirect softboxes are quite well known amongst fashion and commercial photographers. Especially the 190 octabank. Recently Elinchrom revised its indirect lineup and renamed it Indirect Litemotiv. The Swiss brand offered me the chance to play around with the whole line of Indirect Litemotiv for a little over a month. I must admit, these are great light shapers, and I did not really want to give them back. Are they the ultimate softboxes? I would not go this far, but they are very close. Here is why.
