The other day I was sitting in the window at one of my regular Starbucks pit-stops, and I was trying to write some content for my blog, but I was struck by a bad case of writers block. I was sitting there staring out the window hoping for creativity, and then I began playing with my camera while I sipped my coffee.

A little while ago I reviewed Luminar from Macphun. At the time I pointed out some issues with the processing RAW files in the software, and Fuji files in particular. Since I wrote that the company has released a new version which addresses some of the issues, and so I thought I would take another quick look at it.

Now that Iridient X-Transformer has been out on the Mac for a little while I’ve had a chance to play around with it for a bit. After lots of testing and trying various combinations, I’ve come up with what I believe is the best approach to take if you prefer natural looking images. In this post, I’ll outline the settings that I’m now using and some other tips for using the software. As always, I based these on my preferences, and so, you may prefer a different approach. However, if you’re looking for somewhere to start, then have a look, try the recommendations, and judge for yourself.

Every year, at this time, the city of Dublin get’s a little greener. I’m not talking about some environmental initiative though. It’s not a sudden growth of trees or grass either. No, instead I’m talking about the annual build up to St. Patricks Day. Where every shop, pub and restaurant does it’s patriotic duty and adorns their premises in the requisite amount of green trappings, from Shamrocks to Leprechauns. If you didn’t know what was going on you’d think there was some kind of plastic outbreak.

For me, the Intelligent Search features in Apple’s Photos app, or what Apple refers to as “Advanced computer vision”, was one of those things that gets announced and then most people promptly forget about. However, once you actually try it, it’s actually pretty impressive, and while not perfect, it shows where the technology is going. 

I wanted to wrap up the street photography video series I’ve been sharing over the past few days with one final post, where you can see the finished images. These are some of the actual images the I edited in the second part of the video, as well as a few more that I didn’t cover. 

In this video, which is a follow on from my street photography vlog video, I discuss editing the shoot. I take you through the whole process from import, through rating and then processing the images to final output. I try to discuss why I like certain images, and why some things work and others don’t.

I really want to start doing more video and in particular I want to do a series of vlog style videos. I’ve been putting it off out of fear, and general procrastination, but yesterday I finally got around to making my first attempt. I won’t call it a resounding success because a lot of things didn’t exactly go according to plan, but it turned out reasonably well all things considered. I consider this as a learning exercise. A beta version if you will.

A while ago I wrote about Iridient’s new product, X-Transformer. It was only available for Windows at the time. I don’t have access to a Windows computer, but I did try it under parallels at the time, and I was impressed with the results. However, because it was just too clunky to work with under emulation, I didn’t do too much with it, as a mac version was promised.

Capping off what seems to have become Capture One week here on the blog, I’m pleased to announce that my first set of Styles for Capture One is now available. Called “SilverLUX”, it’s a set of 25 Black and White Styles. The set also comes with 20 film grain presets. People have been asking me for a while to create some Capture One styles, and so I’m delighted to be finally able to release them.

A guest post from one of my regular readers Mike Arst. Mike discovered a bug in Capture One and he has a work around should you come across it.

For a while now people have been asking me if I was planning to make presets for Capture One. I have been putting it off because I wasn’t really confident in my abilities with the software. However, I’ve been using it a lot more lately, and I’ve reached the point where I’m happy with the looks that I’m creating. So I’m nearly ready to release my first set of “styles” to use the Capture One terminology. They’ll be a black and white set and I’m calling them SilverLux.

For a while now there’s been something that I’ve been meaning to try in Capture One that I’ve never gotten around to, and that is to find some colour profiles for Fuji cameras. Unlike Lightroom, Capture One doesn’t include colour profiles for the Fuji film simulation modes. However, it does have a comprehensive colour matching engine, and many people have posted their own matching profiles. 

I’ve talked a lot about using Capture One Pro for processing Fuji Files here on this blog, but I also use it when working with other cameras too. In particular, I find that it does a really nice job when working with files from Sony cameras. In the past I’ve used it with both a Sony A7II (Which I had borrowed), and my own Sony A6000. 

Recently I was out taking some photos in the city centre of Dublin, and I ended up shooting a lot of bracketed exposures. It was a moody, cloudy day, and while the low clouds would probably come out by pushing the Raw files with just one exposure, it as quite dramatic, and I wanted to maintain as much detail as possible. I wasn’t so much intending to create lots of HDR files, but I was more just trying to give myself options afterwards.