Software How To

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Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Aug 05, 2016  |  0 comments

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a budget-friendly image editing package that’s designed for casual users and amateurs. Under the hood, however, there are dozens of advanced features and hidden capabilities that are accessible via plug-ins. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could unlock, say, 130 of those features with one add-on product that costs less than fifty bucks? Then here’s good news: you can. 

Ron Leach  |  Jul 25, 2016  |  0 comments

If you’re new to Lightroom, or just need some help streamlining your workflow, fear not: After watching this six-minute video tutorial you’ll feel much more confidant when editing your images.

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Jun 16, 2016  |  0 comments

The folks who brought you PortraitPro, the software that turns average looking men and women into superstars (or as John Oliver might say, “Turns ones into tens faster than a South American counterfeiter”) now brings you LandscapePro, a similar application you should think of as “cosmetic surgery for Mother Nature.” But is this a case of “liking what you get,” or “getting exactly what you like?” That, my friends, is the $59 question

George Schaub  |  Jun 07, 2016  |  1 comments

Digital Ice and similar dust and scratch cleanup tools for scanning color negative and non-Kodachrome slides was a boon for those looking to archive/digitize their film files. This software/hardware solution worked with numerous scanners by isolating the offending dust and scratches on a separate infrared channel that it then dumped when the final scan was made.

Seth Shostak  |  May 31, 2016  |  0 comments

Panoramas are easy to wish for, but, until recently, were not easy to get. To shoot high-quality panos often required special cameras that could rotate their lens while simultaneously advancing an aperture slit across a curved film plane.

Scott Kelby  |  Apr 26, 2016  |  0 comments

Scott Kelby is a photographer, Photoshop Guy, award-winning author of more than 50 books, and CEO of KelbyOne, an online education community dedicated to helping photographers take the kinds of images they’ve always dreamed of.

Howard Millard  |  Apr 15, 2016  |  0 comments

HDR, as most photographers know, stands for High Dynamic Range, allowing you to capture a wider range of highlight and shadow detail than you could in a single frame. You create an HDR image by shooting several identically framed shots of the same scene at different exposures, often with three brackets such as -2, 0, and +2 EV. The newest kid on the HDR block is Aurora HDR Pro from Macphun, currently for Mac only, but with a Windows version in the works.

Steve Bedell  |  Mar 11, 2016  |  0 comments

The first thing I thought when I saw this new update to PortraitPro was “What happened to Versions 13 and 14? I’m still on Version 12 and never saw anything about any other updates.” That’s because there aren’t any. Maybe Anthropics Software is superstitious about the number 13 and just decided to skip 14 as well. Who knows! We’re on to PortraitPro 15 now.

Jon Canfield  |  Feb 19, 2016  |  0 comments

There are times when a global adjustment to color, whether it’s a saturation change or a modification to the hue of the image, isn’t appropriate. You may just need to boost the color in the sky or make a small change in the color of some other element in the photo. While you can do this type of adjustment with Photoshop through the use of adjustment layers and masking, that can be quite a bit of work and obviously it requires Photoshop, or something similar, and not everyone is willing to invest in or learn another piece of software.

Dan Havlik  |  Feb 08, 2016  |  0 comments

There are some Photoshop tutorial videos out there that can be extremely helpful and there are some that can be extremely annoying. The humorous short clip below from Sugar Zaza shows precisely why some of them can drive us completely batty.

Joe Farace  |  Jan 25, 2016  |  0 comments

One of the easiest ways to capture that classic black and white look when shooting an IR- converted SLR is to shoot in Monochrome mode. If your camera doesn’t offer that option, you’ll have to convert the image into black and white after the fact. That may be the better of the 2 choices because that approach will give you more control over how the final image looks.

Scott Kelby  |  Nov 24, 2015  |  1 comments

Hi everybody! I’m very excited to be launching a new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. OK, let’s jump right to it.

Joe Farace  |  Nov 06, 2015  |  0 comments

There’s more to black-and-white photography than simply a lack of color. Maybe we wouldn’t feel this way if the first photographs were made in color but that didn’t happen and I grew up admiring the works of W. Eugene Smith and other photojournalists who photographed people at work, play, or being themselves in glorious black and white.

George Schaub  |  Oct 26, 2015  |  0 comments

Software programs for imaging can be simple or complex. The complex ones offer a steep learning curve and allow you to refine images to your heart’s content. Simple programs, although complex under the hood, allow you to make quick choices to create a wide variety of looks. And while they can be used for “instant” art, they also allow for nuances that multiply your options a thousand fold, using sliders that modify each look from the menu. One such “simple” program is Alien Skin’s Snap Art 3 (www.alienskin.com, $199 or $99 for an upgrade from previous versions). This is a plug-in and a standalone program, which means it works within the architecture of Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom and Elements as well as other image processing programs so you can create Layers from the work that can be further refined (leading to many more options) or within Snap Art 3 alone.

Joe Farace  |  Sep 28, 2015  |  0 comments
Using filters to directly capture infrared images has never been easier, but not all digital cameras have this ability and some have only a limited capability. If your camera doesn’t work with IR filters and your budget doesn’t permit converting your SLR for infrared-only capture, maybe it’s time to consider converting some of your existing RGB images into an IR “look” using emulation software.

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