A good while ago now, I posted some photos of a dramatic seascape that I had taken of Dublin bay in the aftermath of a storm. A few people had asked me how I created the dramatic black and white look, and so I thought it would make a good video. I had used a combination of Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex for the processing and in the video I walk you through the process.

Today, DXO announced the release of the latest version of Pure RAW, the company’s RAW pre-processing software. Version 4 adds some welcome new features including a new version of Deep Prime, DXO’s noise reduction and demosaicing technology, improved lens softness correction, and new workflow improvements. One of the most requested new features is that you now have the ability to control the amount of noise reduction through new advanced settings options.

I’ve been a Fujifilm shooter for quite some time now. The original X100 still sits on a shelf in my office, and I’ve had a total of 5 different Fujifilm cameras over the years. While the original X100 wasn’t my first Fuji camera, it was probably the one I used for the longest. Since then, there have been numerous iterations of this camera, each better than the previous one. I never really bothered upgrading the X100 because my other Fuji cameras pretty much did the same thing, but with the additional option of changing lenses. Now with its latest iteration, is it time to finally upgrade? And what does the X100VI release say about the rest of the Fuji Lineup?

When you import ProRAW files into Lightroom, it defaults to using the Apple ProRAW colour profile. The colours on this are…let’s just say, they’re not great. It makes it look like it would if you had just shot it normally and not used ProRAW. In particular, shadows seem pushed too much, and highlights have a weird yellow tone. No problem, just switch to one of the Adobe colour profiles, I hear you say. This is where the weirdness comes in. If you switch to the Adobe profile, it will be significantly under exposed.

I had this great plan to start the new year with a fresh blogging schedule, and a renewed energy. Of course that didn’t happen. It’s two weeks later and I’m only getting around to writing my “new year” post now. Like many a New Year’s resolutions, they crashed and burned on day two! But now that I have a moment, let me update you on a few things that have been happening, and some plans for the next little while.

Capture One has announced that the company is discontinuing the free tier of its software, Capture One express. The software will no longer be available to download after January 31st, 2024.

A little while ago I was going through some photos and I came across a cool shot I had taken in New York of a dog in front of a large window. Unfortunately it was ruined by the reflection of yours truly. Normally removing something like this would be quite time consuming, so I thought, why not try Generative Fill. Not only did it work, but it worked perfectly at removing the reflections and keeping the other detail. So I made a video to show you the process…

All this week, DXO is offering up to 50% off new sales and upgrades for DxO PhotoLab, DxO PureRAW, Nik Collection, DxO FilmPack, and DxO ViewPoint. DxO’s photo editing software applications will be available at the best prices of the year from Monday, November 20 to November 27 (Cyber Monday). Click through for more details

Two of the most impressive features added to Lightroom in recent years are the AI-based “Denoise” and “Super Resolution” features that live in the “Enhance” tool. Denoise has been something of a game-changer in particular. Unfortunately, though, you can’t use both of these functions on the same image. Or can you?

For the last few years, whenever I wrote about Capture One, I would invariably get a comment from someone about how poor the performance was in the software. Try as I might, I could not replicate the results, so the reason behind this perplexed me. To be honest, I had assumed it was some external factor causing the issue. Well, I owe my readers an apology on this because, after recently upgrading to a new computer, I too now have this problem, and it seems to be due to running the software on a 4k display.

DXO labs have released an update to Pure Raw that brings their RAW pre-processing software to version 3.7. The latest version includes improved integration with Lightroom to better integrate the software into a Lightroom workflow. 

In this video I show you how you can use the new lens blur feature in Lightroom Classic 13 to create a faux tilt shift miniature effect in Lightroom. This technique allows you to create the effect without any plug-ins or having to go to Photoshop.

In this video, I go back to basics and set out to enjoy the creative process of taking photos in order to overcome a bad case of creator block and imposter syndrome. I went for a Photo Walk by the grand canal in Dublin with my Trusty Fujifilm X-E4 and talked about how you sometimes need to take photos just for yourself and enjoy the process as a form of meditation.

Yesterday, as part of its Max event, Adobe released a new version of the Lightroom family. This includes Lightroom Desktop 7.0, the latest versions of Lightroom mobile and Lightroom Classic 13. In this post, We’ll have a look at some of the key features of Lightroom Classic 13.

DXO labs has today announced the release of the latest version of its Flagship Photo Processing software, DXO Phot Lab 7. This new version includes new colour calibration tools, LUT support, a new workflow for black and white images and some revisions to the way local adjustments work. Also announced today is a new version of DXO Film Pack, DXO’s film emulation software.