Photoblog

I’ve been playing for about 15 minutes with the brand new and shiny image processing software released by the guys from Macphun: Luminar 2018. I got caught a bit in the hype surrounding this new product, with a quite cheap pre-release price. But the reason is actually a different one: the inclusion of a SmugMug Power plan (72 eur value) in the Luminar 2018 list benefits ( we had a long term wish to switch from Zenfolio to SmugMug – more about this in a future post) . I have quite a lot of contradicting feelings and impressions about Luminar after the first tests . This is far from being a comprehensive review (I might write one later, when getting the chance to try it out more). Bellow is a very quick results of my trials. Interface: the interface is clean and quite intuitive. Lots of things look surprisingly identical to Lightroom or Photoshop. There are many functionality that have been totally cloned out from the Adobe products (HSL filter, Chanel mixer, Colour balance). Eve...

Gueirua beach, Santa Marina shot with Nikon D800, Nikkor 14-24 F2.8 lens, Haida filter system with Haida ND 3.0 and Haida GND 0.6 soft Some time ago I was reviewing the Haida system for my Nikon 14-24 lens. A wonderful lens, but so heavy and bulky that is uncomfortable to carry it around in the bag for a whole day, therefore I leave it at home more frequent than not during my shooting trips. For this trip in Spain, I decided that my shoulders need to roughen up and Carmen needs a wider lens than her 20mm prime, therefore I was using the 14-24mm quite intensively; as a result Haida system came into play a lot. This time in real shooting conditions: sunrises, sunsets, close by the water, in growing tides and rough waves. San Juan de Gaztelugatze, Bakio  shot with Nikon D800, Nikkor 14-24 F2.8 lens, Haida filter system with Haida ND 3.0 and Haida GND 0.6 soft So how my conclusions evolved ? First of all using this kind of filter system is...

Our history with the two image hosting platforms started in the end of 2010, when we won a one year SmugMug account at a photo competition. Back then, we had very few images that were worth being uploaded as part of a portfolio site; SmugMug plans were much more expensive than now, so the account was never renewed. Later on, in 2012, after a year of blogging and slight improvement of our images, we decided that we needed a website; therefore we considered    the two major players in the market : Zenfolio and SmugMug. Zenfolio looked good, was significantly cheaper than SmugMug so it was best chance at that moment.   5 years later, we made the step and migrated our website to SmugMug, closing the Zenfolio account. The decision was taken mainly because of the way Zenfolio ignored the need to improve their algorithm for compressing the images, especially when viewed on large resolution retina  screens.  On such screens our images looked so soft, almost emb...

Few weeks ago I was contacted by Liam from CanvasPop with an interesting offer: they would offer me a free large framed print, in exchange for an honest review of the product. I agreed immediately and I started to think which one of my images would look nice on our living wall. This is quite a difficult process as everyone tends to be so emotionally attached to their own work. In the end we decided to go with the classical view of Hamnøya village in Lofoten islands, an image so dear to us due to the memories that evokes: an amazing holiday in one of the most photogenic places on earth, where Carmen and I had such an amazing time. So I emailed the large format file to Liam and patiently waited to receive the print. We got it on Thursday packed nicely in a big cardboard box, covered with bubble wrap to avoid any damage due to the transportation. And the packaging fulfilled its mission as the print arrived in very good conditions, without any damage. The box contained the print its...

After reviewing some weeks ago the great View Point 2 from DXO labs, this week I found out about a new excellent tool for straightening and perspective correct your images: the new feature that Adobe released into their Photoshop CC. We all know about the controversies around the new business model of Adobe for Photoshop software and even if some people complained about the need to pay monthly fee instead of buying a software for life, I still think that this CC is a great deal, especially because of getting new features much often than before, in the old major release way. So, what is this new feature about? It is a tool called “Perspective Warp” and as it name suggests it is intended to be used for correcting perspective. The first impression about it is that it is an extremely powerful tool; this mean in Adobe world that you can do great things with it but you can also royally screw up your images if used incorrectly. I would suggest to start (as I did as well) by watching...

This is an image that I processed using Photoshop CC, Topaz B&W Effects and Topaz Denoise. It is called “Tribute” as it is part of the Beisheim Center in Berlin, a tribute to American Art Deco architecture. I will start this review with a bit of background information. I am a long time user of various Topaz plugins. The first ever Photoshop plugin that I used was Topaz Denoise , which is still part of my current workflow (I remember at that point I was not even using Photoshop but Gimp and it was quite a struggle to make Topaz plugins working inside it). Later on, during the period when i was experimenting with HDR, I was a happy user of Topaz Adjust and Topaz Details. Now most of my work is in black and white, so I had explore more or less all the conversions techniques, from simple Film&Filter, to more complicated channel mixer techniques in Photoshop and more sophisticated plugins like Topaz B&W  Effects and Nik Silver Efex.   Also, it is ...

I am writing this review having in mind that Topaz is offering a half price discount for one of their best products: Topaz Denoise. You can downloaded as a free trial for 30 days from Topaz Labs page:  Topaz Denoise . The product is now 39.99$ instead of 79.99$ with the coupon code “mardenoise” (type it without quotes), until the end of March. I would mention that I really appreciate that Topaz guys do not have differentiated prices for European and US customers like other vendors (making European customers paying about 40% more for the same stuff). So, what is Topaz Denoise? It is a plugin for Photoshop CS, Elements, Lightroom, Aperture, IrfanView (and I even managed to use it within Gimp with some emulator couple of years ago before entering into Photoshop world). It is the first noise removal plugin that I use and the only one that is part of my workflow at the moment and that has been constantly part of it in the last 2 years). Despite some attempts to try other si...

Recently I heard about a new tool for Black and White conversion called Tonality Pro. It is on of the interesting product produced by the guys from MacPhun and it addresses only to Mac users. Tonality Pro can be downloaded and tried for free for 15 days. I will write this informal review having as a reference Nik Silver Efex Pro which is what I currently use for my black and white work all time. As Nik Silver Efex is generally recognised as a market standard and a product of high quality and maturity in the world of photography plugins, I must admit that the bar is very high for any competitor. Tonality Pro comes as standalone application or as plugin for Photoshop CC/Lightroom/Elements/Aperture. I am going to test it only as plugin for Photoshop as my workflow is entirely in CC, so going out in an external application and importing image back to CC does not really make sense for me.The first think I must say is that it is a bit slow. Both lunching it and applying some p...

This week I have been invited to try a brand new plugin from Topaz labs: Clarity. In a world of photographic plugins clearly dominated by Nik Software/Google (both quality and price wise as most photographers would consider), it is good when some competition spices up the things. And Topaz Labs is an interesting competitor for Google, providing a large range of photographic plugins covering almost every area of image editing. I have installed Clarity, with some ideas in mind, based on the description that I received “quick and easy to enhance contrast and color without degrading the image with halos or artifacts”. The program is very easy to use. The interface is simple and self-explaining, letting aside some minor bugs that probably their development team is working at as we speak. There are only few presets available at the moment (some categories are empty, but we expect to see some predefined presets in those soon) but as with any plugin, I suggest starting from the scratch, pl...

Couple of days ago I have received a newsletter from the friends from Topaz Labs , featuring an offer for ViewPoint 2, software made by their partners DXO. I knew about DXO before from their well known DXOMarks, cameras and lenses reviews, benchmarking’s and ratings, but I was not aware that they are also producing photographic software’s. The geek in me was really curious and decided to give ViewPoint 2 a try. View Point comes as both Photoshop plugin and standalone application and according to their website: “The indispensable companion to your wide-angle lens, DxO ViewPoint fixes perspectives and easily restores the natural shapes of the subjects located along image edges.” As an architecture photographer I was getting interested to learn more about this, so I installed the trial version and watched a quick tutorial movie. Since I am a Photoshop user, I am much more interested in the plugin version, as it integrates much easily in my workflow, so this is what I have used for t...