Software News

Photokina 2014 in Germany has been covered widely on the Internet already—including our own extensive reporting on the show on Shutterbug.com—so there’s no need for me to rehash the major announcements from the event, such as the latest full-frame cameras from Canon and Nikon and the like. My photo report here is aimed at sharing some wider ranging thoughts and perspectives on this important biennial show and what it told us about photography today and where it might be heading tomorrow.

Adobe just added several exciting new features to the beta version of Photoshop. The most significant is Firefly-powered Generative Fill, the ability to select any item in an image and replace it with a different object based on the prompt you type into a dialog box.

Online photo portfolio services are a dime a dozen these days, but the lads at the London, England-based Pixelrights think they can offer something their competitors don’t: copyright protection for your images. Yes, you read that right. Not only are Pixelrights’ portfolios designed to showcase your online images in a clean, attractive way, they also have several built-in security tools to prevent your photos from being stolen and re-used without attribution, permission, or payment.

Most of the software news for 2010 was featured in our March issue, but we have some quick updates to share.

Nik Software is best known for its Photoshop plug-ins. They have expanded beyond this with support for both Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom now in all of their products. One new addition worthy of mention is Viveza 2. If you’re not familiar with...

This is the third edition of Portrait Professional I have reviewed so I’ll focus this review on three areas of investigation in Version 11: what can it do, how quickly can it do it, and what’s new. I should note that I am reviewing the Studio 64 version that can handle Raw files and utilize 64-bit versions of Windows 7 or Vista. The Standard version works with JPEG files or 24-bit TIFF files; the Studio version can also work with Raw files but is limited to 48-bit color. The program can be used with Windows XP and up and also Intel Mac OS X 10.5 or later. It acts as both a stand-alone product and as a Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, and Aperture plug-in.

For over a decade, PortraitPro (formerly Portrait Professional) has been popular with photographers looking to retouch their own images in-house. The easy to use interface makes it easy to customize nearly every part of your edit, making it ideal for everything from high-fashion to family portraits. PortraitPro 18 brought AI to the table, making for a significantly faster and more accurate editing experience. The latest offering, PortraitPro 19, was released in mid-October. So what can users expect from this new version?