There’s been a few bits of photo software news over the past few days, so I’ve distilled them down into one quick post! Nik Software is celebrating its 25th anniversary, you can now get a free upgrade to Capture One 21 if you buy version 20, and Photoshop is already out in beta for Apple Silicon Macs.

If you’re curious as to what is new in the upcoming Capture One v21, the company is holding a sneak peek live stream tomorrow (Nov 17th) at 16:00 CET where they will showcase some of the new features.

Ever since Apple first announced the move to Apple silicon back in July, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve been wanting to write about it for a while now, but I held off until there were more concrete details. Well, now that the first Macs with Apple silicon have been announced, I can share my thinking on the subject, and what these new systems might mean for creatives.

The first memory I have of noticing photography was from when I was a child. In the house where we lived at the time, there was a long narrow hallway, and along that hall were beautiful black and white portraits of our family. Those portraits were taken by my father, and I always remember them, even to this day.

I've been trying to get some time to do a proper full review of DXO Photo Lab 4 but I’ve been really busy with client projects and some other things, so I haven’t had the time to fully immerse myself in the software yet. However, I have played around with the new “Deep Prime” noise reduction, and I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

Just a quick update on the state of my Gumroad store. After closing my own digital download store, I’ve slowly been working to make some of my previously available products available for sale again via Gumroad. I’ve just added another few and now most of my eBooks are available again.

Today, Capture One has announced that the next version of Capture One will be coming in the not too distant future, and they are accepting pre-orders for those who want to upgrade to Capture One 21.

It seems to be the month for software announcements. Hot on the heels of Lightroom 10, DXO Labs has announced the release of DXO Photo Lab version 4. I’ve been playing with this for a little while, and I’ll have a proper review in due time but for now, here’s the details of what’s new.

Adobe today announced the latest versions of its Lightroom family of applications. There are a couple of key new features, the biggest one of which is the new colour grading tool. In the post below, I’m just discussing Lightroom Classic, but many of these features are across the whole ecosystem.

Ever since Luminar 4 was released, and SkyAI allowed easy sky replacements, there was one consistent complaint about the function. It didn’t include reflections. If you replaced a sky in an image containing water, the reflected sky would still be the original. Well, it looks like they have heard the feedback, as the company just released a preview of the new sky replacement feature in Luminar AI and it includes reflections.

Capture One just released an important tech note that you should be aware of if you’re running the software on a Mac. The application does not currently support MacOS Big Sur. With the release of the next version of MacOS imminent, you should be aware of this before you upgrade, especially if you use Capture One in a work or production environment.

In addition to today’s earlier news of a new Capture One 25% off discount for prepaid subscriptions, there’s more Capture One news in the form of a service update. Version 13.1.3 contains new camera and lens support, as well as bug fixes. Full details below.

Exposure is one of those applications that I’ve been interested in, and I’ve played around with quite a bit, but it hasn’t really made it into my daily workflow. I keep coming back to it though, as it offers some unique features, and it also does some nice RAW conversions. Well, Exposure Software (the company) has just launched the latest version of the software, Exposure X6.

While it’s main summer offer has ended, Capture One is now offering another chance to get 25% off, but this time only for annual prepaid subscriptions. This offer does apply to all variations though, so Full Pro, Sony Pro, Fujifilm Pro and Nikon Pro.

A recent technology demonstration from Adobe showed off a new feature coming to Camera RAW and Lightroom: Colour Grading. The applications will get a three-way colour corrector similar to video editing applications, and a feature that has been present for some time in Capture One.