Articles from Mel Martin

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. 

When you open the app, you'll see a selection of countries and places to explore.

The Nik Collection has been a powerful and useful tool for photo editors since DxO rescued the software from Google in 2017. 

The software is used in Photoshop and has a variety of color and black-and-white effects that have proven popular.

This version 8 of the collection is a big leap over previous upgrades.

Boris Oliviero, the product director, says:

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. 

The company says update 1.3.0 introduces powerful new retouching tools, significant UX improvements, and expanded language support, making portrait editing more efficient and precise than ever.

For Mac users, Peakto software has always been one of the premier solutions for cataloging and easily finding your media because it automatically sorts your media as it comes in, using AI to help you find images by content, colors, time of day, camera settings, and many other attributes.

took a look at the first version of Color Theory Pro last year and found it interesting and useful. Now, version 2 is out, and I find it more interesting and more useful. 

The app is a plug-in for Photoshop and is aimed at landscape photographers and astrophotographers. This is the first version that deals with night sky images, so I'll start there.

I have to say that on many days, I find myself using a DxO product—most frequently, their PureRAW software, which looks at my image metadata in my RAW files and gives me a near-perfect image, correcting my sensor/lens combination, sharpening, and removing imperfections like vignettes and ringing. DxO has more than 100,000 camera/lens combinations covering almost any gear.

CYME announces that Peakto Search, the Mac-only plugin for Lightroom Classic and Capture One, is back with two new features designed to make creators’ lives easier: Instant Speech Search and Custom Metadata Display. 

Well, here's something I did not expect in a mobile photo editing app, but it's a nice surprise. Skylum, which also makes the popular Luminar Neo editor, has added full raw support, an editing history feature, seamless iCloud synchronization, and an improved user interface to its iOS app that runs on iPhones and the Apple iPad. 

Small, uncomplicated automated telescopes for casual viewing seem to have taken off. Among the most popular are the Seestar, the Dwarf2, and the newer Dwarf3. 

The problem is that the included editors are pretty basic, but there's enough data in these little scopes' images to get a better result than the included apps can provide.

I covered the announcement of the latest release of Radiant Photo last month. It looked promising, but reviewers didn't have it in hand to take a deep dive into the software. Now I've had it for a few days and want to share my thoughts and experiences. 

First, I'm looking at the Radiant Photo 2 software from the perspective of a landscape photographer.

The new DJI Air 3S has made quite a splash in the photo and drone world, with a reasonable price, dual cameras, and robust obstacle avoidance with the addition of LIDAR. 

Just when you thought you'd seen just about every editing tool, Radiant Photo comes along with a solid update to its Radiant Photo Editor that I first took a look at in 2022. Since then there have been many improvements and new tools. 

This latest version is packed with features, new tools and improved workflows. 

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 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. 

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.

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, 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. 

DxO, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, has done a solid update to PhotoLab, its class-leading RAW editor. 

This latest version, PhotoLab 8, can really push the quality of your RAW files, something DxO has been an expert at for years.

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.

Skylum, the company that offers AI editor Luminar Neo, has some very desirable updates coming in October. 

According to the company, this fall upgrade introduces cutting-edge enhancements driven by advancements in generative AI technology, along with several highly requested features.

Here are some of the highlights of what is coming:

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. 

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.  

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. 

It was inevitable, I think. We've already seen a version of Luminar on an iPad, but most people are taking photos on their smartphones, which often have better cameras, so editing directly on an iPhone just makes sense. 

Skylum has news that will be of high interest to portrait photographers. It's an announcement of a dedicated app code-named "Project Barcelona." It's an app designed for professionals to enhance portrait retouching. 

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. 

DxO grabbed the popular Nik Collection in 2018 after Google cut it loose. The company has continued to improve it and add features. A case in point is the new Nik Collection 7. 

Skylum is continuing to add more AI-based features to its popular editing tool, Luminar Neo. The new version will be out on April 25, but I was able to get an advance look at it. 

Here's what's coming:

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.

It's nice to see Skylum offer the powerful Luminar tools for iOS and a version that runs natively on Apple's new Vision Pro headset. 

It comes as a small but welcome surprise for editors who live in the iOS world and want something more than the basic editing generally on offer.

The app has rather broad functionality including:

Just when you thought raw images couldn't be improved any more with external software, DxO aims to show you they can make your raw files look even better. 

I've looked at previous version of the Radiant Imaging software, which focused mostly on landscape images. This latest version, Radiant Photo 1.3, offers new portrait tools that focus on natural skin tones and Color Style tools that should simplify the editing process. It's a free update for all Radiant Photo customers.