Verdict: 4 stars Lightroom is Adobe’s bold vision of a cloud-based photo organizing and editing tool where all your images can be organised, edited and viewed anywhere on any device. For mobile users and content creators it’s a clever and effective proposition, but for regular photographers, while its editing tools now include AI masking, A lens Blur and the rest of Adobe’s latest Lightroom features, its restrictions, the closed nature of its editing ecosystem and its cost remain a major barrier.
Non-destructive editing software
Software which doesn’t make any direct changes to the pixels in a photo, but saves processing instructions alongside it. These instructions are used to change the appearance of the photo when it’s displayed and can be applied permanently to a new ‘exported’ image.
Adobe Lightroom Classic review 2023
Verdict: 4.5 stars Lightroom Classic is the traditional, desktop-based version of Lightroom. Its editing tools are powerful and versatile, aided by new and steadily improving AI masking tools. Lightroom Classic continues to be the professional cataloguing and editing tool by which all others are judged, though it’s not always the best.
Affinity Photo 2 videos on YouTube
If anyone is interested, I’ve recently produced a series of videos on Affinity Photo 2 for Amateur Photographer, covering everything from new features in version 2 through focus stacking, HDR merge, object removal, non-destructive editing and panorama stitching. Here’s a list, with links.
Cataloguing software explained
Cataloguing software can organize your entire photo collection, but how does it work and what do you look for?
Image metadata explained
Metadata is image information stored alongside or within a photo. You don’t see it in the image, but it can be read by different software applications to help filter, sort, search or identify images.
Local adjustments explained
‘Local adjustments’ is a bit of a catch-all term. It means picking out an area of an image for adjustment while leaving the rest unchanged. So how do local adjustments work and which software does them best?
Exposure X7 review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Exposure X7 is a great all-in-one program for cataloguing your images, enhancing and retouching them and adding a huge range of evocative analog film effects
The DxO Nik Collection non-destructive workflow and how it works
The DxO Nik Collection 3 brings non-destructive editing to the Nik plug ins for the first time. This is how it was done, and what you need to know.
Non-destructive editing: does it cause more problems than it solves?
Non-destructive editing sounds like a no-brainer. This is where your software stores your edits as processing instructions which can be updated, changed or removed at any time. But is it really that easy?
How to get started with Analog Efex Pro
Analog Efex Pro is one of the plug-ins in the Nik Collection. It works as a plug in with Lightroom Classic and Photoshop but it can also work as a standalone program or as an external editor with all sorts of other programs like Capture One, Exposure X and more. It’s designed to recreate the […]