Yesterday on February 19th, Adobe Photoshop celebrated its 25th birthday. It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago the first version of the venerable photo manipulation software was launched. 

While it probably doesn't get the attention that other important innovations of the late 20th century get, such as the personal computer, Photoshop is still one of the most influential inventions of the time. When you think about how much of the visual world we live in today has been influenced by computer graphics in one way or another, from advertising to movies, and much of that can be traced back to Photoshop. 

I want to take a little break from the normal photographic topics for today and relay a personal story. This only has a tenuous link to photography, so please excuse the indulgence, but it's worth a read in my opinion. Last week my wife and I had to move from our home of many years.

I'm not a huge black and white shooter. Don't get me wrong, I like black and white, but I rarely set out with the notion of shooting exclusively in the format. I used to in the past, but I haven't done it in ages, so when I was in the city centre here in Dublin the other day, I decided to try shooting some black and white images with my new(ish) Sony A6000. 

On Friday Canon announced the company’s newest DSLR offerings, the much rumoured Eos 5DS and 5DS R cameras. The new versions of Canon’s long running 5D line have been making waves in the photography community for their headline feature, their new 50mp sensor. I won’t go into all the specifications and technical details on the cameras, as that’s been covered in great detail by photography news sites...

I’ve written a lot on this blog about using different RAW converters (other than Lightroom) to get the best from Fuji X-Trans files. In the past I’ve discussed using Photo Ninja, Iridient Developer, and Aperture but there is one big piece of software that I haven’t really covered in depth and that’s Capture One. The main reason was that I didn’t really have the time to properly use the software to judge it fairly. The few times I had tried it, I wasn’t satisfied with the results, but I’ve gotten comments from many readers who swear by it so, over the past few months I’ve been spending time with the software whenever I had a chance to see how I could get the best results from it.

I've been shooting some more street photography recently, partly as part of my review of the A6000, which was a good excuse to get out there, despite the really cold weather we've been having lately. I've written my first impressions of the little Sony camera already, and I'll be doing a full, comprehensive review once I've been using it for a few weeks. 

A couple of months ago my Sony NEX-7 stopped working. I was out shooting and the controls just stopped responding. I tried all sorts of things to get it back but to no avail. The camera was out of warranty and it was going to cost me €100 just to have it even looked at. I still haven't done anything with it yet, and I do intend to leave it in to be assessed at some point, but I'm just reluctant to spend several hundred euro to get it fixed when they're going for less than €400 now second hand. 

I had also been looking at the A6000 as a possible replacement. Over Christmas, there were some good deals at one of my local camera stores so in the end, one day when I felt like some retail therapy I decided to treat myself.

I had mentioned last week that I was almost ready to release Film Candy 2 for Lightroom, and I'm delighted to announce that the new set of presets is now available from my digital download store. Film Candy 2 has been a labour of love for the past year, and I'm really happy to finally make it available. 

On its official “Lightroom Journal” blog yesterday, Adobe posted a somewhat unusual post warning users that the next major release of Lightroom, Lightroom 6, would have new system requirements. Specifically, the Mac version would require 10.8 or higher, and the Windows version would require Windows 7 or higher.

It was almost a year ago when I launched my first set of Lightroom presets. I had ported my popular "Film Candy" set from Aperture. Since then I've ported most of the rest of the sets that I had previously released for Aperture to Lightroom and they have been really well received. However, I've also been working on some new presets, which aren't versions of previous Aperture looks. In fact, ever since I released Film Candy nearly a year ago, I've been working on Film Candy 2

It's that time of the year again, when the excitement of the new year is still fresh and I decide to make lots of resolutions for myself that I invariably won't actually keep. Ok, I'm kidding.... well, sort of. I did actually keep some of my resolutions last year, but this time, instead of resolutions as such, I'm setting myself some photography related goals to achieve throughout the year. Most of these are just ideas, that I've jotted down. Even if they never actually happen, it can be helpful to think out loud like this, even if it's just to give yourself some direction. 

Because of the wonderful new EU Vat laws (yes, I'm being sarcastic) I've had to change the way the download store works. Basically the EU has decided to change the way VAT is charged for electronic download sales between EU countries. Up till now, when selling to another EU country you would charge vat based on the address of the seller, in my case Ireland. However, starting on the 1st of January, you now have to charge VAT based on the address of the buyer rather than the seller. 

After a very mild winter so far here in Dublin, we had the first severe frost of the year yesterday. I awoke to a beautiful covering of white across the ground. The fields surrounding where I live were glistening with their white crystal coverings, and the rooftops were as white as if it had snowed. I had been planning to head out to do some photography anyway, so the winter scene was a bonus.

I just wanted to wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas from her in Dublin. (And happy holidays for those who don't celebrate Christmas). Thank you all for your support and for all the kind comments and encouragement that I've received over the past year. To keep in the festive spirit, here's a few photos of the decorations around Dublin

I spent a few days in London a few weeks ago, and I spent most of the time in the lovely Russell Square area. I did't get much time for photography, but I did get to take some shots around the square with my Trusty Fuji X-E1. The weather was pretty miserable and gloomy, but that just made for some more moody images. These were processed with Lightroom using my Monolith for Lightroom Presets