A high key image is one which consists almost entirely of bright tones. This works really well for subjects with white or near-white tones and gives a very bright, airy look. Not every image needs a full range of tones from solid black to brilliant white, and not every image needs the ‘perfect’ histogram. Histograms are there to tell you what’s happening, not what to do.
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.
Color editing is the secret sauce of photo enhancement
All image-editors offer color controls that let you target a specific color or color range and then change its hue, saturation or lightness. In this example, I’m using the Color Editor in Capture One, but any photo editor with HSL color controls will let you do the same.
Preset picks: Silver Efex Pro Hollywood Glamour
What’s in a name? Preset effects typically have names to give you an idea of the kind of subjects they might work with, but in reality you should just choose a preset that gives you the ‘look’ you want. For this dramatic seascape I turned to the Hollywood Glamour preset in Silver Efex Pro, one of the key plug-ins in the DxO Nik Collection.
Capture One 23 Cull tool: how does this new feature work and how useful is it?
Capture One 23 comes with a whole series of new features, and one of these is the Cull window, a workspace for filtering out your best shots and ditching the rest.
Topaz Photo AI review
Verdict: 3.3 stars $199 is a lot of money to pay for a simplified AI photo fixer and there’s not even a trial version, just an ‘unconditional’ money back guarantee. When it works, Photo AI is good, even spectacular, but the image and its problems have to fall within its window of fixability. Photo AI is also slow, over-aggressive with noise reduction and can only fix the right sort of blur.
Affinity Photo 2 is launched with a new Affinity 2 Universal License
The three Affinity desktop apps – Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher – have been upgraded to version 2, as part of a new combined ‘Universal’ license for all three.
More than half of photographers use Lightroom, according to Shotkit survey
Camera gear website Shotkit has run a survey of 657 photographers to find out what software they use, and Lightroom is by far the most popular option, with 58% of the vote. Equally interesting are the reasons why users don’t choose Lightroom, and what they use instead.
Radiant Photo review
Verdict: 4 stars Radiant Photo sounds like countless other ‘magic’ photo apps and plug-ins that use the power of AI to make your photos perfect. The difference is that it works. Not every image will be transformed equally, but the dullest, most difficult and downright impossible images are the ones that get the most benefit.
ON1 launches 2023 versions of its professional plug-in suite
Following on from the launch of ON1 Photo RAW 2023, ON1 has released updated 2023 versions of its professional plug-ins: ON1 Effects 2023 , ON1 NoNoise AI 2023, ON1 Portrait AI 2023, ON1 HDR 2023 and ON1 Resize AI 2023.
Capture One 23 is on its way: here are the new features
There’s no definite date yet for the release of Capture One 23, but the company is running a special offer for new users where, if you buy Capture One 22 now, you’ll get Capture One 23 free. So what are these new features, how excited should we be and will it be worth existing users paying to upgrade?