Thursday 31 August 2017
SanDisk Unveils the World’s Largest microSD Card: A 400GB Monster
Today, SanDisk released the world’s highest capacity microSD card to date: the 400GB SanDisk microSDXC Ultra UHS-I card. It’s targeted at mobile users who have a lot of data to store on their smartphones, including high-res photos and videos.
The card comes about a year after SanDisk previously broke records by creating a 256GB microSD card that was the world’s fastest of its size.
This time around, this new Class 10 card looks pretty robust, too: it’s water, shock, temperature, and even X-ray proof.
“Mobile devices have become the epicenter of our lives, and consumers are now accustomed to using their smartphones for anything from entertainment to business,” said Jeff Janukowicz, Sandisk Research Vice President. “We are collecting and sharing massive amounts of data on smartphones, drones, tablets, PCs, laptops and more.
“We anticipate that storage needs will only continue to grow as people continue to expect more sophisticated features on their devices and desire higher quality content.”
Western Digital, the company that now own SanDisk, says it leveraged its “proprietary memory technology and design” to allow for the increased capacity.
“We continue to push technology boundaries and transform the way consumers use their mobile devices,” said Sven Rathjen, Vice President of Western Digital. “By focusing on achieving new technology milestones, we enable consumers to keep up with their mobile-centric lifestyles with storage solutions they trust.”
The new microSD card is ideal for Android smartphone users and can hold up to 40 hours of Full HD video. The transfer times are fast too, with a read speed of 100 MB/s (that’s about 1,200 5MB photos per minute) and write speed of 10 MB/s. The card is also said to load apps faster, thanks to its adherence to the A1 App Performance Class specification.
The 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card comes with a 10-year warranty and SD adapter (for using it as a standard SD card) and is available on the SanDisk website and through retailers such as B&H for $250.
from PetaPixel https://petapixel.com/2017/08/31/sandisk-just-announced-worlds-largest-microsd-card/
Ep: 207: Nikon Apologizes – and more
Episode 207 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast.
Download MP3 – Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS!
Featured: Sony Artisan of Imagery, Albert Dros
In This Episode
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Show Opener:
Sony Artisan of Imagery, Albert Dros opens the show. Thanks Albert!
Sponsors:
– Get 10% off your order at MeFOTO.com, Tenba.com, KupoGrip.com and StellaProLights.com using code PetaPixel.
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Stories:
Nikon issues an apology. Was it necessary though? (#)
Photographer Thomas Hawk documents protestors turning on photographers. (#)
Nevada parks require some photographers to jump through a number of hoops. (#)
Canon announces its 85mm f/1.4L IS, three tilt-shifts lenses and a twin flash. (#)
Authorities in England erect barriers to thwart grief tourism and inappropriate selfies. (#)
The Insta360 ONE is released offering bullet-time, 4K video and other features. (#)
Outtake
A reminder about my new show with Brian Matiash, the No Name Photo Show.
Connect With Us
Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community.
We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome!
You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”
from PetaPixel https://petapixel.com/2017/08/31/ep-207-nikon-apologizes/
Wednesday 30 August 2017
The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business
No photographer wants to get into the photography business with the aim of becoming a marketing expert. But the reality is that if you don’t focus on the marketing and business end of photography, your business will not be able to survive long enough to do the fun stuff. It stinks, but this is the truth.
Luckily, the learning curve at the beginning is the toughest part, and as you get used to the business side, everything will come much more naturally to you. Eventually, you might even learn to enjoy it, or at least appreciate the work, after you see how powerful it can be in getting you where you want to go.
So here are 10 of the most important strategies you can start right away to make sure your photography business succeeds.
1. Use Your Personal Network
Nobody wants to be that annoying marketer that always pushes their business on their friends and acquaintances. However, this fear can push photographers way too far in the opposite direction, never working with the people that have grown to trust them the most. Your personal network is your strongest asset and even more so at the beginning of your photography business. These are the people who will give you your first jobs and introduce you to your first clients.
Photography is unique in that no matter what genre you are involved in, people in your network will most likely need your services at some point, whether it’s wedding or event photography, business portraiture, family portraiture, or print selling. So let your network know what you do and how you can help them.
Create a mailing list and send out an announcement to your network. Show your best work, talk about your photography business, and make sure to explain how you can help people. How can your business benefit them? They will not know unless you tell them. In addition, make sure to ask for referrals.
2. Take Advantage of Local Marketing
Whenever you say the word marketing these days, for some reason everyone immediately starts talking about social media. That is funny, because as important as social media is, it should be one of the last steps to think about for any marketing plan.
Your first step should be working within your local community. Similar to the last point, these are people who know you. You are just down the street from them. There are businesses of all types in your community that can probably use your work, so create a plan for how to get in front of them.
Make a good impression
Keep in mind that you only get one first impression, so be smart about how you reach out. First and foremost, figure out how you can benefit them. If you are going to reach out to someone, you need to know how their business or life will be better with your services and explain how you can help. Always be kind and courteous with their time, and if possible see if you can get an introduction before contacting someone cold. Does anyone in your personal network know the person you want to contact? That’s always a great first step, but if not, just reach out yourself.
The more you are seen, the more people in your community will notice you and start to think about working with you. Whether it’s local events, business events, fundraisers, you name it, you should make the point to be there, particularly at first. This is the way to create new relationships and to spread your reach.
Similarly, reach out to the other photographers in your area. Many photographers will assist others when they need help and vice versus, and this will help strengthen everyone as a whole. It can be easy for photographers to feel competitive with each other but avoid this. The ones that work together and refer each other will do much better in the long-run than the ones who try to do it all on their own.
3. Create a Mailing List
Use a mailing list provider such as MailChimp or Aweber to keep up with your clients, personal network, and fans. Email lists have the highest engagement of any form of marketing, and it is the way for you to stay on people’s minds.
Ask people if you can add them to your list, and always have them opt into the subscription. Put signup forms or popups on your website that encourage people to join. Consider giving away something to encourage them to do so, such as free computer wallpapers of your photography.
When sending out emails, create content that your list will enjoy. Do not sell too often with it. The more benefit and interest that you provide for the people on your list, the more they will enjoy it and the more they will like you. Then when you sell, they will be primed to purchase your services or product. When it’s time to sell, sell.
4. Create a Personal Project
This image is part of a personal project I’ve been working on involving talking to and making portraits of people in my community.
Personal projects will not bring new clients to you right away, and they will take away time from building your business and making a living. This is the tougher side of doing projects, but they are immensely important for the long term growth of your business and for growing your voice as a photographer. A project can be done slowly over a long period of time, so you can build it into your weekly schedule.
Think of an idea that will resonate with both you and your community. This is a way of keeping your passion for photography alive. It will also help to set you apart from the other photographers in your community. It will show people that you are an interesting person. They will be more interested in working with you, even if the paid work you do is a completely different genre. It will be a way for you to gain press coverage and something for you to talk about to engage people. All in all, a personal project will make marketing yourself so much easier, and it will feel much more natural.
5. Respond Quickly
There is no point in building your photography business or marketing your work if you are not going to respond quickly to inquiries. Respond quickly at every step of the process throughout a job as well. Responding quickly does not have to mean within the hour, although sometimes that can help when getting a new inquiry. It can mean responding within 12 hours or a day, as long as you are consistent and prompt.
Fortunately for you, a lot of photographers are terrible at this, so this will quickly set you apart. It will show people that you are a responsible person, and it will make them more comfortable working with you.
6. Build Your Connections (Both Local and Online)
Building your network is a lifetime process. As you go further and further in your career, you will begin to create connections with people who can do more and more for you (and who are tougher to get in contact with).
Whichever point in your career you are at, and whatever level your skill level as a photographer, start at that point and build connections there. Then over time, work your way up the ladder. Be patient, be smart, and don’t try to push too hard at first, particularly with people who don’t know you. First impressions are impossible to get back. Grow your network carefully and consistently.
7. Keep Your Existing Clients Coming Back
It can help to create a client management system. You can start off with an excel document at first and eventually grow to a more robust system, such as Sprout Studio. Keep in contact with your best clients, and even consider sending them holiday cards or a small gift to stay on their minds. A small gesture can go a long way, and it is much easier to get an existing client to come back than it is to reach a new one.
8. Makes Sure Your Website Sells
Think about your website as your number one selling tool. Whatever your primary service is, your site should be developed for the specific purpose of leading people to hire you for that service or for purchasing one of your products.
Study the basics of copywriting, create specific sales pages for your offerings, and even consider creating sales funnels that lead people to an end goal. These can be very powerful ways of priming people to want to work with you.
9. Take Advantage of SEO
SEO, or ranking highly in search engines, is a long term strategy that takes some studying to understand how to do (beyond what we will be able to cover completely here). My belief is that you should always focus on local networking first, as that has the ability to get you very quick gains, whereas an SEO campaign can take years to truly get you where you want to be.
But that being said, SEO should not be ignored, because most people will use Google to find the right photographer for them. Always remember, the goal of Google is to serve up the most relevant websites for the query topic. If you want to rank for a specific term, make sure to create the best possible page that will answer that query. Without this, an SEO strategy will not work.
Listen to Google
Google runs on links, so you need to figure out how to get other related websites to link to yours. It’s interesting because while it may seem annoying to gain these links, Google is actually forcing you to do things you should be doing in the first place.
Network with websites that you would like to be featured on, and figure out how you can provide that site with some value before you contact them. You will get nowhere if you just ask for something, but if you contact them willing to help them out, it will help immensely. As you grow with your abilities and your marketing, your opportunities for getting covered will grow as well. Internet marketing gets much easier over time.
This is another area where a personal project can help grow your business. People want to share interesting topics, so even if you are not generating income from the project directly, you can use the project to get covered on websites and to make people more aware of you, which will ultimately help improve SEO and grow your network and mailing list.
10. Create a Daily Plan
All of this is way too much to do in a feverish month of working. Similarly, your marketing skills will grow gradually, so take your time and be strategic about how you work through your marketing plan. You do not want to spend a whole month contacting everyone you can only to burn out soon after.
Set aside a daily block of time to build your business. Contact a few people every day or every few days. Use the feedback from those to tweak your next pitch. Over time, you will figure out what works and what does not work. A small amount of work each day will eventually snowball into much bigger things.
Conclusion
The main theme throughout this article is that you need to put yourself out there. The work will not just come to you. Create an organized plan, stick to it, and go for it. Be both careful and relentless. That is what is needed.
It may seem like there is a huge wall in front of you that is impossible to cross. But if you chip away at it a little bit each day, within a few years you will find that you have opened up many paths through it.
For even more business help – join the Focus Summit 2017 Online Business and Marketing Conference for Photographers on Sept 26-28th 2017. We will cover marketing, business development, law, SEO, branding, blogging, and much more. Use the code “DPS” for a $50 discount.
The post The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business by James Maher appeared first on Digital Photography School.
from Digital Photography School https://digital-photography-school.com/10-marketing-strategies-grow-photography-business/
How to Understand the Difference Between TTL Versus Manual Flash Modes
It is no secret that the popup flash which comes built-in to your digital camera simply isn’t enough in most situations. For a variety of reasons, shooting using just the popup flash is not a feasible option. That is why you will find photographers everywhere you look, going for an external flash and using it increasingly during their shoots.
External flash, also known by the term “speedlight” provides many benefits and advantages to photographers, even while shooting in extremely low light conditions. They allow us to have a far superior control over the lighting of an image. Flashes are available in the market from a variety of manufacturers including camera makers like Canon and Nikon, or third-party companies like Godox, Yongnuo, Nissin, etc.
If you step out in the market to buy your first flash, you will come across two variants, a fully manual flash, and a TTL (Through The Lens) flash. You may end up getting confused over which flash will suit you the best and which one you should invest your money in. Both the Manual and TTL flash have their own plus and minus points which appeal to photographers. What is important is to properly understand their systems, functionalities, advantages, and disadvantages.
Understanding Manual Flash
On a fully Manual flash, there is no control (d either by the camera or the flash) over the intensity or duration of the light emitted from the flash. Instead, it is the photographer who controls the output of the flash by adjusting the settings, either in-camera or on the flash itself.
While using a manual flash, there are four controls you can use to set your flash output manually as per your requirements:
- Adjust the ISO on the camera.
- Raise or lower the level of output from oyur flash (½, ¼, 1/8th power, etc.)
- Alter the distance between the subject and the flash (light source).
- Adjust the aperture value on the camera.
Manual mode – check the user manual for your flash to see how to set it.
Not all flashes are equal
An important point to remember and consider is that the majority of flashes can shoot in manual mode, but not every flash can shoot in TTL mode. A manual flash also gives you specific control over the light and exposure, and allows you to set it exactly to your requirements. You do not have to use exposure compensation while using a manual flash as your composition, frame, etc., does not have any affect on the overall exposure and lighting of the scene.
Pros and cons of manual flash
In situations where the distance between the flash and the subject is constant and fixed, you can opt to use manual flash settings. A manual flash is extremely useful in situations where you have to fire away a series of shots of the subject repeatedly, under similar exposure conditions. E.g., in food photography, product shoots, and more this is the case. The power level is fixed, and it remains the same, which ensures that the exposure does not vary from shot to shot.
Manual flash works best when the subject is not moving like this setup, posed shot.
One of the main drawbacks of using a flash in manual mode is that you still need to figure out the optimal power output needed to obtain the correct exposure, which can be a time consuming process. And thus, a manual flash can mainly be used while shooting portraits, headshots, and fine art. In other words, in situations where you can take time to setup the scene.
Many also believe that manual mode is the best to use to learn about external flash photography. You choose the output, click the picture and then review it. If it does not come out the way you were expecting and wanted it to, then you can tweak the settings and try again. So you end up learning more in the process.
Understanding Automatic or TTL Flash
When the flash output is directly controlled by your camera, it is called Through-the-Lens metering or TTL. In the case of an Automatic or TTL enabled flash, the flash output is directly controlled by the flash or by the camera’s exposure metering system. Thus, using a flash in TTL mode will give you varied flash output.
Flash in TTL or Automatic mode.
The only method to control a TTL enabled flash is to use the flash exposure compensation function on the flash or through your camera settings. Also, while using a TTL flash, your chosen Aperture and ISO levels do not affect the flash output because the camera tells the flash to emit a particular output based on the camera’s readings. If the settings change, so will the output to compensate automatically.
When you half-press our shutter release button on your camera to focus, your camera not only focuses, but it also takes a metering of the scene and its exposure. It measures the amount of ambient light which is being returned “Through the Lens” to the sensor.
How it works
A TTL enabled flash fires a “pre-flash” before the actual shot is taken. The camera then measures the pre-flash with the ambient light level to calculate the power needed from the actual flash to make a correct exposure. This pre flash happens really quickly, only micro-seconds before the main flash, and thus cannot be seen by the human eye. Based on the model of your flash, this pre-flash can be an actual white light flash or an infrared one.
Using a TTL enabled flash is extremely helpful in situations when you are moving around a lot, shooting in different or changing lighting settings, etc., and do not have the time to fire a series of test shots before the shoot.
One of the drawbacks which accompany the use of a TTL flash is less control and less precision over the lighting. If you get an incorrect exposure while using a flash in TTL mode, it is really difficult for you to know the power setting which was used for that shot.
Conclusion
If you have recently purchased your first digital camera and plan to buy an external flash, then you have two options.
Either go for a manual flash, as it will urge you to learn more about how to control and adjust the lighting in various situations. But if you want to take up professional assignments and cannot afford to experiment with a manual flash, then go for a TTL enabled flash.
Which do you use? Do you have a flash that does both? Which do you prefer for different situations? Please tell us in the comments below.
The post How to Understand the Difference Between TTL Versus Manual Flash Modes by Kunal Malhotra appeared first on Digital Photography School.
from Digital Photography School https://digital-photography-school.com/understand-flash-settings-ttl-manual/
How to Make Your Own DIY Light Box with Tape, Paper and a Window
Photographers are pretty savvy when it comes to saving money. This DIY light box is a surprisingly simple method for photographing small, translucent objects like flower petals.
Remember holding sheets of paper against a window to trace out a design? This process is similar in technique. The sheet of baking paper will act as a diffuser, spreading light evenly through a translucent object so it can be photographed in detail. Using a well-lit sheet of paper also isolates the subject from the background with a nice, even, white backdrop. Plus, you get to take great photos without leaving the comfort of your own home. So really, it’s win-win!
Supplies you will need
- Camera
- Tripod
- Macro lens or extension tubes
- A well-lit glass window or door
- Butcher’s paper
- Clear sticky tape
- Glass cleaner or rubbing alcohol
- Eucalyptus oil (for removing any remaining sticky tape from the glass surface once you have finished shooting)
- Small transparent objects to photograph (I like using flowers)
Picking a location
Before you start, you’ll need to locate a light source. While the butcher’s paper will serve as a background for your image, you’ll need a strong, even amount of light to illuminate the subject.
Depending on the time of day, you might have to try different windows around your house. The position of the sun will dictate the strength of the light penetrating the butcher’s paper. Choose a window that is unimpeded by exterior blinds or trees if possible.
Capturing the intricate detail of organic materials like leaves is made much easier with the glow of light coming through the subject from behind.
Setting up
Once you’ve settled on a well-lit window, you’ll need to prepare the glass. Wipe a small amount of rubbing alcohol or glass cleaner over the window and pat down with a cloth. This will minimize any particles that may impede light from coming through. It will also allow the sticky tape to adhere to the glass more effectively. Make sure that the glass surface is completely dry, however, or the tape and butcher’s paper will become soggy and unusable.
Take your piece of butcher’s paper and hold it against the window. The reason I use butcher’s paper is because I’ve found that run-of-the-mill copy-paper disperses light in mottled and uneven patches, which looks poor in photographs. Butcher’s paper diffuses light more evenly and makes for a uniformly white background. You can use a piece as large as you like, just make sure there is enough paper to fill the viewfinder in your camera.
Not all paper is created equal. This is an example of the uneven, mottled light caused by a sheet of standard A4 copy paper.
Fix your piece of butcher’s paper to the glass. I recommend using clear sticky tape rather than blue-tack or colored tape because it may show up in your photographs and can wrinkle the paper. Once you have fixed the paper flush with the glass, you can begin adding your subjects.
Carefully stick your objects to the butcher’s paper with small amounts of clear sticky tape. This can be tricky on a vertical surface, so having lightweight, translucent subject matter like flowers work best. I also like to sit on a chair for this part, to avoid a backache.
Fix your subject matter to the butcher’s paper with bits of clear sticky tape.
Taking the shot
Once your subjects have been adequately adhered to your butcher’s paper, it’s time to get the camera out. Mount your camera on a tripod and position it so that the subject and the butcher’s paper fill your viewfinder. To capture the detail in your subject, a macro lens is ideal. I used my Kenko extension tubes to get a nice detailed shot. Of course, you could also arrange larger subjects or patterns on the butcher’s paper, focusing on pattern and light rather than macro detail.
Set your camera to Aperture priority mode (Av on Canon and A on Nikon) and adjust the aperture to allow for the desired depth of field. Remember, to maintain focus throughout the whole image, use a smaller aperture like f/22. However, this may be limited depending on the lens you use.
For the sharpest detail, using a low ISO count is also a good idea. Although this will cause your camera to automatically increase the shutter speed, your tripod will minimize camera shake, especially if you view your composition using with the LCD screen and Live View rather than the viewfinder.
Conclusion
Once you start photographing, you’ll notice the diffused light enveloping and illuminating your subjects. With the abundance of the soft light, you’ll discover that detail is much easier to capture and view. Using this butcher’s paper method eliminates pesky shadows, allowing the subject to lift off the background with striking contrast and intricacy.
Try photographing all sorts of flowers, fruits, leaves and other transparent materials and see your subjects in a whole new light!
The post How to Make Your Own DIY Light Box with Tape, Paper and a Window by Megan Kennedy appeared first on Digital Photography School.
from Digital Photography School https://digital-photography-school.com/make-your-own-diy-light-box/
Overview of Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 for Windows by ACDSee
ACDSee has released Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 for Windows and is the new update for their photo editing software. They have given it a new name, introduced new features, and made improvements to others. With so many people looking for other software packages that you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for, this makes it a very attractive program for people to use.
What part of Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 looks like when you open it up.
I recently wrote an article, Photo Editing Alternative – An Overview of ACDSee Ultimate 10, that will guide you through the different modes and what they do. If you are new to this software, it would be best if you read that first. This review goes into more detail about Edit mode and what is possible. It will also look at some of the features that are now available in this new release.
First Impressions
It would be easy to expect it to look like Photoshop when you first open it up. However, there are many similarities that can help make it more familiar to use. You can work in layers for your images, which enables you to go back and make adjustments to particular ones or delete them if you no longer want them. Many of the adjustments and tools have similar names which make it easier for you to learn. You can use the History function to go back to see what you have done. You can work nondestructively so your original images are always protected.
Edit Mode, working on an image.
There are also many differences. Some of the tools may have the same name, but to get the same results you have to use them in a different way. When you click on one of the tools and adjustments in the Edit mode menu, located on the left side of the workspace, you are taken to a different screen to make the changes. When you are done, you click either Done or Cancel, and you are taken back to the main Edit mode window.
New and Improved
As you start using Photo Studio Ultimate, you will find many new tools and adjustments to help you work on your images. The latest release features many new tools that work really well and will be mentioned soon. It also includes older tools, which have been developed over decades, yet still, stand up to today’s demand. The software is becoming very sophisticated and should suit the needs of most.
Working on an image in Edit Mode.
There are so many improvements, it would be hard to do them all in one article. So, this overview is focused on the ones that ACDSee is the most excited about and those that I really like.
Pixel Targeting
There is a new feature in the software that gives you more opportunities to be creative with your work. You can select a specific color to apply adjustments to, for example, you may want to make the reds brighter, or tone them down. You may want to sharpen only the greens. Or you can decide to change all the yellow tones to purple. With Pixel Targeting, you can do so as you please. You can also apply masks to specific colors or brightness ranges.
Using Pixel Targeting to give the yellows and oranges more saturation.
One application that a lot of people may use this feature for is to convert an image to black and white and have just one color coming through. By selecting your image and then going to Select to choose Pixel Targeting, you can decide which color you want to select. Once you click OK, you will see your selection and when you add the Black and White adjustment layer, the selection is turned into the mask. You will have your image in monochrome, except for the one chosen color.
Using the tool to select which color you will target with Pixel Targeting.
It is easy to use, although, you may have to play around with it a little. Remember that all colors are made of other colors. You may also need to do more work on the mask to get the look you really want. Overall, it does a decent job of the task, and there will be many people who will like this function.
Once you have done the selection and created the mask, then inverted it, you are left with color only for the tulips.
Smart Erase Tool
Along the top of the toolbar in Edit mode you will find the Smart Erase tool. This tool allows you to remove objects in your image that you don’t like, or don’t want. You often find unwanted subjects in your images, and being able to remove them is important. This has always been one of the best things about digital photography.
The tool is easy to use; you simply click on the image and start painting over what you want to be removed. You can set it to show up as a red overlay so that you can see what you’re doing.
When you find an unwanted person in an image you can use the Smart Erase to remove them. The Red shows where it is being applied and then the final result.
The Smart Erase tool seems to work best on small areas and on images with a plain background. Think about what you want to remove and look at the size of it, and the background. If you don’t get the results you’re looking for, you can always run the Smart Erase command again and again until you get a natural look. Play around and see what you can achieve.
The Smart Erase did a good job of removing the woman from just inside the door.
Liquify
The Liquify tool is what they use in the fashion industry to make models thinner. It is easy to use, however, should always be done with caution and used subtly. This tool allows you to move the pixels around to where you want them.
You can use Liquify to move pixels around and to make someone look slimmer.
You can turn objects in your images into funny shapes with the Liquify tool. However, common sense and what works best for the image always must be the first consideration.
Inside the tool, there is a Restore setting, which allows you to brush or push the moved pixels back into place without losing image quality. Even after you press Done in the Liquify tool, you can still undo while still in Edit mode. That said, since the Liquify tool is not a non-destructive adjustment layer, you cannot exit out of Edit mode and then later undo what you did.
Why would you use it? It is usually used to change parts of people, to remove a double chin, or a bit of overhanging skin. You can make people thinner, as previously noted. You can pull the waist in, or make legs that look a little less chunky, or make clothes fit better. Every time you use it, remember you are moving all the pixels in the area, and that includes the background.
The Liquify tool is great to play around with to familiarize yourself with what it does. Try out the different settings within the tool to see which one will suits your needs.
You can just play with it to see what else you can do. This flower now looks crazy, but great effect.
Frequency Separation
This is a technique used by many portrait photographers. It allows you to soften the skin, but keep detail around the eyes, nose, and mouth. When doing close-ups of people, you often find the skin looks dry, or you may see the pores. By using Frequency Separation, you can add some blur to the skin, but leave the detail at the same time.
What a normal face looks like just after you have taken the photo.
In other programs, you need to do the layers yourself and work it all out. But with Photo Studio Ultimate, you just click the Frequency Separation button and it works like an action, separating the high-frequency and low-frequency layers for you. It will provide the low-frequency layer for blurring and then the high-frequency layer that holds the detail. You are all set to go.
You can use Frequency Separation to give their skin a much softer appearance.
This is a great tool and anyone doing portraits will find it useful. It doesn’t require a lot of research to figure out how to use it and anyone could start playing with it. You could try and use it with other types of photography as well. I’ve tried it on images of macro flowers and have found it really good. There are possibly other ways of using it as well.
Frequency Separation was used on the flower to soften parts and give more detail to the edges.
Lens Correction and Perspective Correction
It’s always good to use lens correction wherever possible. It helps fix up any distortions that your particular lens will give an image.
You can also use the Perspective Correction, which will allow you to change the perspective. If you have an image that looks strange because all the buildings are pointing in towards the center, you can correct them. You can click on the corners and move them so you get what you remember seeing, buildings with straight lines.
Using the Lens Correction and Perspective Correction together to make buildings straighter.
In some ways, the Perspective Correction is far more useful than Lens Correction. It is not something that Photoshop seems to offer. You can do it, but have to do it in a completely different way. This works really well and I use it a lot.
Chromatic Aberration
These are colored lines that appear around objects in your images. They seem to appear around buildings a lot but can happen anywhere. Chromatic aberration is caused by your lens, and there is nothing you can do to stop it, but you can work on this in post-production.
Photo Studio Ultimate has a special adjustment for correcting chromatic aberration. You will find it under the Repair section in the column on the left. Click it and you will get a new window where you find five sliders. Zoom into 100% on the image so you can see the edges and the aberrations. Move the sliders around and see what happens. Each image is going to be different, so you might have to try different adjustments.
Using the Chromatic Aberration adjustment to remove the color fringes around objects caused by your lens.
Once you are happy, press Done and it will take you back to the normal workspace.
Split Tone
A new split tone adjustment layer has been added so that you can nondestructively tint highlights and shadows in Edit Mode. As an adjustment layer, you have the advantage of being able to apply split toning any time in your processing, and on several layers. You can also easily delete the layer if you decide you don’t like it.
A before and after with the Split Toning.
Clone Tool Pressure Slider
If you go to the Edit mode menu and look under Repair, you will see the Repair Tool. When you click on it, you are taken to the work area for the tool and from there, you can see the options, Heal or Clone. If you click Clone, a new slider will appear called Pressure under the Nib Width and Feathering sliders. This allows you to control the strength of the cloning.
At the default setting, it will do a straight copy. However, as you reduce it, the strength is also decreased. This is especially useful when you want to want to clone something out, but you don’t want to lose all the detail. A perfect example is when you want to reduce the darkness under someone’s eyes. You want to reduce the dark color, but you may want to keep the lines that are there as well but soften them at the same time.
Adjusting the Pressure slide for the Clone tool you can use to it remove the bags under the eyes, without taking away too much of the detail.
A Couple More Options to Mention
A Grain tool has been added to Edit Mode. You can add grain to your images to give it texture and create a vintage effect.
A new tool has been added to the toolkit; the Polygon Selection Tool. This selection tool and allows you to select an object in your image by pressing on the outside of it and doing like a dot to dot to get the selection you want.
Working in a Different Way
If you are used to using a program, like Photoshop, you will find that some functions don’t work the same. That is to be expected, it is different software. However, it doesn’t take you long to get your head around how you can do certain processes. In many ways, you do have to think outside the box, and so far I’ve managed to find many ways to do what I would do in Photoshop by using different tools.
I do a lot of processing in Photoshop and I wanted to see if I could achieve a similar look on one of my images, this is the final result. It’s good.
Overall
It is good to see other software that makes it possible to do just about anything you want to your image. While Photo Studio Ultimate may not be as big as Photoshop, there is no doubt that it will enable you to do just about everything you want to your images. The new release will offer users more tools and adjustments to help them get the look they want. It is a great program and one of the best alternatives I’ve seen. You can download and have a free trial for 30 days. Just remember that you will have to work differently, but it is worth it.
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