Verdict: 5 stars Silver Efex Pro 3 is still the best black and white plug-in there is. It creates rich, dense black and white images that echo classic analog films and darkroom techniques in the digital age.
Featured posts
Welcome to the Life after Photoshop archive of 'Featured' posts. These are favourite articles or tutorials that appear in the carousel at the top of the home page.
Nik Collection 6 Control Lines: what they are, how they work
These Control Lines can already be found in DxO PhotoLab 6, but they are new to the Nik Collection 6. Control Lines are a special kind of selective masking tool. They work like a linear gradient tool, but with an eyedropper which can be moved around to select the tones or areas you want the mask to be applied to.
DxO Nik Collection 6 announced: local adjustments improved, new features
There are no new plug-ins in the Nik Collection 6 this time around, but significant feature additions to some and improved local adjustment tools across the board.
DxO PureRAW 3 review
Rating: 4.5 stars PureRAW 3 only does one job, but it does it extremely well. It takes your RAW files and applies DxO’s own lens corrections and, optionally, its DeepPRIME noise reduction process to produce images which are sharper, smoother and straighter. It can make average cameras and lenses look twice as good and extends your camera’s usable ISO range by up to 2.5 stops. These aren’t empty claims – this is what it does.
ON1 launches ON1 Sky Swap AI as a standalone and plug-in for $29.99
Sky Swap AI is one of the big features in ON1 Photo RAW 2023, but ON1 has now split it out to also offer it as a standalone program and plug-in. You can open ON1 Sky Swap AI as an app, or launch it from Capture One, Affinity Photo, Corel Paintshop Pro, Apple Photos, Photoshop or Lightroom Classic.
DxO PhotoLab vs Lightroom Classic – using PhotoLab for cataloguing
That’s an interesting question. PhotoLab 6 offers better RAW processing and noise reduction than Lightroom and more extensive local adjustment tools, but with the improvements to the PhotoLibrary in PhotoLab 6, can it also do the same job as an image cataloguing tool?
Swapping from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom: 6 things you need to know!
The web version of Adobe Lightroom (now just called ‘Lightroom’ by Adobe), is a very compelling tool for photographers who want to view, edit and share their images across a range of different devices, and to have all their images available everywhere. But before you take the plunge and swap to Adobe’s cloud-based version of Lightroom, there are six things you need to be aware of to avoid nasty surprises.
New ON1 Photo RAW 2023.1 healing, copying and moving tools rated
With the ON1 Photo RAW 2023.1 update, the Healing Brush tool gets a major upgrade. You could already move the source area around to find the best match, but now you can transform the repair to flip it, scale it up or down or rotate it to better match the area you’re repairing.
Why SHOULDN’T you edit JPEGs?
For many the answer will be obvious. If you want to do any serious editing later, then shooting RAW is a must, right? Normally I’d say yes, but here’s an instance where I decided to work from the JPEG rather than a RAW file, and I’ll explain why.
ON1 Photo RAW 2023.1 brings new A and B sky replacement models
The ON1 Photo RAW 2023.1 update is free to existing users and might just convince users of older versions that it’s time to upgrade. It also makes this software’s AI credentials that little bit more convincing for anyone weighing up ON1’s do-it-all photo editor against Skylum Luminar Neo.