Introduction to Pixelmator: Part I

Light leak effect in Pixelmator

This is the first in a series of articles looking at alternatives to Photoshop CS and CC.

The recent announcement of Adobe regarding the move to a subscription licensing system for Photoshop CS (now called Photoshop CC) and other Creative Suite applications has caused quite a stir. While the new system might be beneficial for new users and for businesses, there is no doubt that photographers who purchased Photoshop some time ago and upgraded every new release (or every other release) are going to lose out financially.

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What’s New in Lightroom 5

Lightroom 5 radial filter

Note: Scroll down to the bottom of the article for news about Lightoom 5 Up To Speed – the latest Craft & Vision ebook.

Adobe released the full version of Lightroom 5 earlier this week. There are quite a few improvements over Lightroom 4. My focus in this article is on the Develop module, as this is where the creative process of editing Raw files occurs. The improvements I like the most are the radial filter and the improved advanced healing brush, as they make image processing much easier.

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Fire Performers

Fire performer portrait project

Today I’d like to share with you some portraits I took recently of three women who are fire performers. It’s the start of a project that I intend to pursue over the coming months.

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Lightroom 4 vs DPP: High ISO Noise Reduction

Lightroom & DPP high ISO comparison

I know from the number of people who have bought my ebook Understanding DPP that there are a lot of photographers using Digital Photo Professional, Canon’s proprietary Raw processing software. Eventually, a lot of those photographers will move on to a more advanced program such as the latest version of Lightroom.

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Vision is Better 3

Vision is Better 3 ebook cover

It’s been a busy month at Craft & Vision. First of all they released some Lightroom presets, then the third edition of PHOTOGRAPH magazine. Today they have released Vision is Better 3, a new ebook by David duChemin.

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Editing Portraits in Perfect Effects 4 Free

Portrait processed in Perfect Effects 4 Free

It’s hard to ignore the number of photos being produced on camera phones using apps like Instagram. Who would have thought that adding filters to photos to create a retro or vintage look would be so popular? Not only that, but it’s often surprisingly effective.

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Lightroom Presets from Craft & Vision

Photo processed with Lightroom 4 presetToxic Warmth Heavy

In my last article I wrote about using Lightroom presets to simplify the task of processing portraits (you can catch up here). One of the benefits of using presets is that you can buy, or download for free, presets created by other photographers. It’s reasonable to ask yourself, before making a purchase, whether buying presets can really make a difference to your images.

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Using Lightroom Presets for Portraits

Lightroom presets

Old Polar Lightroom preset

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about processing portraits (you can read that article here). I touched on using Lightroom Presets, and today I want to explore that topic a little more deeply.

One of the biggest advantages of Lightroom 4, for me, over other software such as Photoshop CS or Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is the ability to save the settings that I used to process an image as a preset.

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Pinterest

Pinterest

You may be aware that I write articles for other websites as well as this blog and my magazine and ebook commitments. I thought it would be fun to create a page with links to articles that I have written. I’ve tried out a few different options and finally settled on Pinterest. It looks beautiful and is easy to use.  You can see my Pinterest page here (you don’t have to be a Pinterest member to access it).

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Lightroom 4 Portraits

Portrait processed in Lightroom 4

I’ve spent the last six months taking and processing a lot of portraits. I tried out lots of software to see which works well for me. My conclusion? Lightroom 4 is by far the best option out there. Other software has its place for specific features, but for versatility and ease of use, not to mention quality of results, Lightroom comes out on top (the portrait above is processed with Lightroom 4).

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