Photo Editing, Tutorials, Photography News, and More
This blog covers a range of topics from Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, iPhone Photography, and more. If you want to see more of my actual photography work, visit my Portfolio and Photo Journal blog.
Featured Posts
Capture One for iPad Release Date Announced, Due June 28th
Capture One has announced the release date for the iPad version of the Capture One software. The iPad app will be out on the 28th of June and will be available on the iPadOS App Store on that date. The iPad version of the software will require a subscription of $4.99 a month.
New Episode of Street Photo Diary: “Sony A6000 - Still my favourite Street Photography camera”
I have just uploaded a new episode of Street Photo Diary to my YouTube channel. In this episode of Street Photo Diary, I get back to shooting Street Photography with my trusty Sony A6000. I talk about how this 8 year old camera is still my favourite street photo camera, and my preferred lens and settings when shooting street photography. I also discuss 5 tips for beginners looking to get into street photography.
Signs of Summer on the Streets of Dublin
As spring gives way to summer here in Ireland, and the cold dark rainy days give way to bright rainy days, I’ve been slowly getting back into street photography. I have only really dabbled since the pandemic began and for most of 2020 I didn’t really shoot much at all. I’ve been getting back into it bit by bit, and recently, I headed out with my trusty Sony A6000 to get some street shots
Thoughts on the Canon R7 and R10
I just wanted to share a quick few thoughts on the new APSC RF mount cameras that Canon announced yesterday. It had long been rumoured that Canon would expand the RF range to include APS-C cameras and now that they have, the transition to mirrorless is nearing completion for Canon. But there are a few interesting things about these cameras specifically, and the expansion of the range, and I wanted to say a few quick words on the subject.
Opinion: The New Instagram Update is Terrible
So Instagram has been rolling but a new update, and it’s pretty atrocious. If you don’t have it yet, consider yourself lucky. The new design is clearly aimed at competing more directly with TikTok, and while it might be ok for video, it’s really bad for photography and photographic content.
Photo Essay: Cambridge
I first visited Cambridge a couple of years ago and I absolutely loved it. This was my third visit since then and my first visit post lockdowns. There is something really nice about the city. It’s small, like a big town, and it has a combination of history and grandeur as well as the peaceful parks and riverside. It also has great cafes and great food.
On the Road Again ... and Air and Rail
After two and a half years, I finally got to travel overseas again last week. It was the first time travelling in the new reality of the semi-sort of but not really - post(ish) COVID-19 world. It was a part work trip, part “get away and clear your head” type of trip, and it involved two countries, and multiple forms of transport. Hey, if you’re going to do it, do it right.
Capture One Addresses Service Outage
Last week Capture One suffered a service outage that affected users of the companies software. The issue was caused by Capture One’s payment provider, Fast Spring, and it caused the software to temporarily stop working for some users. Needless to say, people affected by this weren’t happy. Luckily, Capture One seems to have realised the seriousness of this, and yesterday they addressed it in a Tweet on the companies official Twitter Account.
Video: How to add White Borders to Instagram Photos in Lightroom
Some people prefer posting their photos to instagram using a frame, with white borders surrounding the image, n order to preserve the original aspect ratio. People are quite divided as to whether or not this is a good thing to do or not, but if you want to do it, there are lots of ways to go about it. If you use Lightroom, there’s actually a pretty easy way to get the white border effect inside of Lightroom, without having to use plug-ins or go to Photoshop.
Speed Up Lightroom - The Three Most Likely Culprits for Poor Performance
Lightroom Classic used to have a terrible reputation for performance. Certainly, older versions of the software had some serious speed issues, but over the past few years, Adobe has worked to improve the responsiveness of the application. It’s now it’s a far cry from the way it used to be. However, If you have a modern computer, and you’re still experiencing a slowdown with Lightroom, there are a handful of common issues that could be causing it.
Using “Enhance” in Lightroom for Fuji Users – Answers to the most common questions
The Enhance function in Lightroom has been around for a while now. It was originally called “Enhance Details” but changed its name to just “Enhance” when the super resolution feature was added. For Fuji shooters, Enhance offers a way to get improved demosiacing inside of Lightroom without having to use third-party software. Using it on Fuji RAF files can provide significantly better rendering of detail in Fuji files, but it does come with some downsides.
Capture One Quick Tip - Don’t forget about Presets
Most people think of Styles when thinking about saving process recipes in Capture One. Styles let you save a wide range of settings into a file that can easily be recalled, and work great as both a time saver and for creating looks that you can apply to a photo. However, you shouldn’t forget about Capture One’s other recipe saving tool: presets.
Capture One Wish List – 5 Things I wish Capture One would do to improve the Software
I’ve been using Capture One for quite some time now (since version 6 I think) and in that time it’s come a long way. With recent versions, they’ve been adding a lot of features that people have requested for a long time, but there are still areas where I think the software could be improved. Moreover, some recent decisions by the company are somewhat perplexing, and there are areas there that could be improved too. So, in no particular order, here are the five things I would love to see improved in Capture One
My T-Pan Lightroom Black and White Film Presets are available for sale again
When I closed my old digital download store a few years ago, I stopped selling most of my Lightroom presets. I figured that the market for these was pretty much saturated and that there wasn’t really any point. However, recently I’ve been receiving some requests for some of my older packs, and after using m T-Pan set on the most recent episode of Street Photo Diary, I’ve decided to make T-Pan available again.
The Return of Street Photo Diary - Street Photography with the Fuji X-E4
My most popular series of videos on YouTube by far was “street photo diary”. It’s a series that I loved creating, but it has been on hiatus since 2019 and the pandemic hit. Well, I’m delighted to say that I’ve finally created a new episode, and it’s up on YouTube now. In this video I take my new Fujifilm XE-4 on a photo walk around Dublin City to see how well the camera works for Street Photography, and to see how it will fare as a replacement for my ageing Sony A6000
How to do the “desaturate lows” cinematic grading technique in Lightroom
In colour grading for film and television, there is an age-old technique that is often used to make your footage look more cinematic or film like. The trick is to desaturate the shadow parts of an image. In fact, old versions of Final Cut (before FCPX) even had a specific plug-in for doing this called “desaturate lows”. In most modern colour grading and video editing tools, you have tools which let you control the saturation directly in relation to the brightness values in a scene, but in Lightroom, and other photo editing tools, this is one of the few tools you don’t have. Or do you?
Spring is (almost) here. New Growth and New Creativity
This time last year, I posted a story on this blog called “Virtual Spring”. We were in the midst of lockdown and I couldn’t get out to get any photos of the changing seasons. While autumn has always been my favourite season to photography, spring is a close second. I love as the bleakness of winter gives way to new life, and it clears out the cupboards of one’s mind, as it were.
DXO Photo Lab 5.2 Released - Important notes for Fuji and Apple Silicon Users
DXO quietly released the latest update to DXO Photo Lab sometime recently. I don’t know when exactly this was as there was no press release or anything and I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the software update notices, but it’s actually an important release for two reasons. It brings improvements to Fuji support and improves the way Fuji cameras are handled in an important way. It also makes us aware of a bug in the latest MacOS and offers a work around. Read on for more details