DxO recently announced that it has acquired the Nik Collection suite of popular photo tools after Google abandoned development in May. The Collection is still available as a free download and can be run as standalone programs independent of Photoshop and Lightroom. Here’s how.
Google has created a trio of apps that utilize experimental technology in a bid to push forward the possibilities of smartphone photography and videography. The apps — Storyboard, Selfissmo!, and Scrubbies — use techniques like smart object recognition and person segmentation algorithms similar to Portrait Mode to enable creative editing of images and video.
Dual cameras have become ubiquitous in the smartphone world, and with them has emerged a new technique for simulating a shallow depth of field -- the feature commonly called ‘Portrait Mode’. This 10-minute video from Marques Brownlee explains how it works, and it also pits Portrait Mode on an iPhone X, Note 8, and Pixel 2 against the $8,000 medium format camera Hasselblad X1D.
In his signature story-telling style, photographer Sean Tucker sits us down in this video for a 10-minute talk about handling creative envy and jealousy as a photographer or videographer. As he says, comparing yourself to other creatives can stall your career and breed resentment, and it’s important to know how to identify and check these thoughts.
The RevolCam is a new unified smartphone attachment that adds wide angle, macro, and fisheye lenses to the camera along with an adjustable and detachable LED light and mirror.
Fresh from telling us to stop asking about camera settings, Tony Northrup is back with a 17-minute video going in depth on the general camera settings he uses for specific situations, imparting knowledge along with over 50 sample pictures.
The Clone Stamp tool is a powerful option in Photoshop for removing or duplicating parts of an image. There are some tricks and shortcuts that will increase your productivity with the tool, and this 5-minute video from Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect demonstrates how you can use them.
To the untrained eye, the difference between the vibrance and saturation sliders is not immediately obvious. Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel explains the subtle difference between these two useful tools in this 5-minute video.
Conventional synthetic camera straps may be either comfortable or attractive, but it can be difficult to find one that's both. Enter KIKI. Photographer Kishor Krishnamoorthi is producing a line of designer camera straps that are crafted in India from a breathable and soft, yet strong, cotton fabric.
Understanding basic camera settings is important so that you know how to react in different conditions such as varying light, moving subjects, or to achieve maximum depth-of-field. In this 10-minute video, Adam Karnacz from First Man Photography discusses his techniques for working his camera while doing landscape photography.
In this beautiful short film by filmmaker Vincent Urban, photographer Chris Burkard tells the story of how after growing weary of surf photography in crowded cities he sought solitude, adventure, and beauty in remote places. He found it in Norway’s Lofoten Islands.
Changing the color of an object using Photoshop is a typical use case for the software, and there are many ways to do it. This 20-minute video from Nathaniel Dodson of tutvid that examines 5 separate ways to re-color or add color to objects.
Photographer Tony Northrup wants you to stop asking photographers about their camera settings. In this 7-minute video, he explains why the camera settings that were used for an image are relatively unimportant and a distraction from the real work that goes into making a shot.
Photoshop is such a hugely featured application that much of its feature set can be overlooked by even seasoned veterans. This 25-minute video tutorial from photographer Jake Hicks explores some of the less intuitive features that Photoshop offers.
Obeying local law when flying your drone is paramount, but those laws vary from country to country – with some not allowing drones in at all. To help with planning, blogger and frequent traveler Anil Polat has created a map of the world with the laws of each country.
Ask any photographer their least-favorite thing about Adobe Lightroom, and they will most likely tell you it’s the application’s speed. There are a few tricks to help optimize the responsiveness of Lightroom, and this minute-long Lightroom coffee break video focuses on generating 1:1 previews.
Auto-stacking in Lightroom can quickly organize a huge set of images in to more manageable ‘stacks’, which are small groups of images grouped according to their capture time. This 6-minute video from photographer Anthony Morganti shows how you can use the feature to speed up your workflow.
When it comes to composition “rules”, it’s important to understand the concepts so that you have them in the back of your mind while shooting. You’re not going to jail if you break them, but you will likely end up with a better image if you follow them! This 6-minute video from photographer Evan Ranft runs through 4 common composition mistakes that photographers make, and how to avoid them.
Photographer Brendan van Son recorded this 9-minute video in which he shares his frustration with the current landscape of photography in the social media era. Is the influx of new photographers ruining the joy of photography by crowding locations and behaving impolitely towards others?
The biggest misconception with macro lenses is in the name, photographer Peter McKinnon says. In this 3-minute video, he explains why a macro lens should be in every photographer’s kit bag.
The LAB color space is particularly useful for boosting colors and definition in images due to the way it handles colors when compared to RGB and CMYK. Rather than describing how colors should appear on a screen or in print, LAB is designed to approximate human vision. Colin Smith of photoshopCAFE shows in this video how this color space can be utilized in Photoshop to easily improve your images.
Joey L. has released a follow-up documentary to his 2015 film ”Guerrilla Fighters of Kurdistan”, again finding himself embedded with Kurdish guerrilla organisations on the frontlines against ISIS. The new documentary is titled ”Born From Urgency”, and is available online for free.
The new Nikon D850 is a beast of a camera by pretty much all accounts, but how does it stack up against other rival cameras and the D810 it replaces? In this image quality comparison by Tony Northrup, see whether the new camera is really a full-stop improvement over the D810 as Nikon claims.
William Eggleston is well known for his work in the early 1970s as a pioneer who helped legitimize color photography's place in the art world. The 78-year-old artist has revealed that he is releasing his first music album -- one composed of improvised symphonic tracks recorded on a Korg synthesizer.
Photographing a human subject successfully has a lot to do with making a connection, making sure your model is feeling comfortable, and being respectful. In this 10-minute video, photographer Manny Ortiz teams up with his wife Diana (who is a model herself) to talk about the do’s and don’ts of working with models.
Need to take portraits and don’t have access to a lighting kit? No worries – this 4-minute video from Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens will show you how you can turn a bathroom – or any room for that matter – into a softbox to create beautiful soft light.
Focus stacking is a technique typically used in macro shots to achieve a large depth of field. It’s a relatively simple concept: take many images focused at slightly different distances and combine the sharp portions to a single image in post. This 6-minute video from landscape photographer Mark Denney will show you how to utilise the technique in landscape photography.
Mastery of the pen tool enables complex vector shapes and selections that can be used for masking or extracting elements from an image. There is a bit of a learning curve to the tool, but this 30-minute video from Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect will teach you everything from the fundamentals to real-world use.
This short 2-minute video from photographer Svitlana Vronska demonstrates some clever lighting tricks you can use to add some creative flair to your images with an otherwise uninteresting backdrop.
Are you planning an outdoor landscape photo adventure? This video from landscape photographer Thomas Heaton will give you some ideas on how to optimize your pack. It's a 12-minute look through the gear he’s settled on for his camping photo trips.