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MacPhun Luminar – Powerful Image Editing without the Photoshop Learning Curve

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Not too long ago, MacPhun introduced Aurora HDR software. While it could work well to edit single-exposure images, it really isn’t meant for that purpose. But pretty soon, MacPhun is going to be releasing Luminar, a full, single image editing software that gives you the ability to turn your images from everyday to spectacular using either the most simple tools, or choosing to use some seriously advanced image editing tools.

I was fortunate enough to get a bit of a chance to experiment with Luminar, and although I’m not allowed to disclose much (yet), I thi43452-1-gifnk you’ll be really pleased at it’s ease of use and the breadth of it’s functionality.

Luminar will be released on November 17th, and the purchase price will be $69, but if you sign up to be notified of a preorder (preorders will start on November 2nd), you’ll be able to get the software for a $10 discount ($59). To sign up for a preorder notification, please follow this link http://macphun.evyy.net/c/321616/317324/3255.

But, why preorder, when you can’t even see what it does?! So, MacPhun has created a Sneek Peek on their blog. To find out more about the ease and functionality of this program (which also works as a Photoshop Plugin), please click this link.

Please note: MacPhun software is MacOS only.

 

Announcing MacPhun Luminar – Preorder Discount

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Please click this link to be notified of this Pre-Order and launch – Announcing Luminar

This is gonna be GREAT:

About Luminar:

Innovative Adaptive User Interface
The Luminar user interface is built around the idea that every photographer is different, and therefore their photo editing needs are different too. Users can choose from 4 default interface variations, designed for: quick image fixes, photo enhancement with presets, an intermediate level of control, and advanced editing.

Workspaces & Filters
Luminar is the first Macphun editor to introduce Workspaces – innovative collections of tools most suitable for a specific type of photography. Default Workspaces will cover Portrait, Landscape, Street, and Black & White Photography. In addition, users can create an unlimited number of custom Workspaces, as well as import Workspaces from other photographers.

Luminar 1.0 will feature over 35 innovative imaging filters, from classic Tone & Exposure, to Bi-Color, Photo Filter Emulation, Cross-Processing, Detail Enhancement and dozens of others. Each filter category includes a set of precise controls, which can be adjusted to create countless different looks.

Users can save a group of pre-adjusted filters to create their own one-click preset, or for convenience, choose from over 50 pre-defined presets. With categories ranging from Outdoor to Portrait, Street to Drama, there’s a preset for every photography style.

Innovative non-destructive editing and powerful selection tools
The new Luminar for Mac introduces a new editing workflow. Users can change the order of applied filters at any time in the editing process, therefore totally changing the look of their photo. With the new History feature users can check all steps of the editing process, and go back to any step at any time.

The new selection tools in Luminar include;: adjustable editing brush, radial and gradient masking, as well as masking with a single layer and masking with an independent filter.

Together with the powerful blend modes, layers and filters, these masking tools allow users to easily perform even the most complex edits, for instance the sky replacement.

What else is in Luminar?

Essential photo fixing tools, including spot healing, crop & transform, clone & stamp, noise reduction and other.
Complete photo enhancement toolset, including exposure & contrast controls, saturation, vibrance, clarity, sharpness, polarization, and more.
Creative color controls & adjustments, including bi-color, split toning, selective luminosity, saturation & hue controls and more.43452-gif
A myriad of photo filters, including cross process, glow, orton effect, monochrome, soft tone and more.
Layers with blend modes and layer masking
Custom Textures with blend modes
Works as a standalone software, plugin & extension
Built-in RAW converter

Availability and Pricing:
Luminar will be available for pre-order on November 2nd at a discounted price of $59 for all new users, and just $49 for anyone who already uses has Macphun photo software. Pre-order offer will also include a bonus pack of photo training videos and a course on building a photography business from Will Burrard-Lucas, an award-winning UK based wildlife photographer with over one million Facebook fans.

Luminar will be available for purchase on November 17t

 

MacPhun Noiseless Pro – Photo Noise Reduction Made Easy

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As you all know, I’m a big fan of using my DSLR for most of my photography, but it’s rather bulky to carry – so often, I count on my Smart Phone to capture a moment or scene (in my case, an iPhone 5S). I love it’s convenience, but compared to the captures I can get on my Nikon, there are often issues I have to repair.
Noise (blocks of off-color pixels) is a major issue for me. I get it in skies, shadows, areas that should be smooth look broken and pixellated. This is a particular problem in Southern California, where the lighting outside can often be quite harsh. Please note, this software is Mac only.
Enter MacPhun Noiseless (and Noiseless Pro, as a Photoshop Plugin). With some truly intuitive settings, noise can be easily cleared from an image, while clarity and detail can be maintained and enhanced. Check it out by clicking the banner:

Excellent Demo of On1 Photo RAW vs On1 Photo 10.5

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On1 has created an excellent video on the relative speed of processing a photo using their new (coming soon) Photo RAW software, vs their existing On1 Photo 10.5 (which I’ve been using, and loving). Check out the video here.

On1 is offering an excellent deal – a Presale of Photo RAW prior to it’s release – buy Photo 10.5 now, and the upgrade to RAW is FREE on release. Click the link below to check out the deal!
ON1 Photo 10 now + ON1 Photo RAW Free (Fall 2016)

Transmission BitTorrent client was found distributing Malware

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Just a warning! People using the Transmission BitTorrent client software may have given hackers access to their computers. According to a MacWorld.com article, People who downloaded a new version of Transmission this past Sunday and Monday (August 28th and 19th, 2016) may have installed the affected software, capable of spreading malware through your system.

If you may be affected, please read the article at: http://bit.ly/2c2Akkc

Will Parallels Prove Themselves Thieves? Answer – They’re Trustworthy!

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UPDATE!
You should be informed – I heard back from Parallels today – SAME day I requested their flexibility – and they DID do the right thing! As I’ve been a loyal customer for many years, they honored my purchase, and offered me a new license key for the new version of the software! They ARE trustworthy!

As you all know, I believe in offering both praise an condemnation when appropriate. I praise Parallels today, for doing what’s right!

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Many of you have seen me teach using Parallels to emulate the Windows environment on my Mac. Overall, I’ve found it to be the most reliable, user friendly emulation software among all the alternatives.

I’d delayed my purchase of their version 11, because I had no need of it until I upgraded my Virtual Machine to Windows 10. That was July 28th. Yesterday, Parallels announced the release of their Version 12. Oddly, their “free upgrade” for recent purchases section only allows free upgrades for software registered between August 1st (25 days prior to the release) and October 30th (when people won’t be able to buy the old version, anyway).

I’ve contacted them about the 2 day discrepancy – almost NO software company declines to offer free upgrades for purchases less than 30 days.

I’ve touted Parallels’ virtues to many of my students and clients over the years. I have my request to extend the free upgrade date on escalation. I’ll keep you updated on the outcome, as I’d never again suggest this software to anybody, if they choose to enforce their unreasonable and draconian rules in this situation.

For Photographers who are also Mac Users

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One set of my favorite plugin developers, MacPhun, has released an article on their blog about the expected changes in the upcoming MacOS Sierra. While I’m usually quite hesitant to upgrade my OS (I don’t like buying software upgrades for my existing apps – and what happened with Mavericks and it’s lack of video codecs is inexcusable), some of the revelations about the new Mac native photography apps are intriguing.

I skipped Mountain Lion, I’ve skipped El Capitan – but I might consider Sierra (after a good, long, healthy wait to the .2 update version).

Check out their article at: MacPhun

Topaz Labs Photoshop Plugins

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As I mentioned, I’d be discussing some Photoshop plugins. One of the first I’ll be discussing is a set of plugins from Topaz Labs. This software has a zillion modules and excellent tools, from Image Effects, to retouching to masking. I’ll be reviewing a bunch of these shortly, but in the meantime, here’s a link that’ll get you a $20 credit for whatever product you buy. I own the whole set, and one of my favorite things about these guys is that once you buy a plugin, the upgrades are FREE for LIFE. Check them out HERE!

Adobe is SERIOUSLY limiting it’s trial software time limits

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For students who plan on attending classes using trial software, this notice is extremely important. Please note that if you intend to do so, you’ll want to hold off on installing the necessary application until just before your class is scheduled to begin. Otherwise, you’ll be required to enter their Subscription Program to continue usage throughout your class time.

On May 9th, Adobe posted:

Update on Creative Cloud Trials

Adobe provides free trial periods for Creative Cloud in order to allow individuals to download, evaluate and try Creative Cloud before deciding to become a Creative Cloud member. In order to ensure that trial lengths align more accurately with how trials are being used, we are making some adjustments to the program.

Beginning May 9th, 2016 the length of the trial period for Creative Cloud will be standardized worldwide to 7 days.

Individuals currently evaluating Creative Cloud via a trial will not be impacted.

You can find more information on Creative Cloud trials, including how to sign up on the Creative Cloud trials page.

To see the original post, please visit: http://blogs.adobe.com/adobecare/2016/05/09/update-on-creative-cloud-trials/

Strategies in honor of World Backup Day!

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Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 1.37.40 PMToday, March 31st, 2016, is WORLD BACKUP DAY!!!

Many of you in both my live and online classes have heard me, very strongly, tell you to BACKUP your data! As I’ve mentioned before, the only time you miss having a backup is when you need it and don’t have it. 

I always recommend more than one method of backup, just to be safe. Hard drive space has become very reasonably inexpensive, and cloud space can often be had for FREE (my 2nd favorite price, as I often say) ?

Some strategies you might mix and match:

  • A CLONED backup of your system, or just your startup drive. Cloning is creating an exact replica of your hard drive (please note, for this discussion, I’m not referring to “Disk Imaging”, which creates what is essentially a zipped file of your cloned hard drive, but doesn’t use the suffix .zip). You need a hard drive with space that matches the size of the drive you’re backing up for this. As for software, Windows users have the options of Macrium Reflect Free, Paragon Backup and Recovery (Advanced) Free  ,   Acronis True Image 2016 (not free), and several others. I do a weekly clone of my startup drive, so that in the case of disaster, my system is only one week behind. However, please note that I do the next strategy daily.
    For Mac users, there’s DejaVu, Carbon Copy Cloner, Super Duper!, Data Backup, along with many others . Note that there no longer seems to be much FREE cloning software for Mac, but that’s because the MacOS has Time Machine built in – we’ll discuss that momentarily. With any application you choose, I recommend getting one with the following features:

    • Exact duplicate clone capabilities
    • Creation of a bootable backup (contains the files necessary to start from and use the backup drive, should your original drive go “bad”)
    • Duplication of the startup drives “Recovery Drive” feature (I know Carbon Copy Cloner does this on the Mac, but am unsure what does in the Windows world)
    • The ability to SCHEDULE your backups on a regular basis – so that you don’t have to remember to do them – your system does it automatically.
  • A duplicate backup of all my “Work” drives, which includes my USER FOLDER from my startup drive. I do this nightly, scheduled with the same backup software I use for my weekly backup of the startup drive. Every night, the drives (or folders) that contain my daily changes are duplicated to a secondary drive. Note that my user folder is in there, so if I ever need to reinstall from my cloned drive back to a new hard drive, I can also move my user folder into place, and my emails and documents, etc. are up to date. On this drive, I don’t duplicate my startup drive. Since I have several drives in my computer, I need quite a large capacity drive for this backup. However, since it only changes the file that have been changed that day, the backup process is quite quick.
  • Mac users may also take advantage of the MacOS built in “Time Machine”. This requires quite a lot of storage space, but it does an hourly (give or take) backup of all changes made to your system. The advantage of this is that you can store and restore files from many months back, in case a file gets corrupted, accidentally deleted, or just plain messed up. The DISadvantage to this is that the drive is not bootable (you can’t start your computer from it), so there’s downtime if you must replace your original hard drive, while Time Machine copies your files back to the drive.
  • ONLINE backup into the “cloud” is also a great option. Some systems automatically upload your files to their cloud, but you may need to pay for the service. Please note that these will NOT backup your system files, so an Operating System reinstallation would be required). But, your work files will be saved offsite, which is always safe. Nowadays, there are what seem to be a Zillion choices out there for this service. One popular service is Carbonite, and another is Backblaze, there’s also iDrive,  CrashPlan,  Pogoplug (I love this option, because it also offers a hardware “personal cloud”)….. I could go on for days on this. Some of these plans offer a free option for a small amount of space. In addition, there are FREE:
    • Dropbox – 2GB – file size limit 10GB
    • Box.com – 50GB – file size limit 250MB
    • OneDrive Windows – 5GB – file size limit 10GB – or 1TB with an Office 365 plan
    • Google Drive – 15GB – file size limit – varies – but up to 5TB for non-converted files
    • Verizon Cloud – 5GB – 1200KB from phone
    • Amazon Cloud (w/ Prime) – 5GB for video and files, unlimited for photos – file size limit 2GB
    • Copy.com – 15GB no max file size limit
    • hubiC – 25GB Free – got 30GB with code

Oh, and DON’T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR CELL PHONE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS. Use a cloud to do automatic uploads, use iTunes, or whatever software you have to get those photos on your harddrive and back THOSE up. I’ve seen such sadness when someone loses their phone, corrupts the data, accidentally resets the phone… PLEASE remember that those photos will not be easy to recover, if they’re recoverable at all.

In my line of work, there’s been a lot of money to be made by people having NOT backed up their data – please save yourself the money of data recovery, the heartache of lost files and work. Find a strategy that suits you and remember to BACK UP!!!

Oh, and if you ever do need to have data recovered, I do recommend DriveSavers, in Novato, CA. Their “cleanroom” work is the best in the business. If you ever need a discount, please feel free to use my code DS16297.

****Broken hard drive image, courtesy of DriveSaversDataRecovery.com