Preset picks: Alien Skin Border – Negative (Kodalith)
Preset Picks: This time, Alien Skin’s Border – Negative (Kodalith) preset goes under the microscope. Using just three tools it transforms regular images into super-strong graphic black and white.
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Tool tips: Luminar Orton Effect filter
Tool tips: The Luminar Orton Effect is a way to combine an ethereal soft focus ‘glow’ with sharp detail in a way that goes beyond ordinary soft focus techniques. This is how it works in Skylum Luminar.
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Preset picks: ON1 MacArthur preset
Preset picks: The ON1 MacArthur preset stacks two instances of the ON1 Textures filter and adds the Dynamic Contrast filter to give the look of a textured, sun-faded vintage colour print.
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Does the new Capture One 12.1 X-Trans processing make any difference?
It’s fine for Phase One to say the Capture One 12.1 X-Trans processing has been improved, but can you actually see the difference? (It was pretty good already.)
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How to use LUTs in Alien Skin Exposure X4.5
The new LUTs feature introduced in Exposure X4.5 supports one of the newest trends in photography. LUTs (lookup tables) started out in cinematography as a way to apply a specific ‘look’ to a movie or scene, but they’re now catching on in stills photography too. They are like a basic conversion profile, or film simulation…
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Lightroom HDR: how the HDR Merge tool works
The Lightroom HDR merge option has been around for a while, so how does it work and how does it compare to a dedicated HDR tool?
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How to change Lightroom’s default processing
The default processing for camera RAW files in Lightroom is a reasonable start but quite often you find yourself making the same adjustments time and time again for specific cameras. I get that particularly with my Fujifilm X30. It’s a few years old now and has a pretty small sensor that’s prone to noise, but…
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The power of adjustment layers and masks
Adjustment layers started out in Photoshop as a way of altering the look of an image without actually changing its pixels. It was the start of non-destructive editing. Now, adjustment layers are everywhere, not just in Photoshop, and for me they are the key to successful image enhancements. There’s a second factor, though – layer…
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Can you really take proper pictures with a smartphone?
I can understand there’s a certain amount of smartphone snobbery, but I think that’s because we associate smartphones with a certain sort of selfie-loving snapshot mentality. Smartphone cameras are actually pretty good, provided youunderstand their limitations and work within them
and put the same thought into each picture that you would with a ‘proper’ camera -
How to enhance a sunset with white balance and graduated filter adjustments
Sunsets don’t always come out the way you want them to, so here’s a quick way to enhance them with a white balance adjustment and a graduated filter effect. This picture was shot using the auto white balance on a Nikon Z6 and while the colours are a pretty reasonable representation of how the scene…
