DXO labs today announced the release of the latest version of its popular Nik Collection software suite. While it might sound like a point release, it actually contains some significant updates and marks a milestone for the software.

Today Adobe released the latest round of photography product updates, including all the versions of Lightroom, camera raw, etc. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to concentrate on Lightroom Classic 12.3. While this sounds like it should be a minor update given that it’s a point release, it is anything but. This could end up being one of the most substantial updates in years, based on just one of the features in the software

It’s hard to believe that it’s August already. Here in Ireland it’s technically Autumn now, and already you can feel the change in the air. And speaking of change, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting very regularly recently, so I want to apologise. As well as being busy with client work, I’ve also been doing some thinking and I’m hoping to make some big changes soon, on the website and in a broader sense.

Today Skylum announced a new product - Luminar Neo. They are billing this a new product and a new member of the Luminar family. It is a separate application from Luminar AI and Luminar AI will continue to be sold. So, what’s new, and what’s the difference?

DXO Photo Lab has been awarded TIPA’s 2021 professional photo editing software award. The award is primarily for the applications’ impressive “Deep Prime” noise reduction software. I’ve covered this before a few times and it’s really impressive technology.

When I announced that I was closing my store earlier this month I was blown away by the support from everyone who reads the blog, and those who have bought content from me in the past. Since it closed, I’ve had lots of requests from people who still wanted to get some of my eBooks or Styles and Presets. So, I’m trying out Gumroad to make some of these available.

I just wanted to post a quick follow up on the news that I am closing my store. I have received a lot of well-wishing, and I want to thank everyone, but there has also been a little bit of confusion that I wanted to clear up.

This isn't a decision I have taken lightly, but I have decided to close my digital download store. I will cease selling content on Thursday, September 10th. The website will remain online until the end of September to allow anyone who may have made purchases to download and back them up. After that, the store will be taken offline.

I was trying to write the title for this post and make it not sound like a spam ad, which is what I thought when I first saw this, but its true. Adobe is offering two months off for creative cloud subscribers to help creatives deal with the current global situation. I read about this on a tweet, and I thought it was a joke or a scam, but it was from a reliable source, and I tried it and it works (at least it did a few days ago).

Luminar 4 has received its first major update, and the new version adds some new functions to the Sky Replacement filter, as well as a collection of under-the-hood fixes and enhancements. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new in the update

The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy for photo software. We’ve recently had plenty of teasing about Luminar 4, as well as an announcement of sorts about the next version of Capture One. So what can you expect over the next little while?

A little while ago I wrote a post on how I couldn’t understand Canon’s decision to remove 24p from their newest cameras. 24p is considered a standard around the world, and many of Canon’s cameras became so popular for video precisely because they allowed users to shoot in 24p, so it was inexplicable to me that the company had chosen to remove such a key feature. I wasn’t the only one, and there was a wide and loud backlash from users. Well, Canon listened, and has announced that it would be adding 24p to several recently released cameras via firmware.

There’s been a good bit of photo software news over the past week so rather than doing lots of separate posts, I thought I’d cover it here in one section. The headlines: Skylum shows off AI Portrait enhancer coming in Luminar 4, Phase One announced a new offer for Capture One, Exposure announced some details of Exposure 5, and a useful piece of software for Sony and Olympics shooters who want to use Pixel Shift.

I’ve finally gotten around to something I should have done a log time ago. I have finally upgraded the graphics card in my Mac Pro. I had been owing the original and extremely bad (by today’s standards) ATI 5770 and its paltry 1gb or ram. Amazingly enough I managed to get by all these years, but it was becoming increasingly problematic, so I finally ordered a replacement.

Just a quick notice! I’ve created a new Facebook Group where you can discuss any of the things you see here on the blog, or if you use any of my styles or presets, you can share photos you’ve created using these. You can also use the form to ask questions and get help from other members of the community.