Over the past few days I’ve been trying out a pre-production version of Macphun’s recently announced Luminar photo editor, and I have to say I’m intrigued. The new software, which is due out later this month, is a pretty advanced RAW converter and photo editing App. It’s like of like a combination of Camera Raw and Google’s Nik Photo Plug-ins all rolled into one. It’s surprisingly powerful, and I have to say, I’ve had fun working with it

I recently posted a piece about shooting some photos using the in-camera Acros mode on the X-Pro 2. While I posted Jpegs straight from the camera in that post, I’ve also been working on matching the effect in Raw. This might sound like a straight forward process. You just set the colour profile, right? Well, after experimenting for a bit, there seems to be more to it than that.

I've been suffering from something akin to writers block when it comes to photography lately. A lot of things are getting to me and frustrating me creatively. While Autumn had been my favourite time of the year for photography for many years, a few weeks ago it was the anniversary of my mother’s passing away, and that has changed my feelings about the season. Autumn is now a reminder of that sad time, rather than the celebration of colour that I used to see. I'm sure with time this will pass, but this year was difficult. On top of that, the weather has been dark and cold, so that hasn't exactly helped things. I wanted to try and channel some of these feelings and reflect the mood of both the environment and myself, and so I headed out the other day to try something a little different. 

Autumn is my absolute favourite time of the year for taking photos. When the leaves on the trees start to take on their seasonal colours the landscape takes on a beautiful sheen of red and gold, there is a certain magic about the place. But it’s not just the trees, and the leaves that make Autumn special. It’s the light too. Over the years I’ve collected a large variety of Images from Autumn. I have lots of different types of Autumn images, from Landscapes to close-up images, and from this selection, I’ve created a set of wallpaper images that I think will work well as desktop wallpapers. 

I’ve been slowly updating and changing the way I handle my portfolio on my collected websites. Previously I had been relying on Photoshelter to host my portfolio, but I’m starting to move away from this for various reasons (more on this in a minute). Because I already have a separate site which is an overview of my Photography in general, I’m adding a proper portfolio to that. I’ll also be updating it with proper galleries for the various genres that I photography regularly. 

A while ago I wrote a post about the settings that I use on My X-E1. In that piece I mostly covered the Jpeg settings that I used on the camera such as the shadow and highlight tone and so on. Since then I’ve moved to an X-Pro 2, and recently a reader gave me the idea of doing a follow up article to talk about the settings that I use on my X-Pro 2, so In this post, I’ll talk again about the image settings, but also about some of the other camera options that I have set.

I’ve been using Mylio for quite a while now, but I’ve never really talked about it. The reason is that for the longest time, I considered it as something that I was “trying out” and I was trying to work out how it would fit into my workflow. Over that time, it’s quietly absorbed itself into my way of working, and now I consider it an essential tool. If you’ve never heard of Mylio, then let me explain just what it is and how I use it. 

Affinity Photo is one of the more interesting Photoshop competitors out there, and it has a powerful feature set. I find myself using it more and more for various tasks, and its speed makes it a very useful software tool to have in your arsenal. The software has its own raw processing engine, and while it hasn’t ben updated to include X-Pro 2 support yet, you can still open and edit X-Pro 2 raw files with the software thanks to a semi hidden feature.

I’ve been busy with a few ongoing projects at the moment and I wanted to provide you with a few updates that I thought you might be interested in. I’m working on a few interesting things here for the blog, and also a few new interesting products for my store, so stay tuned for that. In the mean time, here are a few updates that you might be interested in...

I have just updated my Fuji X-Trans Lightroom guide with some significant changes. I’m calling it “version 1.5” and it contains some updated information, including some notes on processing 24mp X-Trans files, such as those from the X-Pro 2. I also tried to incorporate as much of the feedback and questions that I’ve received since the initial release. I also used the opportunity of releasing an updated edition to make some other changes and include some additional detail. If you had previously purchased this guide, the updated version is available for free to download from your account

When the rumours of the new Sony A6500 surfaced a few days before it was announced, I have to say, I was a little skeptical. I really didn’t think Sony would release another camera in the range so soon after the A6300 but I was happy to be proven wrong. The newly announced A6500 is a step above the 6300 and pretty much addresses all the criticism of the 63000 which is also still fairly new

I was walking through a local park here in Dublin the other day, and I loved how the low Autumn sun was creating these lovely patterns of Dappled light on the ground. In the shadows of the trees there were patches of sunshine that danced as the breeze blew the leaves. It was quite beautiful and relaxing, and as I had my trusty X-Pro 2 with me I decided that I would shoot some video as well as stills.

I was walking through a nearby forested park the other day, and I caught an interesting sequence of images. There is a large lake in the middle of the park and there’s always lots of ducks and seagulls there. At this time of the year it’s especially beautiful, as the autumn colours on the leaves give the waters of the lake a patchwork of green and gold. 

If you’re a user of any of my presets, then you will know that I’ve designed them with the idea of being used with the “Standard” camera profile. The idea behind this was to provide a base level of compatibility across cameras, without having to create custom colour profiles for different models. Most manufacturers have a standard profile, and while obviously this isn’t exactly the same across different cameras, it’s generally the most “normal” looking profile, which is why I use that as the base for my presets.

I’ve been very busy working on an update for my Lightroom X-Trans processing guide. I had hoped to have it out a while ago, but it ended up taking longer than anticipated. The revised version of my guide, features updates to cover some changes that I’ve noticed in the approach that I take for the newer 24mp X-Trans cameras such as the X-Pro 2 and the X-T2. I’ve also added a few new sections, and made it longer