In one of my great examples of bad timing, a friend and I headed to southern Utah a few days ago. We were aware of spreading wildfires in the eastern part of the state, but where we were going, SE Utah, things were reported to be good.
There's a lot of competition out there for photographers' attention with recent updates of editing software. The big target for competitors is Adobe's ecosystem of programs, and many of my pro photographer friends are pretty locked in on Adobe Lightroom.
After some false starts, Apple has gone all out for the upcoming iOS 27, due this fall. There's a greatly improved Siri, based on Google's Gemini, and a host of AI features. Our readers will be most interested in the new photo-taking and editing features in iOS 27, and I was able to download the developer beta for a quick look around.
The Nik Collection of software tools goes way back to when Nik introduced some editing plug-ins for Photoshop in the 90s. Google bought the tools in 2013 and brought several of the tools together into a collection. But Google, as Google does, sold the collection off to DxO in 2017, and they began to rewrite everything with new code, and released a 7-app collection, adding an 8th shortly thereafter.
In a significant update to Luminar Neo, Skylum is focusing on AI-based portrait tools, as well as improving some of the included masking tools. This update is version 1.27.
It seems smart telescopes are taking off, bringing more and more people into the astrophotography hobby. I've reviewed a few of these new categories of products, most recently the Dwarf Mini. 3, a low-priced entry in the computer-driven portable telescope offerings.
DXO had a big announcement a few weeks ago with powerful new features in their raw image processor PureRAW 6. Now those features have been folded into their powerful image editor, PhotoLab, which gets a version bump to 9.6.
DxO PureRAW has been a go-to item in the workflow of photographers for years. PureRAW launched back in 2021, designed as a tool to preprocess Raw files before they go into an editor. The software de-noises your image, then corrects for defects in your optical path or the sensor. To do this, DxO maintains an extensive database of lenses and sensors so it can match your equipment to the corrections.
Skylum has released an update for its popular Luminar Neo editor that is incremental but will please owners. It follows a major fall update that brought many new features to the editor.
When I first heard about the Dwarf Mini Smart Telescope, I have to admit I was skeptical. A smart telescope you can carry in a pocket (albeit a large pocket like a photographer's vest), plop down, and produce decent astrophotos seemed like a stretch. Smart telescopes have certainly evolved over the last few years, and I've reviewed a few of them.
Aperty, professional portrait retouching software, has released a new update designed to integrate more seamlessly into photographers’ existing workflows. Here are the details from Aperty.
CYME has just announced Peakto 2.6, the latest version of its AI-powered media manager for Mac, introducing what is now the most comprehensive AI-driven culling and deduplication tool available for photographers and visual creators.
We’ve looked at products from Radiant Imaging Labs before, and they’ve always offered an interesting and fresh software approach for photographers.
Current owners of Luminar Neo are getting a holiday update with some new and unique features. Besides the usual bug fixes and some speed increases, Neo has added what they call an AI Assistant.
It’s been a long time coming, and it finally hit on Tuesday, with the U.S. banning new models of Chinese-made drones effective immediately.
Astrophotography has been having somewhat of a renaissance over the last few years. Part of that may be the addition of high-quality digital cameras and also computers that can take away the drudgery of aligning the telescope and finding and capturing faint objects.
DxO has been very active this year, and this month will not be an exception. The company is pumping out new, enhanced versions of three of its most popular photo-editing applications today.
I've gotten my hands on a beta of the new, and I have to say improved, Luminar Neo fall release from Skylum. It keeps everything that's good in the current version and adds a couple of new features that will likely get non-owners of the current product on board.
Skylum has announced a significant fall update for Luminar Neo coming in early November.
Peakto is releasing a 2.5 update to its excellent media management tool that frees it from the cloud while allowing robust search of all your media assets and enabling team sharing.
DxO has updated its film emulation package to version 8, and it's a major update. This latest version introduces two standout features: Time Warp Mode, a new interactive way to explore photography’s past, and full integration with Adobe Photoshop, giving photographers direct access to FilmPack’s creative palette.
Astrophotography is growing rapidly in popularity. Better and more reasonably priced equipment, computer control, and a heightened interest in what is in the night sky have all combined to expand the number of photographers who do night sky imaging. Some create landscapes, better termed “nightscapes,” while others focus on capturing planets, nebulae, and galaxies.
DxO PhotoLab has been the editing choice for many photographers since 2017, specializing in correcting optical defects in camera bodies and lenses. It has a large following, but Adobe, with Photoshop and Lightroom, has always been the 800-pound gorilla commanding much of the market.
This is lightning season for large parts of the U.S. and Europe and the rest of the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
I reviewed PanoVolo last year and found it excellent Windows or Mac software for creating panoramic images, even 360-degree ones.
Here's something a little different to display your photos. It's the Aluratek ePaper frame. Photos look like printed photos, and this 13.3" Wi-Fi-connected frame can run for about a year after a charge through its built-in USB-C port.
Disk Drill has been around a long time. Its job is to recover files from damaged disks such as hard drives and SD cards—pretty much anything that holds media files.
Adobe has released, without fanfare, a work-in-progress camera app for iPhones that shows tremendous promise, and I think it will excite photographers. The app is part of Adobe's Indigo Project.
Peakto has been a premier Mac app for organizing and finding photo assets, using AI and metadata to quickly find images no matter where you have hidden them. Now, they are adding powerful collaboration tools and tools for pre-editing video, and we know a lot of our readers are also creating videos as well as still images.
Skylum and Google have teamed up to bring Luminar Photo Editor to Android and ChromeOS. This move opens up powerful AI-driven editing tools to a wider range of mobile and Chromebook users.
Locationscout is a sort of Swiss Army knife for all kinds of useful photo information. It comes in a variety of flavors: iOS, Android, and a full-featured web app.
The Nik Collection has been a powerful and useful tool for photo editors since DxO rescued the software from Google in 2017.
Skylum is rolling out a spring update to their popular AI-based editing program, Luminar Neo. Users should start seeing the update today when they launch the application.
We spent some time on the new DxO PureRAW 5 when it was announced in February, but now it's out and I've had a chance to give it a run.
We've had a look at Aperty before, the new portrait editor from Skylum, which also offers the popular AI-based photo editor, Luminar.
