Innholdsfortegnelse for 06/12/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Adobe does not rule the photo-editing world. Photoshop and Lightroom are fine, as far as they go, but there are important and compelling reasons for choosing software from other publishers. Raw processing quality is one. Adobe Camera Raw, which comes with Adobe Photoshop and is the processing engine within Lightroom and Lightroom Classic, will not always get the best from your raw files. Capture One and DxO PhotoLab are actually better at combining noise control and fine detail rendition. Creative presets and ‘looks’ are another. Lightroom presets can be varied and interesting, but those in other programs go way further. If you need inspiration in your photography, there are plenty of programs that can provide it, like Exposure X7 and ON1 Photo RAW. Maybe you resent paying ongoing subscriptions to…

Testbench SOFTWARE TEST At a glance £125 Essential edition £199 Elite edition ● Raw workflow software ● Mac and Windows ● Features DxO’s DeepPRIME science ● DeepPRIME XD (Elite edition only) ● 30-day trial version available ● www.dxo.com DxO, the company with PureRaw and the Nik Collection in its stable, has revamped its flagship editing and workflow software. The updates to PhotoLab 6 from the previous version aren’t huge but they are significant and worthwhile if you want the best image quality, especially from high ISO images. DxO has possibly the best raw de-mosaicing and de-noising technology available in any software, although I’m sure ON1 and Topaz will have a view on that. It started with Prime, which evolved to the even more effective DeepPRIME. In PhotoLab 6, the…

Across 750 pages, 370 photographs and 22 stories, Marc Wilson’s photobook, A Wounded Landscape: Bearing Witness To The Holocaust (AWL), captures the experiences of individuals who survived or were murdered in the Holocaust. Six years in the making, it’s fair to say that in producing the work, Marc’s soul took a pummelling. His latest project, Remnants, was much gentler on his senses. A collaboration with Italian architect and researcher Marco Ferrari, Remnants explores both the historical and ecological aspects of First World War mountain forts of the Trentino-Alto Adige region of northern Italy. ‘Most of the research had been done already,’ Marc explains. ‘I went to Italy in 2021 and ended up doing two location trips of three weeks each. There were 30-40 places I wanted to visit. I arrived,…

UNIT STILLS PHOTOGRAPHY In 2000 I was on assignment for the Sunday Times Magazine photographing production of The Fast Show, a BBC comedy sketch show that ran from 1994 to 1997, with specials in 2000 and 2014. I’d been on location with the cast in Middlesbrough, where the atmosphere was relaxed and enjoyable, but my final day of shooting in Studio 1 at BBC Television Centre in London was tense. An A-list celebrity was expected, security was tight, and I was told not to approach the luminary codenamed Juan Profundo. On the way to the toilet, actor Johnny Depp stepped out. A huge fan of the show, he was making a cameo as a hapless customer in the ‘Suit you, sir’ sketch. I introduced myself and negotiated what I needed,…

Testbench SOFTWARE TEST At a glance $8.90 monthly (approx £7.50) $150 per year (approx £125) ● Facial mapping for face editing ● Auto selection tools for sky replacement ● Photomerging now includes panorama stitching ● www.acdsee.com Monopolies aren’t healthy for anyone, so it is always good to see imaging software applications evolving to counter the dominance of Adobe. I don’t have anything at all against Adobe, and the company is powerful in this area for a number of very good reasons – I just like healthy competition. Many other applications have a range of strong points, but so many weak spots and missing features that I often find myself going back to Photoshop for my everyday needs. ACDSee’s Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 seems to cover most bases that are…

● £29.99 ● www.nisioptics.co.uk IF YOU regularly use a tripod, you’ll know that most tripod heads rotate the camera off to one side when shooting in portrait format. That’s fine with lightweight loads, but with heavy camera and lens combinations it can be a recipe for instability. L-brackets aim to solve this problem by allowing the camera to be fixed directly above the centre column for portrait-format shooting. However, many are matched to a specific camera model which makes them expensive, while so-called ‘universal’ designs are rarely a perfect fit to any given camera. NiSi has addressed this problem in an unusual way, by making its ‘universal’ L plate in four variants, called NLP-C, NLP-S, NLP-C(G) and NLP-S(G). All fit standard Arca-Swiss type-clamps and have a 4cm-long slot for the…

Putting Ourselves in the Picture by Fast Forward Women in Photography £25, Trolley Books, hardback, 248 pages, ISBN: 9781907112690 As a collective, the aim of Fast Forward: Women in Photography is to empower women to use photography in pertinent ways to tell stories about their own lives. The book, Putting Ourselves in the Picture, engages with groups of refugee and migrant women and nonbinary people whose stories are the focus of this new book. Through photography workshops and mentorship delivered across the UK, the aim of this series is to confront gender discrimination and the marginalisation of women in our societies. An interesting look at how photography can be used for good, it demonstrates the power that the medium has to bring people together. The Monocle Book of Photography: Reportage…

LETTER OF THE WEEK What’s the difference? As a devoted reader for decades, I’m always keen to read the latest camera reviews, more out of curiosity than any desire or financial wherewithal to upgrade. My last move a couple of years ago still more than suits my needs. Which leads me to the question ‘What am I missing?’ when it comes to the latest cameras, some boasting sensors of 40MP or more. Having studied your published shots I’m pushed to see much difference in the array of great shots taken with a broad spread of cameras. Some fellow readers could argue that your page size is not the best test but among my circle of camera buffs anything much above A4 size is the exception and not the rule. Camera…

Testbench SOFTWARE TEST At a glance £59.99 ● Genuine pro Photoshop alternative ● Version 2 brings new features ● Layers, masks and retouching tools ● HDR merge, panoramas, focus stacking ● Adjustment layers and Live Filters ● affinity.serif.com Affinity Photo 2 is just about the closest direct alternative to Photoshop on the market. As with Photoshop, it’s designed for sophisticated, detailed and advanced image manipulation, though it can also be used for relatively quick and simple image enhancements too. Like Photoshop, Affinity Photo is an all-round design tool, not just a photo editor. It supports vector graphics for creating illustrations and type layers for adding text. It’s clear that the design community is where much of Affinity’s focus lies. But what we’re looking at here specifically is Affinity Photo…