It’s only been a short time since Adobe released Lightroom 14.4, but the next iteration is already out. I’m actually a little late on this - as it didn’t get much fanfare when they launched it. While this is mostly an under-the-hood update, the release does have a couple of new features and one big fix for generative remove.

One of the mildly frustrating things about shooting film in 2025, apart from the cost, is getting your negatives scanned. Most labs will scan your film at the time of development, but the results are pretty terrible. They usually give you very low-resolution scans, with horrible noise reduction and sharpening turned up to eleven. These scans are mostly useless for anything except for previews. I have tried upscaling them and processing them in the past, to make them at least suitable for social media posts, but generally to no avail. Even using super resolution in Lightroom, the results aren’t great. Enter a new feature in the latest beta version of Photoshop.

The 14.4 update to Lightroom caused quite a degree of consternation with its changes to how the software handles Denoise, Raw details and Super resolution. While I prefer the new method of applying these tools, some people really preferred the old way of creating DNG files. One of the biggest complaints I received, which is totally valid, is that when batch processing Denoise with the new method, it no longer updates in the background. If you’re doing a lot of images, this can take over Lightroom for minutes or even hours. After a bit of trial and error, I have found a way to get this to work in the background. It’s not perfect, and it’s a bit of a hack, but it means you can process hundreds of images without it taking over Lightroom.

I know this may seem like a link bait headline, but in my opinion it’s actually true, but it’s not in the way you might think. I’m not talking about generative AI taking photographer’s jobs or anything like that. It’s the “AI everywhere no matter what” that’s making it harder and harder to get traffic to your website or portfolio. It’s also making content on tips and techniques obsolete. Ever since google started doing its (frequently wrong) AI summaries for search results, traffic to almost all sites has seen a steady decline. It’s not just something I noticed, it was actually on the news the other day.

I’ve been a bit remiss in posting over the past two weeks, and that’s because I’ve been preoccupied with a little side project. For the longest time now, I have not been happy with my website(s). My photography web presence is basically split into two parts. There’s this one, which is my “gear and news” blog and then my portfolio site, which also has my (mostly) gear free “ pure photography” blog. Ive hosted these on Squarespace for years now, but I’ve been increasingly frustrated by the way the sites work, and by Squarespace in general. Unfortunately moving platforms isn’t really a viable option as the sites, particularly this one, are too big to easily move. With that in mind, I’ve set about trying to update them within the confines of the current host.

Back at the end of April I was in London for a few days, so as always I took the opportunity to get a few photos and some video while I was there. I didn’t really go very far from our hotel in Southwark, pretty much staying to the south bank, but even here there is plenty to see just walking up and down the Thames. So Join me for a walk along the Thames in London taking in bridges, river traffic, and life by the water, capturing both video and stills with the Canon R6 Mark II.

DxO has announced the release of Nik Collection 8.1, an incremental update to its suite of photo editing plugins. The update brings performance improvements and new usability features. From now until July 27, 2025, customers who purchase Nik Collection 8.1, either as a new license or an upgrade, can choose a free copy of either DxO PhotoLab 8 Essential Edition or DxO ViewPoint 5.

I know I’ve been covering the topic of the changes Adobe made to the old “enhance” workflow a lot lately, but there seems to be quite a bit of questions and confusion around the topic. When I first made a video about it, I knew some people would have an issue with the way Lightroom now works, but I wasn’t really expecting such a backlash. On hindsight, I probably should have, but anyway. As some people really still want to be able to batch process Denoise or Raw Details in their images to a DNG, there are really only two solutions that I can think of.

I’ve been exploring the challenges of processing Fujifilm X-Trans files ever since the original X-Pro 1, sharing tips, sharpening methods, and even an eBook along the way. Historically, Lightroom struggled with these unique raw files, demanding extra workarounds. But with Adobe’s latest update, that’s finally changed. Processing Fujifilm files is now straightforward, and it mostly comes down to one simple checkbox.

The recent release of Lightroom Classic 14.4 brought with it a major change to how denoise, raw details and super resolution work, and with that, some confusion. One of the most recurring questions I received since publishing a video on the new version last week was “how do you batch process Denoise in the new version?”. It’s pretty straightforward, and there’s actually several ways of doing it.

Adobe has released a new update to Lightroom Classic and the rest of the Lightroom and Photoshop family. In Lightroom Classic, there are a couple of significant changes in this release, including a change to how “Enhance” works and some new functions in the remove tool.

A year and a half ago, I wrote a piece about the Fujifilm X100VI and how it was (at the time) the last of the rangefinder style cameras. When I wrote that piece, Fuji had discontinued the XE-4 and the X-Pro3, and there was no immediate sign of replacements. I had speculated that Fuji had ended these lines as the X-T Series and X100 lines were more popular. As an X-E4 owner, I was saddened but resigned to the fact. But luckily, I was wrong and today, Fujifilm announced the new X-E5.

I’ve been busy with travel and some other things, so I don’t really have any good tips or tutorials, so I thought I would do a good old-fashioned blog update. Remember when those were a thing? Anyway, here is a random collection of things I’ve been up to (photographically speaking) and ongoing projects and thoughts.

A while ago, I shared a video on YouTube on how to do SuperResolution and Denoise on the same image using Lightroom and Photoshop. The trick was to do Denoise first, then send the image to Photoshop, save it and send it back, and then you would be able to do SuperResolution. Unfortunately, in a recent update, Adobe has broken this workflow. I’ve been working on finding another workaround for this, and after a bit of experimentation, I think I’ve found the solution.

Fujifilm has just released its long rumoured, and much teased “half” digital camera, and it has, to put it mildly, decided opinions. The camera, which looks like a tiny X100 series, is an homage to half frame film cameras of old, with a 1.0 type sensor mounted vertically and a vertical screen on the back. Fuji has also designed the software of the camera to mimic film as much as possible, even including a film mode. When activated, this mode doesn’t let you see what you’re capturing it until you reach the end of the roll and “develop” it in the companion camera app. It’s either a nice nod to nostalgia or a gimmick, depending on who you ask. But the one thing Fuji really, really wants you to know is that this camera is “Fun”.

When PureRAW 5 was announced a couple of weeks ago, I had only briefly tried it and the initial release had an annoying bug in it, so I wasn’t able to test it properly. However, since that was quickly fixed, I have been trying it out properly to judge how much of an improvement it is over previous iterations. In particular, I have been looking at two main areas. Firstly, how good is the new X-Trans specific mode and secondly, does Deep Prime 3 address some of the issues of the previous version on non X-Trans images. 

Last week Capture One (the company) held an event which they had been hyping up for a few weeks to launch the latest version of Capture One (the software) as well as giving an update on the company’s direction. At least that’s how they billed it. They had been selling it pretty hard in the emails that they had been sending out to customers, but in the end, the reality didn’t match the hype. But there was one important fix that wasn’t mentioned in the event…

DxO has released Nik Collection 8, bringing new Photoshop masking features, a redesigned plugin panel, and updates to Silver Efex and Color Efex. It’s an update that adds more flexibility for those using the suite within Photoshop. I’ve gone through the key new features and pricing details in this post.