Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in News
The next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy for photo software. We’ve recently had plenty of teasing about Luminar 4, as well as an announcement of sorts about the next version of Capture One. So what can you expect over the next little while?
A little while ago I wrote a post on how I couldn’t understand Canon’s decision to remove 24p from their newest cameras. 24p is considered a standard around the world, and many of Canon’s cameras became so popular for video precisely because they allowed users to shoot in 24p, so it was inexplicable to me that the company had chosen to remove such a key feature. I wasn’t the only one, and there was a wide and loud backlash from users. Well, Canon listened, and has announced that it would be adding 24p to several recently released cameras via firmware.
There’s been a good bit of photo software news over the past week so rather than doing lots of separate posts, I thought I’d cover it here in one section. The headlines: Skylum shows off AI Portrait enhancer coming in Luminar 4, Phase One announced a new offer for Capture One, Exposure announced some details of Exposure 5, and a useful piece of software for Sony and Olympics shooters who want to use Pixel Shift.
I’ve finally gotten around to something I should have done a log time ago. I have finally upgraded the graphics card in my Mac Pro. I had been owing the original and extremely bad (by today’s standards) ATI 5770 and its paltry 1gb or ram. Amazingly enough I managed to get by all these years, but it was becoming increasingly problematic, so I finally ordered a replacement.
Just a quick notice! I’ve created a new Facebook Group where you can discuss any of the things you see here on the blog, or if you use any of my styles or presets, you can share photos you’ve created using these. You can also use the form to ask questions and get help from other members of the community.
I’m having a summer sale on all of my Lightroom Presets and on my Capture One styles. There’s up to between 20% and 50% off on various presets and styles. I’ve been running this through July, and now it will continue until the end of August. If you’re looking for some great Capture One Styles or Lightroom Presets, here’s a chance to get them at a good discount.
I’m currently running a trial to test the idea of enabling review on my store. The reason I haven’t done this in the past is that it is a bit risky, with a small store like mine. However, for the next month I’m trialing it on a select few products to see if it works, and if it does, they will stay on, and if not, I’ll turn the review system back off again.
I’ve released a minor update to my X-Transformer guide that addresses some of the recent changes in the application. This is a free update to anyone who had previously bought the guide.
In case you missed it, I’m having a summer sale on all of my Lightroom Presets and on my Capture One styles. There was actually a little problem with my store and it wasn’t displaying all of my Capture One styles for some reason, but this is fixed now. There’s up to between 20% and 50% off on various presets and styles. Here are some examples:
Skylum has just released an update to Luminar Flex, the plug-in version of Luminar. The update brings the second generation of Accent AI filter to Luminar flex as well as a couple of other updates. Here’s what’s new:
After an extended period of not being available through Apple’s MacOS App Store, Lightroom has made a return. The changes to the Mac App Store that came about when Mojave was released last year, allowed Adobe to bring the software back along with the return of several other high profile apps, such as Microsoft Office, It’s available now for any compatible Mac running 10.8 or later. It should be noted that this version is Lightroom Desktop (I.e. the version based on the mobil eversion of Lightroom) and not Lightroom Classic.
I’ve just released an updated version of my Fuji Jpeg book. This is a relatively minor update, and is focussed on fixing the language in some places, as well as updating the references mentioned in it to reflect things that have changed since the guide was first written, such as the arrival of newer Fuji cameras, changes to Lightroom etc. the new version number is 1.2, and you can find a complete list of changes below.
Yesterday Sony announced the latest camera in its A6K line, and for the first time, Sony has embraced the Vlogging market somewhat seriously. The new camera, the Sony A6400 is a mid-range entry in Sony’s APS-C lineup, which borrows some features from higher end Sony cameras as well as adding some new features of its own, all for a relatively affordable price.
So today, Nikon finally announced the company’s new Mirrorless cameras, the Z7 and Z6. I say finally because the leaks and rumours seem to have been going on for months, not to mention Nikon’s own teasing of the new system. So now that they’re official, what do I think?
Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of my latest set of Lightroom Presets: StreetLUX. I got the idea for StreetLUX when I was processing my most recent set of photos from my Street Photo Diary series, and I was originally using my Monolith Presets. I wanted a high contrast look, but I wanted to create something a little more “film like” so I went back to the drawing board and came up with a new set. But I didn’t stop there and I also created a set of colour presets too, which were inspired by the “chrome” style of films from the past.
I’ve come across a few interesting tidbits-bits of information over the past week that I wanted to share, but none of it was long enough to put into individual blog posts, so I thought I’d compile it all into a singe compilation. This is pretty random, but anyway.
With my Patreon channel operating for more than six months now, I’ve recently made a few changes to how I run it, and to the rewards schemes. After struggling for a while, it became obvious to me that I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew with it, and I had also made it a bit too complicated. So, I’ve simplified it considerably, and I’m trying to get back to what I had originally intended to do with it, which was for it to be like a “directors commentary” on my main blog and various other photography activities.
Last week I was approached for an interview about one of my photography projects by a fairly prominent online newspaper here in Ireland. The piece they were interested in was a project I did charting the progress of the cross-city tram construction that took place in Dublin over the past few years. The request came out of the blue and took me a little by surprises, but they did a good article following the interview.
