Flight From Callahan County

 DxO has recently released version 2 of DxO PureRAW, an automated tool that prepares raw files as DNGs for work in your favorite photo editor or outputs JPGs ready for uploading to social media or your image archives. If you are not familiar with the original PureRAW, the app borrows some of the features in DxO PhotoLab Elite, the highly-regarded raw converter, to automatically produce demosaicing, denoising, optical correction and lens sharpening of raw files. Noise reduction choices include Noise Reduction HQ, Prime, and perhaps the best noise reduction on the market, DeepPRIME. DxO says you can gain up to two stops in low light because of ability to clean up the noise. DxO PureRAW can speed the workflow in your process of achieving the best quality rendering of raw files.  Version 2 of PureRAW contains three new features:  support for a Lightroom workflow, including a Lightroom plugin,  support for a Mac Finder/Windows Explorer workflow and  support for Fujif...

I recently discovered a posting by an amateur photographer on YouTube with directions for changing or adding thumbnails to preset categories shown in the left Presets tab of ON1 Photo RAW 2022.1. I was interested because I have collected a lot of these presets in recent years while using Photo RAW.  This screen grab of the ON1 Photo RAW Browse module shows the way preset categories (the two columns on the left) are displayed. The two generic squares outlined in yellow are older categories with no thumbnails.  Older preset categories and some new ones from third-party providers have no thumbnails, and it can become a bit more difficult with so many generic squares displayed. The YouTube directions identified a method to add thumbnails to the preset categories, but the procedure was complicated. It did not work sometimes. Dylan Kotecki, online trainer for ON1, posted this video about using and modifying presets in an earlier version of Photo RAW, but he did not cover the topic ...

 Version 12.0.1 (Monterey) of the macOS provides the infrastructure for many of the powerful features available in the newest version of Pixelmator Pro. To use some of them, you don't have to be running Pixelmator Pro. They can be accessed from Finder utilizing macOS Shortcuts. One of my Pixelmator favorites is Remove Background with Quick Actions in Finder. Here's a free image taken by photographer Alessia Chinazzo and made available on Unsplash. To remove the background using the magic of Pixelmator Pro, in Finder navigate to the folder with the photo and select it. Right-click and scroll down to Quick Actions, then Left-click on Remove Background.  The machine learning tool in Pixelmator Pro begins working its magic. The time this operation takes depends on the speed of your system and the size and complexity of the photo selected. On my iMac, removal of the background of this JPEG took just a few seconds. And there it is -- a transparent image of the subject with the backg...

 I have just discovered an image app that may completely replace and streamline my photo editing workflow. It's Pixelmator Pro 2.3 Abracadabra , just released earlier this week. Pixelmator's graphic, introducing the latest version of this Mac-only image editing app. Making the transition to a Mac from Windows a few years ago, I stuck with the traditional multi-platform image editing software when I moved to my new system. I found alternatives to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, but they were all available for Windows, too. I saw an occasional reference to Pixelmator, but paid little attention because it was Mac only. Little attention until I recently watched a YouTube video  by Austin photographer Jim Nix. I purchased Pixelmator Pro a few days ago at a Black Friday sale price of about $16 USD. Normally the price is $39.99 USD, still a bargain for this powerful application. Layers-based Pixelmator Pro does all that most amateur photographers need and most of what all enthusiast a...

Stamp is a weathered feature in PhotoLine for painting “stickers” on an image to create borders or other decorative effects. This attribute is similar to brushes found in apps like Affinity Photo and ON1 Photo RAW. To apply the tool in PhotoLine, select a stamp, then drag the cursor across the image to add a curved or straight line of various-angled stickers. The Stamp brush can be resized before clicking by CMD+Left Mouse Button and dragging. Use the Intensity slider in the PhotoLine Tool Settings to add a level of transparency, if desired. This is one of the stamps included in PhotoLine, this one representing the app itself. It has been enlarged beyond its optimum size, suffering from a severe case of jaggies. Note the placement of the "i" and the "e" compared to the other letters. An indication that no time was spent on designing this stamp. The sticker concept, once very popular with scrapbookers, originated in version 5 of the old JASC Paintshop Pro, where they...

Recently I tested a 16mm extension tube on my Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm f1.8 lens. I wanted to verify the combination could be used for impromptu macro work, thereby limiting the the number of lenses and the weight of my camera bag on trips. This rig works, but restrictions include inability to alter the extremely shallow depth of field, and focus only by changing the camera-to-subject distance. Here's a JPEG from the original noisy raw test file shot at high ISO. 75mm lens with 16mm extension tube When I used one of the new noise reduction apps on this file, the results were extremely disappointing. That led to this "eyeball" comparison of four non-Adobe products for cleaning up noise in digital images. Here's my ranking of the four products. Fourth: ON1 NoNoise AI ON1 NoNoise AI out-of-the-box setting ON1 released their artificial intelligence noise reduction application several months ago as a standalone product. It is scheduled to become part of the non-dest...

 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...

 I'm an amateur photographer who likes to tinker with my raw images. The process involves many different Photoshop plugins, but I don't use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom. My two raw converters, DxO PhotoLab and ON1 Photo RAW, don't run external plugins. That means using one of two third-party photo editors, Affinity Photo or PhotoLine, to apply one or more plugins after first processing the raw files or creating a TIF file in Photo RAW to run a plugin standalone. The result can be a very convoluted workflow. A solution may be coming soon. ON1 will release ON1 Photo RAW 2022 late this month, and the company has announced the app will run Photoshop plugs as a layer filter, making the plugins part of a non-destructive workflow. If all of the plugins I use are compatible, it will be a real time-saver. We'll soon know.

ON1 Software’s non-destructive raw photo converter/editor, Photo RAW 2020, is now in public beta with the official release scheduled for next month. I have been using this software for several versions now, and the latest release has some impressive features. Here are the most useful changes I have found: First, the presets in the Browser are either brand new or remodeled previous offerings. After selecting a preset, there’s a slider for controlling the intensity without having to open the Effects module. The black and white film presets appear to have been reworked and much better than those in RAW 2019. Second, the Develop module in much improved. The Auto button does a better job of balancing the contrast in a troublesome image without blowing the highlights. There’s an AI Match option that shows you to change to the look of the image you saw in the camera EVF when you took the picture. After choosing either Auto or AI Match, a master-control slider change...