DXO labs have just released an update for DXO Pure Raw 2. Version 2.1 is now fully native on Apple silicon, and leverages Apple’s M1 and M2 processors. This release also adds support for the latest Canon Eos R series of cameras, and adds some improvements to the batch processing workflow.

I’ve just published a new photo essay over on my Photo Stories blog. I had visited a nearby urban farm back in May and taken lots of photos, and I was captivated by the colour and texture that images of nature. You should check out the blog post here before you carry on. As I try to keep my Photo Stories blog relatively gear and “technical nerdy stuff” free, I wanted to talk about the technicalities of the images here.

When it comes to photography, I have a lot of differing tastes. I don’t just mean photographic genres, bur rather images that appeal to me. I like good composition and storytelling as much as the next person, but I also have an affiliation for colour and texture. And sometimes, Nature provides us with an abundance of both of these.

This is a little trick I stumbled across the other day - almost by accident. I was working on editing a photo in Lightroom, and I had made quite a few edits, but I just couldn’t get it where I wanted it. I said to myself: “I wish there was a way I could just dial all the adjustments back a little”. Then it occurred to me - there actually is a way to do that. It requires a few steps and a little roundabout thinking, but it essentially gives you a way to adjust the overall amount of your adjustments with a single slider.

Alexander Svet from the popular Capture One focussed site “Alex on Raw” has released a new book on Capture One. Titled “Capture One Hidden Features”, the book contains “200+ Pro Hints To Enhance Your Capture One Workflow”. Alex was kind enough to send me a copy to review, and also provide my readers with a 10% discount.

I this video we edit a series of Landscapes in Capture One, starting with some very simple edits and working up to more complex images. I show you both the tools to use, and also share some of my philosophy on editing landscapes.

When Capture One released the latest version (15.3) one of the key “features” was a re-designed layout of the tools and tool tabs. This seems to have been done for consistency with the iPad version of Capture One, but some people may still prefer the old layout. Luckily, you can revert to the old style arrangement of the tools, although there are still some changes. In this post, I’ll show you how to do this.

When you watch a travel show or even a YouTube video from a far off place, it’s easy to get envy for the exotic locations and fantastic scenery. It’s also easy to overlook some of the magnificent sights in your own back yard. And here in Ireland, we have a truly magnificent back yard. Ever since the pandemic hit, we’ve been travelling abroad less, and are slowly exploring more of our own country. A little while ago, we travelled through the mountains and valleys of the beautiful Connemara countryside, and I was blown away by what we saw there.

DXO Labs has just announced the release of Film Pack 6.3. This update brings new camera support, is now native on Apple M1 and has some user interface improvements.

Someone recently asked a question on my Facebook group that, I thought, was actually such a good question that I should write a whole blog post, or perhaps even a series of blog posts about. For a long time, I’ve covered just about every aspect of working with Fuji files in Lightroom Classic, but I’ve never really covered some of the techniques for the non-classic version of Lightroom. While most things are broadly similar, many operations are also slightly different or in slightly different spots, so may be confusing to beginners. So in this post, I’m going to cover some of the fundamentals: how to change the film simulation mode, how to set the film simulation mode to what you shot in-camera on import, and how to use the “enhance” function to get better quality images.

Recently, I was trying to record a tutorial on editing landscape photography. In the end, I didn’t publish it because I felt that the edits I had done weren’t dramatic enough for people to watch. In fact, I even had that criticism about some of my editing tutorials before, that the edits I was making weren’t significant enough. This led me to realise the paradox of photo editing tutorials, especially on YouTube or other socially driven platforms. Unless you’re dramatically changing the image or doing extensive edits, people will find it “boring” and not watch or complain. But the reality is, in most cases, restraint will lead to better images.

After several months of being in beta, Capture One for iPad is now available. The App, which you can get now from the App Store, offers a subset of Capture One for desktop’s functionality, so it is limited. However, it does use the full capture One Raw engine, so images processed on an iPad will be as good as those processed on a desktop.

With the recent release of the Nik 5 plug-in collection], I have been using the software a bit more lately, and one of the cool things in the suite, is something that you may not be aware of. I don’t think this is actually a new feature in version 5, as I believe this was in 4 too, but there is some pretty impressive Lightroom integration with the suite. Specifically, you can copy and apply settings for the Nik plug-ins to other images directly in Lightroom.

So, way back when Lightroom first came out, many moons ago, one of the complaints from long time Photoshop users was that you couldn’t do a basic Levels adjustment in the software. Well, you actually can, and that is with the whites and blacks sliders. Adjusting the black and white sliders can be useful for a lot of things, but there’s one particular case that I think needs special mention. When working with low contrast scenes, it can be useful to adjust the contrast with a Levels adjustment rather than the contrast slider. Let me explain why.

DXO Labs today announced the release of Nik Collection 5. The suite of Plug-ins contains major upgrades to ColorEfex and AnalogEfex which include a new user interface as well as anew grain tool and the companies clear view technology. The suite also now comes with DXO Photolab 5 Essential, bringing Raw editing and DXO’s renowned optics correction to the suite.

Seems to be the day for updates! Not long after Adobe went live with the latest round of updates for the Lightroom and Photoshop ecosystem, Capture One has released the latest update for Capture One. Bringing the version number to 15.3 the latest update to Capture One 22 features several new features, a refined interface, and improved tethering.

Adobe has just announced its June photography updates, and this includes new versions of all versions of Lightroom as well as Photoshop and Camera Raw. In this article, I’m only going to be focusing on Lightroom Classic, which is now at version 11.4. This release actually has quite a few new and improved features for a point release, and I’ll outline the key new features in the post (and video) below.

A little while ago I wrote my first impressions of the Fuji X-E4, but having been using the camera for a little while now, I wanted to follow up with some more observations. I often find that a problem with camera review is that they are written after only a short time with a camera, and often miss out on things that come to light later. So, that’s the purpose of this review. It’s not to slam the camera or say it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s to highlight some things, both good and bad, that I’ve discovered while using it, so that if you’re considering purchasing one, you can be fully informed.