I have lots of Lightroom Presets available now on this store and I wanted to be able to give you a way to try some of them out, so I’ve put together a collection of presets taken from the various sets, to make a free sample pack.

I currently have three sets of black and white presets available for Lightroom and based on popular request, I’m now making them available as a single bundle. The three sets of presets are: Monolith, MonoLux and T-Pan. Each has a different style and different approach to creating the black and white look, and together I think they make a good range of styles for creating black and white images in Lightroom.

Since OnOne released their Raw software late last year, the company has been putting out major updates at a fairly regular schedule. A significant release was announced yesterday, and as part of it, the list of features included improved X-Trans support. In previous versions, the raw conversion of Fuji X-Trans files was extremely poor. I covered it in a recent post, and I pointed out the severe artifacts. So has it improved?

I recently published a new photo essay over on my Streets of Dublin website, and I thought that I would share the story behind it here, as well as some behind the scenes information. The Idea came about by accident really. I was in the area taking pictures for something else, and I realised that this amazing looking building was nearing completion, and my wife and co-editor on the Streets of Dublin thought it would make an interesting story. 

My guide for processing X-trans files in Capture One was actually the first of these series of guides that I produced. Since I’ve written it, the software has been updated several times, and Fuji has come out with newer cameras. I had previously added a supplement to the ebook to cover the X-Pro 2 because at the time support was still preliminary (it still is in a way). I’ve now updated the Capture One guide to include the previous supplement and I’ve also incorporated some tips for working with Capture One 10.

I wanted to share a quick video tip with you about removing people from a shot in Photoshop. This isn’t a video about how to use the clone tool or anything like that. In fact I only use the clone tool for a short part of it. I actually use two images to remove the people, and combine them using one of Photoshop’s lesser known but really useful tools. First, let me back up a bit and explain the circumstances surrounding the shot.

I was recently working on some bracketed exposures that I shot while on a walk by the coast north of Dublin. It was a beautiful and moody day, but the light was pretty strong, and I was shooting with my D700, which hasn’t the greatest dynamic range. With that in mind, I shot multiple exposures with the aim of combining them later so as not to loose any detail in the highlights and shadows. I originally tried combining the exposures in Lightroom, but I wasn’t happy with the results, so instead I decided to use Aurora HDR.

A new photography App has gained some popularity on various photography sites and forums recently, and a few people have asked me to have a look at it. It’s called Raw Power and it works as either a stand alone application or as an editing extension to Photos. It’s this latter option that has most people interested, as the App adds some of the functionality that Aperture had back to Photos. Specifically, it gives you control over the raw decoding process.

When Luminar was first announced I thought that it looked interesting, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t pay it that much attention. A little while before it was released the company that makes the software, Macphun, asked me if I’d like to take a look at it, and they sent me a beta copy to try. I was intrigued by what I saw. Initially I was mostly interested in it as an alternative RAW converter, but after using it for a while I see now that it’s so much more. 

A while ago I released a set of Free Lightroom presets for Fuji users based on my own “variations’ of the Fuji Film simulation presets, or more specifically, the corresponding colour profile in Lightroom. Well, I’m pleased to announce that the follow up to that first set is now available. 

If you’re an Instagram user, you’re probably familiar with the importance of Hashtags. Just like on Twitter, hashtags let you assign a topic to your photos, and using hashtags allows other users to find your work. If you want to grow your account you really need to use this technique as doing so can mean a big difference in the amount of people that see your work. There is a dark side to using hashtags on Instagram however, and it’s to do with the rise of aggregate accounts.

I was recently working on a photo of Dublin’s famous Ha’Penny bridge that I had taken with my X-Pro 2 and an idea came to me. I was processing the image in Lightroom, and I wanted to see what it would look like in different converters. As I’ve written so much about it, and as I had an image that I was working on for a real world project, I thought that while I was at it, I should try a whole bunch of different converters and see what kind of results I got.

For quite a while I’ve been using Photoshelter to host my online image library. Initially it served as a place that I could deliver image files to clients, sell stock and also manage print sales. I really liked the service and it had a lot to offer, but I’m afraid that I’ve had to move to a different host. I didn’t want to, but the reason was quite simple. After two years or saying that they would do something about it, Photoshelter still didn’t properly support EU Vat law. 

I wrote a post yesterday where I compared my new T-Pan for Lightroom Presets , applied to some Fuji X-Pro 2 images, against some real film. It wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously, and wasn’t meant as a scientific comparison. I wanted to show, that I could mix images from both together in a single story and they would work together well. However, someone suggested that It wasn’t a fair comparison, because the film I was using Ilford XP2 wasn’t “real” black and white film.

I’m really proud of how well my T-Pan set of Lightroom presets turned out. I’m not just saying that as a shameless plug. I set about creating something that would work well to emulate black and white film, and I think the results work really well. I’m sure it’s not perfect. It’s not a full simulation as such, but rather an artistic interpretation, but I think it comes close. To see just how close I decided to do a little experiment