In this video I show you a handy workflow tip to make it easier to reset your adjustments in Lightroom without reseting your Crop or Geometry edits.

In early January we took a road trip to capture sunrise and sunset in the southeast of Ireland, starting with the world's oldest working Lighthouse: Hook Lighthouse, Co. Wexford, followed by a spectacular sunrise over the estuary of the river Slaney. Finally, we visited a Co. Wexford Beach made famous for being used in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”.

I’ve just released my latest Lightroom quick tip video, and it’s a video version of a recent blog post I shared a little while ago, about the oft forgotten about global colour correction tool.

In early January my wife and I decided to get away for a few days to relax before the new work year started. We headed to a nice relaxing retreat in Co. Wexford, and while the trip was mostly for a holiday, of course we snuck in some photography time! The last time we were in Wexford we had visited the beautiful and famous Hook Lighthouse in the south of the county, but we had done so at noon during the summer, so the light was a bit flat. This time we aimed to visit it at sunset, to capture it in better light. So we set off on the drive down the peninsula towards hook head and its namesake lighthouse. We were not disappointed.

As we commence the new year, I am undertaking a virtual organisational process. As part of this endeavour, I am harmonising the pricing of my Lightroom Presets and Capture One styles on my Gumroad Store. Effective immediately, all products will be priced at a new, lower base price of €10.

In my latest YouTube tutorial, I demonstrate how to use the mask tool to create a custom vignette effect behind your subject, adding subtle drama to the background while preserving the subject's integrity. The video also shows you how to create a time-saving smart preset for future edits.

On rare occasions, you might encounter the need to update an AI mask in Lightroom, but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a direct way to do so. For instance, if you use DXO Pure Raw and apply an AI mask to an image, since Pure Raw employs its own distortion correction algorithm, the mask may become misaligned when the file is returned to Lightroom. This issue can occur with any software that manipulates the raw file while preserving edits.

In this video, I’ll show you a quick trick to fix perspective distortion in Lightroom that the Auto function in the upright tool can’t handle. Sometimes, especially when you have objects near the edge of the screen, especially if they’re circular, even with the upright tool, you can still get a bit of a distortion. But with this trick, you’ll be able to get rid of it!

As many of my long-term followers have probably noted, I haven’t posted nearly as much in this past year as I have previously. While my blogging has been tapering off for a while, 2024 was undoubtedly my least productive. In this post, I wanted to touch on that a little bit as well as cover some of the more positive things from the past year too. I also wanted to share some photos and other tales that I never got to share in 2024. This will probably be a long post, so buckle up, or maybe get some coffee!

As Christmas is almost here, and the year comes to an end, I just wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who’s been following along, reading my posts this year. Whether you’ve been a loyal reader for years or just recently discovered this blog, your support means the world to me.

DXO has announced its latest round of Optics Modules for use across the DXO line of software including PureRaw and PhotoLab. This month’s release brings 957 new lens and camera combinations, with the total combinations now supported by DXO software 99,163!

Much of the photography content online is created by photographers for other photographers, which works well for building communities but limits its broader appeal. If you want your work to reach a wider audience, it’s worth rethinking who your content is really for.

Ever since it was announced that Apple was buying Pixelmator, I’ve been kind of obsessed with PhotoMator, the company’s Lightroom competitor. I actually had the software on my iPad for a long time but I never really used it that much. However, since the acquisition was announced I’ve been trying it more and more on my Mac, and I have to say it’s a really interesting application. It has some really nice features and its incredibly fast and responsive. Unfortunately, it is lacking some keys features which currently hold it back. Some of these you can work around but others are more problematic. But in my opinion it really has potential. In this post I’ll look at what you can do now to get around the shortcomings, and what Apple really needs to do to make the software more competitive.

Here’s a very quick Lightroom tip for you. I was recently processing some Autumn images, and as I was doing some colour grading to enhance the glow of the Autumn/Winter light it occurred to me that there was a feature that people may have missed. That tool is the global Colour Grading tool.

DxO has announced its Black Friday discounts for 2024, offering up to 50% off its range of photo editing software. The deals run from November 22 through December 2, 2024, and apply to both new purchases and upgrades across all major products. Here’s a summary of the available discounts:

In case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s been a bit of a sea change in the world of social media platforms recently. Now, at first, you may think, what has this to do with photography? Well, as many artists and photographers use social media to promote their content, I wanted to take a quick look at the changing order of things, and keep you up to date on where I’m posting.

I’m a little late with this one, but in case you missed it, Apple has bought the popular Mac and iPadOS photography app, Pixelmator. Or more to the point, they bought the company that makes Pixelmator. This could be a big deal, depending on what Apple ends up doing with the company and its software. It immediately gives Apple a missing piece of its professional apps puzzle that it’s been lacking ever since the company killed Aperture: a more pro level photo application.

Well, almost.

Long-time readers of the blog will know that I have long been a proponent of Capture One, but lately, I haven’t talked about it much. That’s because, to be honest, I haven’t been using it that much lately. This is due to numerous reasons, which I’ll get into in a later post, but it’s mainly due to the performance issues on 4k displays, and the crazy licence changes from a while ago. That said, I still keep an eye on development and try any new versions when they come out. Recently, Capture One released version 16.5, and it has a few new features, one of which stands out above all others. That feature is the new “Match Look” tool.