Noise is the digital equivalent of grain in film. It’s random electrical signals captured by the photosites on the camera sensor, and usually this background noise level is so low compared to the brightness of the captured picture itself that you just don’t notice it.
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.
How to use masks in Luminar
Often you want to apply an effect or adjustment to a whole picture, but not always. Sometimes you only want to apply it to part of the picture, and this is where the Luminar mask tools become really useful.
White balance and how it works
White balance is an adjustment to correct and neutralise colors captured with different light sources. The color of light can vary considerably depending on the time of day and whether you’re shooting in natural light or under artificial light.
DxO Perspective Efex review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a simple, user-friendly interface.
Dynamic range and exposure
Dynamic range is the camera sensor’s ability to capture detail in very bright and very dark parts of a scene. Cameras (or sensors) with a low dynamic range record dark shadows as a solid black or bright highlights as a featureless white.
Picture styles and film simulation with digital cameras
Digital cameras typically offer a range of ‘picture styles’ to suit different subjects or different tastes in color rendition. Canon calls these Picture Styles, Nikon calls them Picture Controls and other camera makers have their own names.
Non-destructive editing and how it works
Traditional photo editing is ‘destructive’. That means every adjustment you make permanently changes the pixels in the photo and there’s no way back unless you’ve saved a copy of the original and you’re willing to start again. ‘Non-destructive’ editing is fully reversible. You can go back and undo or redo all of your editing work at any point in the future. Naturally, there’s a catch
Lens aberrations and what you can do about them
Aberrations, or optical imperfections, exist because no lens is optically perfect. Almost all lenses show aberrations from the ‘perfect’ image.
DxO PhotoLab Graduated Filter, Control Points and Repair tool in action
This step-by-step editing walkthrough shows a number of DxO PhotoLab tools in action, principally the Local Adjustment tools, including the Graduated Filter and Control Point tools.
Luminar tips: where to find key tools, how to use them better
Luminar is one of the most exciting image editors on the market. It’s also one of the fastest changing and quirkiest, so it’s not always easy to keep up with what’s new, what’s changed and where to find the tools and settings you need and why this list of Luminar tips could prove useful, both […]