One of the key features announced when Lightroom CC 2015.4 was released, was the new boundary wrap function in the merge panorama feature. Boundary wrap solves one of the problems with cylindrical panoramas, where the edges are normally distorted and need to be cropped out. It also addresses some of the distortion in cylindrical panoramas. 

I shoot a good few panoramas now and then, and since Lightroom has added the merge function directly into the software, it's gotten a lot easier. So much so, that I don't even really think about it any more when shooting them. While traditional panoramas are fine, there's another incidence where the function comes in handy, and that's when you want to shoot wider than you otherwise could with the lens you have with you.

The latest update to Iridient Developer was announced yesterday and it adds partial support for Fuji X-Pro 2 files. Currently it only supports uncompressed raw files from Fuji's new camera. The update also adds some other bug fixes and improvements.

If you're running a photoblog or photography website, then you're probably already aware of the importance of properly adding descriptive text to your images. If you want to help improve how well your images and your blog is found on search engines, then properly adding alt text can make a big difference. However, if like me, you're using Squarespace as your blogging platform, then it might not be immediately obvious as to how you add this text to images. In this short post, I'll show you how to add alt text for both single image blocks and gallery blocks.

Since I posted my initial thoughts on the A6300 last week, there’s been a lot more information coming out about the upcoming camera. There are two things in particular that I missed when the announcement first came out, so I’m going to talk about them briefly now.

I decided to take my oldest DSLR out for a spin yesterday, and so I dusted off my ten year old Canon Eos 5D (the first one), charged it up and headed out to see what it was like shooting with the camera. The 5D Mark 1 still takes good pictures (in terms of Image quality) compared to today's cameras. The sensor is still pretty good at low ISO, and can hold its own compared to modern equivalents. That aspect of the camera actually holds up pretty well. However, the actual shooting experience wasn't great. 

It's February already, and it's time for another edition of Street Photography Diary! If you're new to the site, this on-going series is basically a random collection of my recent street photography, accompanied by an equally random collection of thoughts on the images, the process, or sometimes on subjects only loosely related!

Here's a quick tip for Lightroom users out there who may have the VSCO film presets installed. Say for example, you're working on an image, or set of images, but you don't want to use the full VSCO presets on them. You might not want them to look too "processed" for example. If you don't want to use the full VSCO presets, but still want a different look, then you should try using one of the VSCO calibration profiles without using the full presets. 

Instagram has finally added what I'm sure is probably the most requested feature: multiple account support. With the latest version of the app on both iOS and Android, you can now have more than one account (you can now have up to 5). You can also easily switch between them and post to multiple accounts as well. 

Photo Ninja from picture code has added partial support for Fuji’s new X-Pro 2 camera. Currently the application only supports uncompressed raw files, and compressed raw has yet to be supported. You can get Photo Ninja, including a trial version from Picture Code’s website.

Yesterday Sony released the spiritual successor to the A6000, the A6300. I say spiritual, because the A6000 is still being sold. As many of my log term readers know, I’ve been using the A6000 for over a year now, and I recently wrote a 3 part real world review of the camera. The successor has been rumoured for quite some time, and now it’s here. I’m very impressed with what I’m reading about it, at least with the specs on paper. At first glance the A6300 may seem like a minor evolution over the A6000, but in my opinion, it’s a massive improvement over the older camera, especially in the area of video. In fact, for video, I think that it’s revolutionary to have these features at the price point and size.

If you haven't come across it before, Affinity Photo is a Photoshop competitor from Serif labs, the same people who brought us the excellent Affinity Designer (an illustrator competitor). The software got a lot of attention when it was launched, and Apple named it the best Mac App of 2015. With this quick first look, I'm going to talk about my general impressions of using it, and I'm not going to go too in-depth, butI'll follow this up in a little while with a full review.

The recent Lightroom and Camera raw updates added support for the newly announced, but yet to be released, X-Pro 2. I was curious to see how the raw files looked given the history of Lightroom and X-Trans files, but as the camera isn’t out yet, I can’t exactly rent one. After doing a bit of searching however, I did come across a couple of sites with sample raw files you can download.

Adobe has just announced the latest upgrade for Lightroom. As well as bug fixes and new lens support, the CC version adds a new feature too. Called Boundary wrap, the new feature enhances the panorama feature in Lightroom. Unfortunately for those with the non subscription version, this new feature is only available for CC users.

I normally try to keep the topics on this blog as positive as possible. I try not to court controversy by objecting to anything too strongly, but there’s something that’s been bothering me for a little while now, and it’s Photoshop. With the most recent update, Adobe made some significant changes to the Photoshop interface, and in my opinion, they’re not very nice.