Image Processing

Adobe continues to release incremental improvements to its various versions of Lightroom. Those of us who prefer the Classic version will be happy to see improved performance. The ability to quickly create collections from folders will also make managing collections across mobile devices easier. “New CC” gets some bug fixes, and the Android version adds Google Assistant integration, which should prove interesting, as well as perspective correction. Adobe’s complete list of updates to Lightroom and XD:

I get asked a lot about how I backup my images (and videos, now that I’m shooting more of them). So I finally wrote it down, along with alternatives that might better suit you, as your circumstances are likely to differ from mine in some way. It’s all online now in this article I wrote for ExtremeTech.com. The essential element to whatever system you choose is to make sure it protects you against all, or at least most, of the issues that can arise. That includes disk “bit rot,” disk failure, controller or computer failure, human error, buggy backup software, and ultimately even major disasters that affect everything on premises.

One of the sadder developments for serious photographers was the purchase of Nik Software by Google. It was done so that Google could leverage Nik’s Snapseed technology into its Photo offering. However, the excellent Nik tools were orphaned in the process. Now that has finally changed. DxO Labs, makers of OpticsPro, FilmPack, and ViewPoint, has acquired the entire Nik Collection. This will result in at least three pieces of good news for Nik fans:

Until now, HDR capture on smartphones has been an under-the-covers merging of several frames in a fairly simple way by the phone itself. Now, Lightroom Mobile offers pro-grade HDR for supported phones. The app’s camera mode will analyze the scene, decide on the needed bracketing, capture the images in RAW mode, and then combine and tonemap them into a 32-bit floating-point DNG RAW file – allowing full HDR editing. This is pretty amazing when you consider that typically a similar workflow involves bracketing on a high-end camera, and the use of specialized software applications to do the merge and tone mapping. It works on the Apple iPhone 6s and later, Samsung Galaxy 7 and 7 edge, and Google’s Pixel family of phones. For users of other phones, there are still some goodies packed into the new version of Lightroom mobile:

For years its been known that working standing up – at least part of the time – can be good for your back. As photographers, most of us work standing up quite a bit. But unlike when shooting film and spending nights in the darkroom, many of us spend long days on the computer, and it is all too easy to not move around or stand up enough. There are a number of very nice motorized desks on the market, but they have typically cost as much as your DSLR. Not everyone can, or wants to, afford that. So it is with great interest that we’ve been watching the rollout of Autonomous.ai’s new SmartDesk 2. The company has been selling SmartDesks for a couple years, but version 2 has some significant changes – including better-built motors and controls. We’ve been testing the dual-motor Business Edition.

As photographers, we’re all familiar with needing to pull the most detail we can out of an image. Now, Google’s Brain team has come up with a way not just to extract detail, but to add it based on comparing the blurry version with a reference library of potentially-similar images. Since they’ve trained the system with a library of popular media stars, you might like the results even more than the original. Of course, it can’t really be called a photograph when it’s finished. More like an impressionist painting. You can read more about how it works in this article I wrote for ExtremeTech.

For photographers looking for an alternative to Photoshop, that want all the power it provides and aren’t satisfied with the more limited processing capabilities of Adobe Lightroom or DxO OpticsPro, there haven’t been too many alternatives. The best options to date have been Adobe Photoshop Elements, Gimp, or perhaps Cyberlink’s PhotoDirector. Now though, Affinity has dramatically improved the capabilities of its Photo product and has also made it available on both Mac and Windows. For the value price of $40, you can have a product that does almost all of what Photoshop does, and many things it doesn’t. I’ve taken it for a spin and enjoyed using it. You can read my full review of Affinity Photo on Extremetech.com.