Software

Apple has acquired MotionVFX, makers of plugins for Premere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro.

Adobe's longtime CEO, Shantanu Narayen, announced this week that he is stepping down after 18 years as CEO and nearly 30 years at the company. If you ask shareholders, Narayen was, for a long time, among the very best in the biz. If you ask Adobe's core customers, the artists who were once indispensable to the company's success, it's a different story.

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Adobe back in June 2024, alleging that the company hid fees and made it excessively challenging for its customers to cancel subscriptions. Adobe and the DOJ settled the lawsuit today, and Adobe will pay the DOJ $75 million and provide affected customers with $75 million worth of free services. Adobe maintains it did nothing wrong.

Panasonic has released a new round of firmware updates for several cameras, lenses, and companion apps in its Lumix S Series ecosystem. The updates introduce new accessory support, expanded lens customization options, and improvements to the company’s mobile workflow apps.

Canva has announced Magic Layers, a new artificial intelligence feature that transforms flat images into fully editable, layered designs within the Canva editor.

Adobe has brought its promised agentic AI assistant to Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat.

Kino, an iPhone video camera app created by Lux, the same people who make the iPhone photo camera app Halide, received a massive update today that adds Apple Log 2 support.

DxO has released PureRAW, characterizing the software as a foundational step in a photography workflow rather than just another editing tool. PureRAW’s primary focus doesn’t change with this launch, which is to work with RAW files before handing them off to other apps for more elaborate touches, be it in DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom, or Photoshop.

BorderTool Pro is a new macOS utility developed by Michael Damböck, a Fujifilm X Photographer, to streamline some of the more repetitive steps in a photographer’s workflow: adding borders, mats, and presentation-ready finishing touches to exported images. Built as a native menu-bar application, BorderTool Pro focuses on speed, batch processing, and preserving file integrity without requiring a full-fledged image editor.

As photographers know all too well, image libraries can be a lot to keep track of. Between internal storage and external drives, sometimes many of them, finding exactly the right photo or folder can be very frustrating. Photographer and cinematographer Paul Kothe agrees, so he built an app to solve the problem once and for all.


VSCO has announced a new professional photo delivery app, VSCO Galleries, which is launching next week during WPPI in Las Vegas. The new app has been built from the ground up for photographers who want to deliver photos to clients in a clean, straightforward, and professional way. VSCO Galleries aims to help photographers make a strong first impression when delivering photos to their clients.

Adobe today added new camera and lens support to Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic. Newly supported cameras include the OM System OM-3 Astro and the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, while new lens support includes the latest lenses from Canon, Leica, and more.

Back in late 2022, PetaPixel wrote about photographer Tom Schucker's Pieca camera, a 3D-printed Raspberry Pi-powered camera with a Leica M-mount. Schucker is back with yet another awesome photography creation, but this time it's a photo editing app built around advanced film simulation effects.

Some of VSCO's beloved Adobe Lightroom presets have returned nearly seven years after they were discontinued, albeit only for a limited time and only for VSCO Pro subscribers.

Photographer Zachary Hou shoots film, so he decided to build an iPhone app to help him out. The new app, FilmMeter, combines multiple useful features into a single, entirely free application, and it looks as pretty as it is useful.

Hasselblad has released version 4.0.0 of its Phocus Mobile 2 app, introducing a new Mask feature that expands local editing capabilities on iPhone and iPad for Hasselblad users.

One year ago, Unpro Camera launched on iPhone, promising extremely natural, unprocessed-looking mobile photos. In the year since, the app has received numerous updates, including HDR support, Bayer RAW capture, improved performance, filters, an all-new UI, and, most recently, RAW + capture, a new mode that the developer believes is unique to Unpro Camera.

Lux, the makers of popular iPhone camera app Halide, have launched a public preview of Halide Mark III. While Lux is offering just a first look at Halide Mark III right now, it has taken the wraps off a huge new feature: Looks.

Adobe has released Photoshop 27.2, introducing new tools for visual artists, including new adjustment layers designed for photographers and improvements to Adobe Firefly features and performance inside Photoshop.

The Nikon ZR is receiving its first firmware update (version 1.10), which significantly increases the maximum record time to six hours, makes using it in multi-camera setups better, improves exposure monitoring, and more.

Website builder Wix has announced a new AI-powered website builder, Wix Harmony, that promises to combine human creativity and AI tools to "reinvent website creation."

The latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro has arrived, boasting a bevy of new AI-powered features, though it's no longer called Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere 26, sans the "Pro" in the name, is fundamentally still the same nonlinear video editing (NLE) app, albeit with a bunch of new tools.

We can quickly acquire tens of thousands of photos. Therefore, managing them effectively is essential. Equally, we are becoming more demanding of our development and editing software. Recently, the most effective way of managing our workflow has changed dramatically, making our lives easier.

Software company Cyme released Peakto 2.6 today, the latest version of its AI-powered photo and visual media management tool for macOS.

Yesterday, Apple revealed its new Creator Studio which bundles several of its apps together into one ecosystem that is akin to Adobe's Creative Cloud. Some of those bundled apps were part of previous subscriptions, though, and Apple says those subscribers can keep those plans if they want to.

DxO Labs has released 326 new modules for its photo editing applications, including support for the latest gear from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Leica, and more. The additions bring the total number of camera and lens combinations supported in DxO's software to over 110,000.

Until January 12, ON1 is giving away its Effects 2025 standalone software and plugin for free, with no strings attached. The company says the goal is to give photographers a chance to try the software firsthand without having to provide payment information or sign up for a long-term commitment.

Elevate.io, the browser-based collaborative video editor developed by Blackbird, has partnered with Epidemic Sound to bring Epidemic Sound's music catalog to Elevate.io’s editing environment.


VSCO has added an oft-requested feature to its VSCO Capture iPhone camera app launched in June: video recording. The new video recording capabilities work with the app's 50+ photo presets and arrive alongside a new film grain function.

DJI has released a significant firmware update for the Osmo Action 6 action camera, bringing 8K video recording and a suite of workflow and creative enhancements.

Every professional photographer understands the frustration of a complex mask. When you’re dealing with fine hair against a busy background, the sheer fabric of a wedding dress, or even highly detailed product shots, traditional selection tools quickly become a time-sinking ordeal. Hours spent painstakingly refining edges in post-production translate directly into lost studio time and increased labor costs. It’s a tedious, manual bottleneck that hinders the creative flow.

Canon's promised slate of massive firmware updates for its EOS Cinema cameras arrived this week, bringing things like open-gate recording to the Canon EOS C400 and improved operability to the C80. The Canon EOS R5 C, C400, C80, and C70 all received firmware updates this week.

Blackmagic Camera 10.0 has arrived, bringing new features and improved performance to numerous Blackmagic Design camera models, including the Pyxis 12K, Pyxis 6K, and Ursa Broadcast G2.

Adobe launched Firefly Video back in February to criticism. In the months since, the company has continued to update its platform and today unveiled new AI video editing features and partner AI models inside Firefly.

ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac 26 has launched, offering a fully local, pay-once post-processing and digital asset management (DAM) tool with integrated AI capabilities, entering a space long dominated by subscription-based software. The release positions the software as an alternative for photographers seeking a different approach to organizing and editing their images.

Honcho, the Singapore-based real-time photo delivery platform, has reached an impressive milestone: more than 10 million photos delivered through its platform. The achievement underscores a broader shift in how event photography is captured, delivered, and experienced, as audiences increasingly expect instant access to visual content.

Leica Camera AG has announced a new strategic partnership with leading photography software company, Capture One. The partnership is focused on delivering "the most powerful and reliable tethered shooting experience and editing tools for Leica photographers," whether they are professionals in the studio or creators on the go.

Editing app Darkroom has launched version 7, marking one of the most extensive technical overhauls in its 10-year history. At its core is a fully rebuilt rendering engine designed to deliver faster performance, smoother navigation, and a more reliable editing environment across photos and video for iOS and iPadOS.

When the Sony ZV-E10 II launched in July 2024, it did so with the promise of significant improvements over its predecessor and high-level content creation ambitions. One of the biggest improvements was finally delivering 4Kp60 video, something the original ZV-E10, puzzlingly, could not. Now, with a free upgrade released today, the ZV-E10 II can do one better: 4Kp120 recording.

Adobe has brought tools from Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Acrobat into OpenAI's widely used conversational AI platform, ChatGPT. Adobe's new apps for ChatGPT promise to combine ChatGPT's straightforward conversational AI with Adobe's "industry-leading" creative tools. Adobe says it is now even easier for everyone to edit photos and transform documents, all without leaving ChatGPT.

Google Photos may have "photos" in its name, but recent and upcoming updates focus on powerful new video editing tools. Leading the charge is a new feature to let users create an automated highlight reel of their video clips and photos in just a few clicks.

Sony has paused distribution of its recently released a7 IV firmware update, version 6.00, after confirming that the software can cause significant instability on some cameras.

Blackmagic Design has released DaVinci Resolve 20.3 today, bringing a wealth of new features and improvements to the popular video editing software.

Sony has issued significant new firmware updates for two of its most widely used full-frame mirrorless cameras, bringing the a7R V to Version 4.00 and the a7 IV to Version 6.00. The updates expand focus control options, add new video workflow tools, and improve FTP transfer handling, enhancements that align both models more closely with the capabilities of Sony’s newer Alpha bodies.