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Aurora HDR 2018 Pre-Order – ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT!

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Aurora HDR 2018 will be released on September 28th. Until then, you can buy it for Windows and Mac at a Discounted price PLUS BONUSES!

Pre-Order Pricing:

  • Current users of Aurora HDR may upgrade at a special pre-order price of $49 ($59 MSRP)
  • New users can purchase Aurora HDR 2018 at a special pre-order price of $89 ($99 MSRP)
  • A collection of bonuses will also be included with every purchase.

Pre-Order Bonuses:

  • Trey Ratcliff Deep Dive video (HDR Training by Trey Ratcliff)
  • Travel Photography Tutorials by Matt Granger (2 hours of tips, tricks and techniques to capture the best travel photos)
  • Source Brackets (5 sets of HDR brackets)
  • 3-month Zenfolio Pro website, including a complementary design consultation. $60 value.

Aurora HDR 2018 works for your RAW files, your single-shot (non-HDR) photos, as a stand-alone app OR as a Photoshop Plugin.

Take Advantage of this new release at a Discount by ordering before the release, before 9/28/17!

 

Apple Changes Device Management With iTunes 12.7

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In a change to which I’m not looking forward, it appears that Apple has made some decisions about how the new iTunes works, that’s going to affect all user – but ESPECIALLY affect users with multiple devices.

We will no longer be able to download IOS apps from iTunes, and synchronize them to multiple devices. Each app will have to be downloaded directly to your device FROM that device’s App Store app, separately. Anybody who wants to set up their iPad and their iPhone with the same apps will have to download them separate times. I assume this also means that we’ll also be unable to organize our apps into folders or among screens as easily as we could in the iTunes app through 12.6.

In addition, there will be significant differences in how ringtones are managed, TV Shows, audio books, music, movies and podcasts (especially iTunes U).

Macworld has published an excellent article on these changes, with a few workarounds, and a very pragmatic attitude about the whole thing. I must admit – I’m feeling a bit more frustrated than I am, pragmatic.

To read the Macworld article, click here.

BACKUP!!!!!!

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As all of my clients and students know, I’m a stickler for telling everyone to BACKUP their data – regularly – automatically, and in multiple places. Personally, I use 2 local backups (one is a clone of my data and a separate for my hard drive – AND I use MacOS’s Time Machine). But I also keep an offsite secure backup in the cloud. I live in earthquake country – and nothing would stink worse than if my hardware was all broken and my data irretrievable (of course, there’s always DriveSavers, but despite my discount, it’s quite expensive). Also, if you guys ever DO need a discount from DriveSavers, please use Discount code DS16297.

For my offsite backup, I’ve been using Backblaze for YEARS. Their uploads are unobtrusive, their security is raged as VERY GOOD, and their prices are extremely  reasonable. They’ve also recently increased the speed of their ability to download files, and added the ability to choose specific files (instead of folders) to restore when necessary.

Many of my clients have been using Crashplan’s Home backup option. Well… they’ve stopped taking new subscriptions, and they’re shutting down the Home version of their options as of October, 2018.

Backblaze is VERY interested in picking up this business – and since I do appreciate their service – AND their support when I needed it, I’m writing this post to recommend them. Take a look at their options. AND, if you do like their offerings, and use my referral link, we both get a free month of service!

Referral link: https://secure.backblaze.com/r/01c089

As I said, your data is irreplaceable. Have you noticed that when you create something, and work on it until it’s right, that you can never really duplicate it again, if you need to? It’s never quite the same? Backup is the only  option, and as for Cloud Backup, I recommend BackBlaze!

 

Update released for MacPhun Luminar

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Luminar is a new universal all-in-one photo app designed to tackle anyone’s photography needs, ranging from correcting challenging image problems to artful stylizing. Sporting a totally unique user interface that adapts to your needs and skills, tons of one-click presets for instant results and a vast number of image processing filters and tools, Luminar may be the last photo software you ever buy. It’s photo editing, reimagined for all of us. Experience it today at www.macphun.com .

There are more choices of cameras than ever before, and more ways to enjoy photos. Luminar comes at a time when current software tools are simply not keeping up with the versatility to satisfy the needs of everyone or evolving to be more complicated.

As a result, Macphun has invented a new scalable, adaptive user interface and mated it to a set of tools that truly provides ease of editing photos on your Mac across the entire span of customers, from Smartphone users to Pros.

  • ?  New photographers and mobile shooters who don’t often use their Mac for editing will appreciate a simple approach using one-click presets and universal tools like cropping, noise reduction, and image healing.
  • ?  Casual photographers may start with those same presets, but will soon “graduate” to using Luminar’s purpose-built workspaces that offer uniquely tailored tools which achieve great results quickly.
  • ?  For passionate enthusiasts and professionals, workspaces and the full gamut of editing tools such as brushes, layers, blending modes, texture overlays, an editing history menu and much more herald a new generation of advanced photo editing possibilities.

  Retail price

MacPhun Luminar is currently still a Mac product, but don’t forget – the Windows version is in PUBLIC BETA, NOW! Please check it out here.

NEW On1 Photo RAW 2017.6 – SUMMER SALE

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On1 Photo RAW 2017.6

For those who don’t yet have On1Photo – On1 is offering a 50% off sale – Ending August 31st! Price for everything below is just $49.99!!!
On1 Photo RAW is not JUST for RAW files – the power of this app extends WAY beyond RAW, and will do a BEAUTIFUL job of giving you creative control over your jpeg files, even files from your Camera Phone!

Here’s what you get with this free offer!

ON1 Photo RAW 2017.6

The next generation of ON1 with NEW Browse, Develop, Effects, Resize, and Layers. – $119.99

ON1 Master Course: Landscape Photography Workflow & ON1 Photo RAW 2017.6

Learn how to bring your landscapes to life with Matt Kloskowski’s workflow in ON1 Photo RAW 2017.6. View details » – $49.99

Portrait & Studio Photography Video Course

This video series by ON1 gurus Liz LePage & Hudson Henry covers everything you need to know about Portrait & Studio Photography. View details » – $29.99

Hudson Henry Core Landscape ON1 Presets

10 fundamental presets for every landscape photographer to add to their collection, packaged with a special instructional video for how to create your own similar styles for your photos. View details » – $14.99

Hudson Henry Core Portrait ON1 Presets

10 fundamental presets for every portrait photographer to add to their collection, packaged with a special intructional video for how to create your own beautiful styles for your photos. View details » – $14.99

TOTAL VALUE – $229.95

YOUR PRICE: $49.99

ON1 Photo RAW! Version 2017.6, is a free update for product owners, is available for immediate download.ON1 Photo RAW 2017.6 includes more new features, speed improvements, and many other updates. In addition, we’ve included many fixes for issues reported by ON1 customers.

Mac OS X:
http://ononesoft.cachefly.net/photoraw2017/mac/3844/ON1_Photo_RAW_2017.dmg

Windows:
http://ononesoft.cachefly.net/photoraw2017/win/3844/ON1_Photo_RAW_2017.exe

What’s new in ON1 Photo RAW 2017.6:

– Fast Preview Mode — When you have just come back from a shoot and you want to dive in a view hundreds or even thousands of photos, Fast Preview Mode lets you rip through them faster than anything. No need to catalog them first.

– Browse Performance Improvements — We have made Browsing ever faster than it was! It loads thumbnails and fit-screen previews faster and it remembers more so that it will be even faster than next time you view the same photos.

– Cataloged Folders — Indexed folders, one of the most powerful features in Browse, have grown-up into Cataloged Folders. Your cataloged folders are scanned and kept up-to-date automatically. Large previews are generated in the background to make browsing much faster too. The powerful database behind Cataloged Folders enabled fast searching and viewing across folders and drives.

– Kelvin Color Temp — When processing RAW photos, the color temperature range is now measured in Kelvin degrees, giving you a larger and more accurate range to make adjustments.

– Rotate Photos Anywhere — Now you can rotate photos in any view in Browse, Develop or Effects.

– Compressed Photoshop Files — When you export or create Photoshop PSD files, they are now losslessly compressed, making them half the size they used to be.

– Other Improvements — Zooming and panning the photo is more intuitive. The Crop tool now remembers the last used used crop settings

– Photo Via improvements — Updated support for new Google and Dropbox sign-in versions. updated, labels improved, bugs fixed.

– Increased the maximum amount of motion blur.

– Added Lens Correction for fixed-lens cameras.

– Added support for the Canon 6D Mark II, Olympus TG-5, Nikon D7500, Leica TL2, Canon Rebel SL2/200D

– Other bug fixes and performance improvements

Happy World Photography Day!!!

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It’s a day to celebrate the beautiful art of Photography, and to honor it, MacPhun has written an fascinating article named 20 Photography Facts

Remember, MacPhun has a few GREAT apps for editing your photos after you’ve shot them.

MacPhun Luminar Neptune – a powerful image editor  – always available for Mac, and now in Public Beta for Windows – and

MacPhun Aurora HDR 2018 – entering pre-order on 9/12/17, and being released on 9/28/17 – both Mac and a new Windows version

Go out, Get Photos, Make Your Memories!!!

AURORA HDR 2018 Coming soon for Mac and Windows!

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Aurora HDR 2018 will be available for pre-order on September 12nd, and released on September 28th. Sign up HERE to be notified when Pre-Order opens!

About Aurora HDR:

Aurora HDR is not just a tool for merging bracketed images, it also provides numerous tools and countless options to create perfect HDR photos for every taste – from one-click presets and advanced tone-mapping, to layers, noise reduction and powerful luminosity masking controls.

Aurora HDR’s Key Features:

  • Total HDR editing experience with the most complete set of tools available.
  • Fast, powerful RAW processing engine.
  • Tone-mapping algorithm to achieve both realistic and dramatic HDR images.
  • Over 70 presets that give photos an amazing HDR look in just one click.
  • Luminosity masking that automatically makes advanced selections within HDR images based on the Zone System.
  • Unique layer system that supports blend modes, custom textures and using original exposures as source images.
  • Image Radiance, brushes, masks, lighting, vignettes and much more help users achieve their artistic vision
  • Highly versatile batch processing
  • Works as a standalone app, or a plug-in to Photoshop and Lightroom

A sneak peek into what’s new in Aurora HDR 2018:

  • Lens Correction Tool – The new Lens correction filter easily fixes all kinds of lens distortion, from barrel to pincushion, to chromatic aberration and vignetting.
  • New User Interface – Redesigned from scratch, the modern and responsive user interface brings a powerful, yet joyful experience to HDR photo editing.
  • Cross-platform version – Aurora HDR 2018 will be available both for Mac and PC users. Files are interchangeable and mixed-computer households can share the same product key.
  • Speed Improvements – Up to 4x improvement in RAW image processing, and up to 200% faster merging and masking performance means that Aurora HDR 2018 is dramatically faster than the last version.

Availability:

Aurora HDR 2018 will be availabe for pre-order on September 12, and released on September 28.

Pricing:

Mixed-computer households can share the same product key for Mac and PC that can be activated on 5 devices.

Pre-order:

  • Current users of Aurora HDR may upgrade at a special pre-order price of $49
  • New users can purchase Aurora HDR 2018 at a special pre-order price of $89
  • A collection of bonuses will also be included with every purchase.

Retail price:

  • $59 for current Aurora HDR users
  • $99 for new users

 

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

Unlimited Cloud Backup – $50/year

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It happened. My backup hard drive used for my daily backup died. It was one of those 4TB MyBooks, that is made up of a RAID of 2, 2TB disks. On that SAME day, I had to teach an online class, which often somehow screws up my Time Machine (which takes ages to fix, but is doable, and got done). BUT, I still felt my data was safe in the event of a serious problem because I’d just renewed my subscription (I’d gotten an initial free 3 month trial) for BackBlaze. I figured that having ALL my other work data on the cloud for only $50/year wasn’t a bad idea – and indeed it wasn’t!

BackBlaze doesn’t back up my operating system, applications or parts of my user folder, but I have several other terabytes of data that sits on my startup and other connected drives. I live in earthquake country and my office electrical is… let’s say… overloaded. I was given a gift of a new 4TB multi-interface replacement backup drive so I can have my local backup again (nice gift, right?)- AND I ALWAYS HAVE A SEPARATE LOCAL CLONED BACKUP OF MY STARTUP DRIVE – but for $50 I had peace of mind – and that’s a great thing!

Check them out at www.BackBlaze.com.