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MacPhun Aurora 2018 PreOrder for Mac and Windows – SPECIAL PRICING!

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The pre-order of Aurora HDR 2018 starts on September 12th for both Windows and Mac Versions!

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.

Offer Availability:

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

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
  • Travel Photography Tutorial by Matt Granger
  • Source Brackets
  • 3-month Zenfolio Pro website, including a complementary design consultation. $60 value.

What’s new in Aurora HDR 2018:

  • Next-generation Tone Mapping – A new smart Tone Mapping algorithm automatically reduces noise, and produces more realistic and natural initial results.
  • Mac and Windows versions – Aurora HDR 2018 is available both for Mac and PC users, enabling mixed-computer households to share the same product key.
  • Lens Correction Tool* – The new Lens Correction filter easily fixes all kinds of lens distortion, from barrel and pincushion to chromatic aberration and vignetting.
  • Transform Tool* – Easily scale, rotate and shift your image to better fit your vision.
  • Dodge & Burn Filter – Selectively lighten or darken specific areas of an image to artfully direct your viewer’s eye towards the key subject of your image, similar to a traditional darkroom technique.
  • HDR Enhance Filter – Adds details and clarity to an image, adjusting colors, details and contrast without creating artificial halos or other problems.
  • User Interface – A new, modern and responsive user interface brings a powerful, yet  joyful experience to HDR photo editing.
  • History Panel – An easy-to-reference list of edits made to your image, the History panel allows you to click on any editing step to revert the photo to an earlier stage of editing.
  • Touch Bar support for Mac – Aurora HDR 2018 adds Touch Bar support to give new MacBook Pro users fast access to key editing features and speed up their workflow.
  • Image Flip and Rotate* – Perfect for correcting photos with incorrect horizons or making creative compositions or other stylistic changes to an image.
  • IMPROVED:  New Structure Algorithm – The re-developed Structure tool allows you to adjust detail and clarity of an image to get a classic HDR effect with great detail or a smoother effect with less details.
  • IMPROVED: RAW handling – An improved RAW conversion brings out more details in shadows/highlights, displays colors more accurately and reduces noise in RAW files.
  • IMPROVED: Crop tool update – Now specify custom crop sizes for even more versatility.
  • IMPROVED: Speed – Faster merging and masking performance, improvement in RAW image processing.

* Lens Correction and Transform tools, as well as image flip and rotate will be available in the Mac version at launch, and arrive in the PC version with the first free update in the beginning of October. Other tools and features that are currently available for Mac only would be added to PC version by the end of the year.

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!

 

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!!!

On1 Photo RAW 2017.5 Has Issued a New Update

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Today, On1 Officially announced their release yesterday of their update to On1 Photo RAW 2017.5 (to build# 11.5.1.3760).

ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 is the lightning fast photo organizer, raw processor, layered photo editor and effects app all-in-one. Unlike the current class of raw processors requiring cataloging, bouncing between apps for editing, and a subscription ecosystem, ON1 Photo RAW 2017 features a new, modern raw processing engine, tuned for today’s sensors and graphics chips. Combined with our current set of tools, the next generation of ON1 Photo 10.5, will continue to work where you want, as a standalone app, a plug-in for Adobe® Photoshop® & Lightroom®, or a host app for other editing apps.

Here’s What’s New:

This is the fifth maintenance release for ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5. It addresses several issues that where discovered after the 2017.5 release. It is recommended for all users. Here are some of the biggest improvements and fixes:

  • Fixed a performance issue with Noise Reduction that was causing loading and exporting to be slow
  • Added a preference to disable Lens Correction by default for Raw photos
  • Improvements to the Clone Stamp tools to make the results consistent, remove a flicker and make it a little faster
  • Fixed an issue where the tool cursor can get stuck in the pan tool mode
  • Removed a flicker in Browse detail view
  • The Navigator is not updating in real time
  • Fixed and issue where thumbs where not drawing in after rename
  • Fixed export results not matching preview when using some esoteric blending modes
  • Fixed random pixels appearing in dark shadows
  • Fixed the Haze & Structure slider is not exporting properly from Develop
  • Fixed an issue where the Sony ILCE-6500 (A6500) raws did not fully render
  • Fixed a rare crash with lens correction
  • Fixed an export failure when the photo has bad GPS in XMP
  • Fixed a rare issue where lens correction is causing solid color to appear with certain RAW files.
  • Keyword search so no longer case sensitive
  • Fixed a crash when using the last filter command via Photoshop
  • Fixed a crash while zooming to 100 whilst adding a preset
  • Fixed a couple issues that caused thumbnails to not render
  • Fixed color Noise Reduction defaults to reduce color bleed
  • Fixed an issue where noise reduction appeared different in the exported photo
  • Fixed an issue where the exported file looses Exposure Program Exif Metadata
  • Now you can Send to Photoshop Elements from Browse
  • Fixed a rare issue where some directories did not appear in Browse on Windows
  • User edited capture dates now display correctly
  • Lots of additional bug fixes and performance improvements

To Download a FREE 30 DAY DEMO of this software, please click HERE.

 

 

If you already own On1 Photo RAW, take a look at these beautiful Lightroom presets.

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

$20 OFF MacPhun Aurora HDR – 72 hours ONLY!

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From June 27-June 30, 2017 MacPhun is offering Aurora HDR 2017 for it’s lowest prices ever!

Pricing as low as:

  • $39 for Aurora HDR 2016 users (instead of $49)
  • $59 for Aurora HDR Basic/AppStore users(instead of $59)
  • $79 for all new users(instead of $99).

You Get:

  • Aurora HDR 2017 – The most awarded HDR photo editor for Mac
  • Trey’s Expansion Preset Pack – 26 presets from Pro Photographe and HDR guru, Trey Ratcliff

ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 – New Features & Performance Updates – Now Available

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ON1, Inc. announced ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5, the latest update to their all-in-one photo organizer, editor, raw processor and effects app for macOS® and Microsoft® Windows®. Version 2017.5 adds powerful new features optimized for performance and ease of use.

ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 Enhancements Include:

 

  • LENS CORRECTION – The new Lens Correction pane will automatically detect supported lenses and reduce distortion, chromatic aberration and peripheral fall-off
  • COMPARE MODE– Select a series of photos (up to 15) and zoom and pan each of them all at the same time
  • DETAILS PANE – Sharpening and Noise Reduction are improved and have been merged into a new Details Pane in Develop for global corrections tailored for raw photos giving better results in both areas
  • IMPROVED SEARCH – Search using a variety of metadata fields and decide if the search must match all or any of the search criteria
  • CLONE STAMP – The powerful clone stamp retouching tool from Layers is now inside Develop and Effects as part of the non-destructive workflow
  • STACKING PRESETS– The Insert Preset command is now available to stack presets in Effects
  • IMPROVED PRESET MANAGEMENT – Delete and rename preset categories as well as export categories for sharing and back-up
  • LIGHTROOM® MIGRATION ASSISTANT­– Migrate photos, their metadata and collections from Lightroom to ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5
  • CAMERA UPDATES – Apple iPad Pro 9.7, Canon EOS T7i/ 800D / Kiss X9i, Canon EOS M6, Canon EOS 77D / 9000D, Fuji X100F (compressed), Huawei Mate 9, Panasonic LX10, Olympus Pen F, Panasonic DC-ZS70 / TZ90, Pentax KP, Olympus E-PL3, Sony?NEX5n, and Sony Alpha ILCE 9
  • UPDATES AND BUG FIXES ­– Several more performance upgrades and bug fixes including reduced memory footprint, increased stability and fixed user-reported issues

 

Price and Availability
ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 is available today with an introductory price of $99.99, regularly $119.99. Previous owners of ON1 Photo (or Perfect Photo Suite) can upgrade for just $79.99, regularly $99.99. For a limited time, ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 is bundled with some excellent training materials. Four ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 Master Courses by industry leading educator Matt Kloskowski and Director of Product Dan Harlacher are free with purchase. Also included is activation via user account for up to five computers. A full-functioning 30-day free trial is also available for download from the ON1 website.

About ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5

The NEW all-in-one photo organizer, editor, raw processor, and effects app is just what photographers have been waiting for. It includes the best new and must-have ON1 editing features and tools for opening, viewing, and editing photos in an instant. The next generation of ON1 Photo works as a standalone photo editor, a plug-in for Adobe® Photoshop® & Lightroom®, or a host app for other editing apps.

 

ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 also supports the key online storage services, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft’s OneDrive. ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 works on both macOS and Microsoft Windows. Version 2017.5 also supports Adobe® Photoshop® CC or CS6, Lightroom® CC/6, 5, Photoshop Elements® 15, 14 and 13.

 

ON1 Isn’t Done Yet
There are still more free updates coming to ON1 Photo RAW 2017.5 this summer. Prioritizing user feedback is a top priority for the company. ON1 President Craig Keudell states, “We can’t be successful unless we listen to the photography community.  Our main goal and something people rarely see from other companies, is the transparency with the way we develop our products. Several features and improvements in this release are the result of feedback from the ON1 community.” Today, ON1 users can go to the ON1 Photo Project and submit ideas and feature requests. Every submission is reviewed and the more votes each idea or submission gets, the higher the likelihood it will get added into development of the app.

 

About ON1

ON1 was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. It is a privately held company consisting of a team of professional photographers, photography enthusiasts and software experts who share a passion for photography.

 

For over ten years, ON1 has delivered upon the ON1 promise of saving photographers time and frustration editing their photos so they can spend more time behind the camera. The ON1 promise includes the belief customers should have complete control of their photography software.  From the feature set, training topics important to them, the workflow they choose (plug-in or standalone app), the preferred computing platform or cloud service, or even how they purchase their software (subscription or a perpetual license). With ON1, the customer is in complete control of their photography experience today, tomorrow and well into the future.

InDesign – A Free Script to Rotate Single Characters INSIDE a Text Frame

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InDesignSecrets.com has shared a link to a script that FINALLY allows us to rotate selected characters INSIDE a text box in InDesign. The text remains editable and the effect can be applied to individual letters, selected character, and/or dingbats. So VERY handy!!!

https://indesignsecrets.com/free-script-to-rotate-selected-characters.php

Google Bought the NIK Collection, Made it Free, and Aren’t Updating It

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The NIK Photoshop plugin collection’s been a staple in my system for many years. It’s sharpening algorithm, it’s controls have always had a strong place along with all my other plugins, and I’ve made great use of it throughout the years.

A few years ago, Google bought it, and made it FREE! That was great, and they even updated the software a few times. But, on the Mac, they stopped updating past OSX 10.10 Yosemite, on Windows, they stopped updating past Windows 8, and for Photoshop, their last compatible version is with Photoshop 2015.

THANKS GOOGLE, for buying something, ensuring it’s not profitable for you, and leaving us in the lurch…

OR DID THEY? Thank goodness for One1. They’re releasing the version Photo Raw 2017.5 in just a few days. MacPhun is not only excellent on the Mac, but they’re finishing up their first BETA of their Luminar and Aurora HDR software for Windows machine. Both of these have options very much like those offered in NIK, and they’re committed to continuing their development for years to come!

By the way – my FAVORITE software for Up-Rezzing images (when necessary) used to be Genuine Fractals – which is now On1 Perfect Resize – part of their Photo Raw software!

To check these apps out – take a look here:
On1 Photo RAW – and check out their On1 software, and On1PLUS – an amazing and unique training center for the use of On1 software

MacPhun Software – and check out their current deal with Plotagraph Pro! Don’t forget to use coupon code SGANS_DISC on checkout, if you choose to buy the software.

I’m finally about to upgrade to Sierra… Bye Bye, NIK….

MacPhun Aurora HDR and Plotagraph Offer EXTENDED!

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Firstly – I need you all to know – MacPhun has their apps for Windows machine in BETA – you will soon be able to get all these cool features I’ve been touting on Windows!

But, I’m really writing to let you know that the Aurora HDR and Plotagraph Offer has been extended until Sunday – June 4th!

Plotagraph Pro allows you to animate PART of an image and create video or animated gifs to use. Check out my first attempts at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_7zXumUEow
https://youtu.be/V4suaTH-noo

This offer is available for as low as $89 (a $186 value) if you use coupon code SGANS_DISC at checkout.

Click here to see the deal!

A Useful Clarification of the Term “Image Resolution” in Digital Images

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In so many of my classes, particularly Photoshop, Digital Photography and the Video applications, we discuss image resolution – or DPI – dots per inch (or PPI – pixels per inch). For the most part, my students seem to grasp the concepts from when I teach in (as I describe it) “Stephanese“. But here’s another discussion on the subject – this time in “CreativeBloqese“.

Check out this article from CreativeBloq.com for further clarification on the subject of pixel resolution (height/width/depth) of an image for print and for screen viewing:
http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/what-is-dpi-image-resolution-71515673/2