Flight From Callahan County

 As an amature photographer interested in composites and image stylization, I love the use of machine learning/artificial intelligence now being incorporated in editing software. It speeds the workflow tremendously, but some features still need a little work. One of those is sky replacement. The software I use now does a good job of recognizing tree branches, leaves and large buildings sticking above the horizon. However, when it comes to automatically masking thin metal framework or structures like windmills extending into the middle or top area of the image, the software still needs more time in the classroom. The image below is a good example. Both ON1 Photo RAW 2022.1 and Skylum Luminar Neo Early Access masked the trees successfully, however they badly blew proper recognition of the blades and tower of the wind turbine, requiring a significant amount of time to correct. A second area of AI/ML problems is replacement of utility lines. Skylum Luminar Neo -- now with a limited-fea...

 The folks at Skylum Software have released what they call an Early Access Version of Luminar NEO to customers who have advanced-purchased this new software. This decision puts Skylum in the category of software publishers who promote public "beta" testing of forthcoming versions. Serif's Affinity products and Computer Insel's PhotoLine are two apps testing this way for a long time. Skylum's primary purpose of Early Access is to seek feedback on their Relight AI, Dust Spot Removal AI and Power Lines Removal AI features. In addition, the early access will help quiet criticism of the company for failing to meet the earlier announced release time of last month. For those of us eager to get our hands on the product, it's a chance to finally see how at least part of the product will work. Early Access is missing layers and numerous other features coming later, but based on my experience with free stock photos and my own raw images shot with Olympus cameras, I am im...

ON1 Photo RAW 2022 I had been looking forward to the December 20th update to ON1 Photo RAW 2022. Improvements and fixes were promised, including tweaking of the sky replacement tool. ON1 Photo RAW has been my primary start-to-finish raw file converter and editor for over a year now. However, several weeks ago Photo RAW began to crash on my 2017 iMac. ON1 support provided me with instructions for the time-consuming uninstall-and-reinstall process to get it working again. However, they could not replicate my crashes with the sample files and logs I sent them. Support indicated because ON1 is a small company, they could not spend more time trying to solve my problem. What I discovered was the digital asset manager I had been using -- Photo Supreme -- altered the Firmware cell in the EXIF data to read "Photo Supreme..." in JPG and TIF images. When ON1 encounters one of these JPG images, it shuts down. Using the Batch processor in ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac 8, I have been able to...

 It's that time of year -- announcements of new photo editing software -- and Skylum, publishers of Luminar AI and Aurora -- has just revealed a new product, again angering its customer base. A few days ago, Skylum had zoom calls with its photographer-ambassadors to reveal the planned winter release of Luminar NEO , a new product that's not compatible with Luminar AI. When Luminar AI was introduced, existing Luminar users complained because AI dropped layers. Now, layers from Luminar 4 will be back in NEO, but existing users are again indignant over incompatibility and other issues if you believe the responses to the ambassadors' YouTube postings . The Skylum announcement does not surprise me.  My impression is that Skylum (formerly Macphun) is an innovative company with no long-range strategy for building a base of satisfied customers. An engineer has an idea for a new tool. They build a new app to sell around that idea, then move ahead next year with a new sales scheme f...