Lightroom Classic’s Tone Curve panel has two modes. There’s the regular Point Curve mode, where you click to add control points to the curve and then move them around to change the curve shape – experienced photo editors will know this tool inside out – but there’s also a Parametric Curve mode. Is this just for beginners, or is it a new and better way to make curves adjustments?
Generative Expand was added to Lightroom as part of an August 2026 update. It’s been available in Photoshop for a while, but now it’s in Lightroom too. The idea is that you can expand your crop outside the current image boundary and Adobe Firefly will use AI to add surrounding details. It’s handy if you need a different aspect ratio to the one you shot in, for example, and you don’t want to crop existing detail. Just don’t expect too much…
There is a reason I don’t create and share ON1 presets – there are just so many of them already available for download from ON1! I do complain about some software publishers not having a lot of imagination when it comes to effects and ideas, but that’s definitely not the case with ON1, and especially the extra preset packs on the ON1 website. For some downloads you need an ON1 Plus subscription, but many are completely free.
So many of the advances in photo editing software right now use AI, principally AI noise reduction (good), AI upscaling (if you need it) and AI subject masking – ESPECIALLY AI subject masking. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not. I’ve used it a lot, on all sorts of images, but for most of the edits I do, most of the time, I use a much simpler approach based around carefully positioned radial masks.
One of the issues with Lightroom’s AI masks is that although they create very precise and accurate masks, they also tend to be very hard-edged. If your masking adjustments are fairly mild, you probably won’t notice, but if you push them to extremes, these hard mask edges become obvious. In particular you start to see strong edge artefacts and outlines. So can the new Edge and Feather adjustments fix this?
Too often, photos are doomed to a virtual life, existing solely on your computer screen or shared digitally via social channels or websites. There are many who feel, however, that a photograph does not properly exist until it’s printed. So here’s a guide to printing and framing photos as easily and effectively as possible.
Capture One and Lightroom both offer image cataloguing tools with powerful organization and search capabilities, but they both rely on an import process. And, if you make changes outside your catalog, you’ll have to synchronize or re-link your image files. Capture One Sessions are different. They are like ‘live’ browsing. And they are not just for tethered shooting.
DxO PureRAW 6 is the latest version of DxO’s clever RAW preprocessing software, and it has two big new features. One is its new ‘high fidelity’ DNG compression option which drastically reduces its file sizes, and the other is a new AI dust removal feature built into the PureRAW process. Who saw that coming?
Like all good black and white photo editing tools, Silver Efex can ‘filter’ the colours in your digital images to translate them into different shades of grey. You can replicate the effect of traditional black and white ‘contrast’ filters, achieving dramatic blue skies with a red filter effect, richer landscape tones with a yellow filter effect and more. Here’s how it works.
The Basic Adjustments panel is one of the ‘optional’ Filters in Nik Silver Efex 8. What this means is that if you are building an effect from scratch, you can add it manually from the list of Filters in the left sidebar, or not use it at all. You will find it’s included as standard in many Silver Efex presets, though, and despite being ‘Basic’, it’s actually central to a lot of black and white ‘looks’.