Lightroom Classic’s masking tools use a combination of AI subject recognition and regular brush and gradient tools to offer huge scope for local adjustments and enhancements. But you can get even more control by using masks in combination – in other words, with ‘sub-masks’.

There are many situations where this can be useful, but our sample image shows a very common one – where you want to darken a sky progressively towards the horizon but without darkening any buildings or other objects that jut up into the sky.

In our example, a linear gradient produces the right gradual darkening but would also darken the building. A sky mask would darken the whole sky, right down to the horizon without any natural gradation in tone.

But by ‘intersecting’ a sky mask and a linear gradient, we can get a gradual tonal gradation that affects only the sky. Our cheat sheet shows the location of the key Lightroom Classic masking controls.

Masking mode

To create and edit masks in Lightroom Classic you need to swap to the masking mode. This panel will give you a list of mask types to choose from. When you choose one, it appears in the Masks panel which opens out to the left of the tools sidebar.

Main mask

The Masks panel will show the area affected by your mask as a tiny thumbnail. Each new mask you add to your photo will appear as a new thumbnail. Any or all of these masks can include sub-masks.

Sub-masks

Every mask will have at least one sub-mask. If you’ve just used a single masking tool it will still appear here. Sub-masks become important if you want to combine or edit the masks that Lightroom has created.

Sky mask

To demonstrate this powerful ‘intersect’ command we’ve started off with a sky mask and used the adjustment tools in the right sidebar to darken it. This produced a very ‘flat’ adjustment that didn’t look natural. This is a common issue with sky masks if they are used on their own.

Sky masks identify sky areas very well but don’t offer any natural gradation towards the horizon.

Linear mask 'intersected'

The ideal way to darken a sky progressively is with a linear mask, but these are indiscriminate in that they darken everything at the top of the frame whether it’s actually part of the sky or not.

This is where an ‘intersected’ sky mask and linear mask can achieve what’s needed – a progressive darkening of the sky with other objects in the foreground left untouched. The linear mask achieves the gradual tonal adjustment, while the sky mask restricts it to the sky alone.

Gradient sub-masks remain editable, e.g. you can move them around even if they’ve been ‘intersected’, added or subtracted from the mask.

Add/Subtract buttons

The Masks panel can look pretty busy, especially if you have all your masks expanded to show sub-masks too – so how do the Add/Subtract buttons fit in? In fact, they apply to the main mask you’ve selected. When you use them, they add new sub-masks. They do not apply to sub-masks.

Adjustment tools

Keep in mind that Lightroom’s local adjustment tools apply to the main mask. Any sub-masks you create simply change the area covered by the mask. These sub-masks do not have their own adjustments. If you need to create a new set of adjustments for a different part of the image then you will need a new mask.

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Take a look at the best photo editing software along with the best free photo editing software.

We as photographers spend thousands on modern digital sensors, then spend even more hours making them look like cheap film from the 70s and 80s. The irony is thick, but the trend is real. Film simulations are everywhere, from in-camera profiles to endless Lightroom preset collections promising that elusive "film look." 

Where does this come from? It’s partly Instagram aesthetics, and partly nostalgia for a format most digital photographers never got to interact with. There's a genuine reaction against the "digital look" too—that clinical sharpness and perfect color rendition that feels sterile compared to film's organic qualities. The problem is distinguishing between a legitimate creative tool and procrastination theatre.

The Fujifilm crowd understands this best. Its film simulations are baked into the shooting experience, informing how you see the scene through the viewfinder. That's different from the Lightroom preset collectors cycling through dozens of looks hoping something clicks. One approach shapes your vision. The other substitutes for developing one.

In the days of the darkroom, you chose your film to get the final look before you even took a photo. Using film simulations can be a legitimate technique when you understand what characteristics you're after. Grain structure, color response, highlight rolloff, latitude. Those are technical qualities that serve specific aesthetic goals. But blindly applying presets designed to match someone else's work most likely under completely different conditions? That's chasing aesthetics without understanding the whys and hows.

The workflow question matters too. Applying film looks in-camera forces commitment. You're making creative decisions while shooting, not deferring them to post. In Lightroom, film simulations can become another settings menu to obsess over rather than a tool that serves the work. How much time is spent tweaking grain versus actually shooting and improving?

There's a deeper issue about what we're really saying when we add grain and reduce sharpness to perfect digital files. Are modern sensors just too clean and sharp? Or have we just become accustomed to film's limitations as shorthand for authenticity? When does the film look actually serve your subject matter versus when it's comfort food for your post-processing?

The biggest trap, though, is chasing someone else's style instead of developing your own. Your lighting is different. Your subjects are different. Your camera processes color differently. Blindly applying someone else's recipe rarely produces the results you're expecting, and stunts your ability to (pardon the pun) develop your own recognisable style. 

Film simulations aren't the problem per se. The problem is treating them as a solution to not knowing what you want your images to look like. They become a substitute for vision rather than a tool to achieve it. 

If you consider Ansel Adams' views on previsualization, you should already know how you want the final photo to look. Yes, there is a creative gap initially, but blindly hoping for a look won’t get you there. 

If you shot actual film, you know what's being simulated. The latitude, the grain, the color shifts. You understand which characteristics matter for your work and which are just nostalgia. If you didn't, you're chasing a fantasy version of something you never experienced.

The honest question: does this film simulation serve your image, or are you just uncomfortable with what digital capture actually looks like? Sometimes the answer is the former. But, often it's the latter.

There are photos on my hard drive that I'm genuinely proud of. Technically strong, visually striking, and folks stop when they see them. They have absolutely no business being in my portfolio, and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to accept that.

We’re all guilty of it. You’ve made an image that earns real admiration, the temptation to make it the key photo in your portfolio is impossible to resist.

Here's the thing: a portfolio isn't a greatest hits compilation. It's a promise.

When a client opens your portfolio, they're not there to be impressed. They’re seeking an answer; can this photographer deliver what I need, and do it consistently? Every photo that doesn't fit your established style, no matter how good it is technically, introduces doubt where you need certainty. That stunning landscape you shot on holiday? The dramatic street portrait from a workshop weekend? If everything else you shoot is clean corporate headshots or crisp food photos, those outliers don't elevate the portfolio. They introduce doubt.

Impact and substance are not the same, and we shouldn’t confuse them. Impact is the immediate reaction — the sharp intake of breath. Substance is the strong foundation that gives confidence to a client when they scroll through your work and see the same eye, the same approach, the same excellent quality repeated image after image. Substance is what gets you hired.

The seductive part about a stunning outlier is that it feels like it can only help. But portfolios don't work on averages — they work on coherence. One image that doesn't belong shifts the viewer's attention from the work to the photographer, and not in a useful way. Instead of thinking "this person really understands corporate portraiture," they're thinking "this person has range, but what do they actually do?"

The hardest edit isn't cutting your weakest work. Any photographer can spot the failures with enough distance. The hard edit is removing the work you love that simply doesn't belong.

Your portfolio should feel inevitable. Image after image builds the same case, creating trust rather than demanding admiration. A client should reach the end feeling certain, not dazzled.

Keep the outliers. Post them on social, enter them for awards, put them in a personal project section. Just keep them out of the room where hiring decisions are made.

The photographers who work consistently aren't always the ones with the single best image. They have a body of great images. They're the ones clients can predict. In commercial photography, predictability isn't a weakness. It's the whole job.

Lightroom is about to speed up the process of retouching acne using a simple slider.

Tucked among the updates introduced during Adobe Max, Lightroom Mobile gained an early preview of a new blemish removal slider. While the slider is only an early preview and only on the mobile app for now, when I sat down with Adobe to demo the new Lightroom tools, the company indicated that it's planning to bring the tool to desktop versions of the popular photo editor in the future.

The blemish removal tool trades the often long process of manually using the healing brush to select each zit for a simple slider. Lightroom first analyzes the image to detect acne. Then, moving the slider to the right will automatically remove the acne.

Putting the tool on a slider gives photo editors the ability to choose how much retouching to do, choosing whether to remove just the largest acne spots or as much as the AI-based tool detects.

I tried out the new tool, using an image from Adobe Stock, and I was impressed at how quickly the slider managed to clean up acne on a portrait. The tool allows editors to select which person to edit in group portraits as well, or editors can choose to adjust everyone at once.

What’s perhaps most impressive, however, is that even moving the slider as far as it could go, the app still left a few freckles and moles intact. My personal editing philosophy is that I edit out anything that’s not there every day, like acne, but I leave in permanent marks like moles, freckles, and scars.

Sometimes, differentiating between a freckle and acne is difficult to do, so I’m glad to see that the slider doesn’t overdo the retouching.

For now, the early preview of the tool is only available on Lightroom Mobile. First, make sure you are using the most recent version of Lightroom Mobile. To find the slider, open an image in the app and tap the retouch menu. Select blemishes, then use the slider to adjust the result.

While I don’t typically edit much on my smartphone, the early preview on the mobile app has me eager for a similar tool to arrive in the photo editor’s desktop apps.

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Take a look at all the newest features in Adobe Lightroom, or learn how to use the new color variance slider in Lightroom.

As a photographer who has photographed more than a few weddings in 90°F heat, I’ve edited my fair share of red skin. But Lightroom just added a new slider that’s going to make correcting red skin far faster: Color Variance.

There are a handful of new tools in the Lightroom October 2025 update that I’m particularly excited about as a portrait and wedding photographer, and Color Variance is one of them.

What is Color Variance in Lightroom?

Color Variance is a slider that creates more or less variety in a selected color tone. Using the Color Vairance slider, photo editors can make a selected color range more uniform, or take the slider in the opposite direction to add more color contrast. That makes the tool useful for smoothing out color variations in skin tones, such as redness from heat or rosacea. But, the slider can also be used in the opposite direction and create more color contrast in landscapes and other shots.

Where is Color Variance located?

Color Variance is located in the Point Color tool, which is available on Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. The new tool can be applied to the entire image, or to a mask, such as applying the change only to the skin tone.

Find the Point Color tool inside the Color Mixer tab in Develop. Then, click on the eye dropper icon, hover over the color that you want to adjust, and click on that color. Now, the sliders in the Point Color tool will adjust the color that you’ve selected.

That includes the new Variance slider. (Adobe calls it Color Variance, but the slider is located in the Color tools and named Variance.) Move the slider to the left for less variety in that color range, such as if you want to create more even skin tones in a portrait. Move the slider to the right if you want to increase the variety of colors in that selected range.

What does Color Variance in Lightroom do?

Decreasing Color Variance is a helpful tool for editing skin. Decreasing the color variance can help correct things like redness from heat. In this particular scenario, editors may want to use a Smart Mask over the skin; otherwise, the edit may also affect the colors in the subject's lips.

Take a look at this photo from Adobe Stock:

First, I masked out the subject’s skin so my adjustments wouldn’t affect the lips. Then, I selected the skin color in Point Color. Look at the before and after when I take that Variance slider all the way to the left:

Now, I like that the redness is gone, but the skin now looks a bit pale, so I adjusted the hue, luminance, and temp just a bit and ended up with this:

That process only took a few seconds, and I didn’t have to brush over specific patches of red skin.

Increasing Color Variance will help create more contrast in the colors without losing detail. If you have a photo of the fall colors, for example, and want to make the variety of different colors in the scene really pop, select one of those fall colors and take the slider to the right.

Take a look at the before and after here, where the only thing I did was move that Variance slider all the way to the right:

Like all Lightroom sliders, you probably don’t want to take the Variance slider all the way to the right or all the way to the left. Variance is a bit more subtle, but it makes a noticeable difference in editing skin or working to add contrast.

Color Variance can be used in conjunction with the other Point Color sliders. That includes the range slider. Range dictates how many colors similar to the one you selected are also impacted by the Point Color sliders, so if you want to adjust more or fewer colors with Color Variance, adjust the range.

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Dig into what else is new in Lightroom, or the new features inside Photoshop 2026.

The new Lightroom is here – and as a portrait and wedding photographer, I haven’t been this excited about a new feature since Adobe first introduced Smart Masks. Assisted Culling has arrived to help photographers quickly find the best shots, but there are a handful of new tools like automatic dust spot removal and even a new slider.

I tried out Lightroom’s newest features during Adobe Max in Los Angeles, and there are two that are going to make a big difference in my workflow – Assistive Culling and Color Variance. But, there are some smaller updates tucked inside the latest versions of Lightroom, too.

Here’s what’s new in Lightroom.

Assisted Culling

Assisted Culling is an AI-based tool that helps photographers sort through photos faster. The tool is available both in the import as well as the library for photos that have already been imported.

The AI is trained largely for portraits and people (sorry, landscape photographers) and it’s designed to weed out the shots with blinking eyes, the out-of-focus subjects, and exposure errors. Adobe does say that they are hoping to expand the tool to more genres, but in my tests, the tool worked best with images of people.

Assisted Culling is an Early Access feature, which means Adobe is still fine-tuning, but it’s available directly from Lightroom Classic and Lightroom without downloading the beta app.

I tried it out on my shots from Adobe Max, and the feature feels like a huge time saver. It weeded through my shots to eliminate the accidental captures and errors. The culling tool did a pretty good job of weeding out the images that weren’t quite in focus – though I did go through my rejects and mark one to keep that the AI thought was too underexposed.

Assisted Culling is available from the Library tab on Lightroom (it’s also available when importing, rather than after). Photographers can find the feature by selecting Assisted Culling > Cull. Select the folder to Cull, and then wait for Lightroom to analyze the shots.

Then, inside the Assisted Culling Panel, check what you want to select or reject by using the check boxes for tools like eyes open and subject focus. Use the slider to increase or decrease how "picky" the assistant is and how many shots you want to end up with. In the Auto Stack section, you can choose if you want to stack similar shots together and how.

The magic happens in the Batch Action section. Here, you can tell what you want Lightroom to do with the selects and rejects, including star ratings, flags, and color labels.

You can also review everything that Lightroom selected or rejected. If you want to keep a photo that Lightroom rejected, Control-click on the red X in the corner to mark it as a select instead, and vice versa for selects you want to reject.

Remove dust spots auto-magically

I can still remember the frustration of coming back from a beach shoot only to realize I had gotten sand on my lens, and I was in for a lot of tedious editing. But Lightroom can now automatically detect and remove sensor dust spots for you. The AI tool is trained specifically for lens and sensor dust, so it may not work as well on other types of spots.

Open the photo that needs the correction in the Develop tab and navigate to the remove tool. Under the Distraction Removal section, select Dust and then click Apply.

The software will then find and place a healing brush over the spots automatically. Those corrections show up like a regular heal brush, so you can click and delete or adjust if needed.

Color Variance

Lightroom has a new slider. Color Variance is part of Point Color, the color tool that helps adjust a specific color. The tool increases or decreases the variety within a color range, which can be used to reduce skin redness in portraits or enhance color contrast in landscapes.

To use it, navigate to the Point Color tools and use the eye dropper to select a color. You can also create a mask first, then use Point Color within the mask, like when you want to correct red skin without affecting the lips.

Adjusting the Variance slider to the left will make the colors more similar, to the right, more different. The difference is subtle in some shots, but I found this to be an easy way to tone down red skin.

Landscape masking now recognizes snow

Landscape masking was already part of Lightroom, but now the software can also recognize snow.

Find the feature by going to the Mask Tool and selecting Landscape under Create New Mask. You’ll also see options like sky and architecture.

Landscape masking is also part of Lightroom Mobile, but you’ll find it in the Quick Actions rather than inside the Masking tool.

Automatic blemish removal (Lightroom Mobile only)

Like automatically detecting the dust spots on a sensor, Lightroom Mobile can now detect and remove acne without manual masking. This tool is only in Lightroom Mobile for iOS and Android, though Adobe hints that it could be coming to the desktop versions in a future update.

To find the new blemish removal, head to the Retouch Tab and select Blemishes. The amount slider will adjust the strength of the effect. In shots with multiple people, you can select the person to edit from the thumbnails.

An improved Remove tool

Previously, Adobe always recommended selecting the shadow when selecting an object to remove with the remove tool. Now, the software can automatically select any shadows or reflections for you, removing them along with the object.

For this to work, inside the Remove tool, check the box that says “detect objects.” This tells the software that you want to remove the shadows and reflections as well, but you no longer need to draw over them.

Tech Preview: Improved Search (Lightroom Web only)

On Lightroom Web, Adobe is introducing an improved search experience that allows users to search beyond objects. With the update, users can describe the photo they are looking for, not just an object in the photo. This is made for instances like when searching for “water” will produce too many results.

As a Tech Preview, users have to turn it on by clicking on the profile icon in Lightroom Web, then selecting Technology Previews, and checking the box that says “improved search.”

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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Adobe is working on a chatbot that helps creators plan and create for social media – including integration with Lightroom and Instagram. On Tuesday, October 28, Adobe teased Project Moonlight, a chatbot built to help creators ideate, plan, and create for social media.

During a demo at the keynote for Adobe Max, Adobe shared a glimpse into the upcoming program. Project Moonlight is an AI chatbot designed around social media. The tool is designed to help creators brainstorm and create content for social media. Adobe calls it "an AI assistant that acts like a social strategist."

Lightroom integration allows creators to feed their images into the chatbot, then ask the AI for help with things like generating ideas on how to share those images on social media. In the demo, the chatbot came up with three different ideas initially. Users can then take one of those ideas and take it even further, with the chatbot recommending things like adding overlays to the images.

Project Moonlight is also tied to Firefly, including agentic photo editing, such as asking the bot to apply a Lightroom filter to the images.

But while integration with Lightroom and Firefly may be expected for an Adobe chatbot, Project Moonlight also works with Instagram. This compatibility allows the chatbot to make recommendations that stay on brand with your previous content, as well as offer advice and insight based on how past posts have performed.

As a Sneak, Project Moonlight isn’t available yet, but something Adobe has in the works. The software giant says Project Moonlight is “coming soon.”

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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Out of all the pieces that come with photo editing, culling photos – the process of selecting which ones to edit – ranks among my least favorite. But Adobe could be about to make that process easier. Assisted Culling is coming to Lightroom in public beta, the software giant announced during Adobe Max.

Adobe previously teased that it was working on an AI-assisted culling tool, but now Assisted Culling is rolling out in the public beta version of Lightroom. Adobe describes it as “a highly customizable tool that helps creative professionals quickly identify the best images in large photo collections.”

Adobe says that the tool will allow photographers to filter out images based on focus, sharpness, and angles. The idea is to give creatives fewer images to manually cull through by using the AI to identify factors like which photo in a series is the sharpest.

A number of AI culling tools already exist, like Aftershoot and Imagen. But if Lightroom’s tool works well, that could help creatives speed up the cull without a second subscription or purchase.

I have high hopes that the tool could help speed up the process of culling – as a wedding photographer, it’s not unusual for me to have thousands of images to look through.

I’m on site at Adobe Max in Los Angeles, where I’m hoping to get a hands-on test of the new beta culling tool inside Lightroom.

Adobe announced a long list of updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Firefly, and more at the start of the brand’s annual creativity conference.

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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Browse the best photo editors or the best culling software.

Adobe often surprise launches updates to Photoshop and Lightroom throughout the year, but if there’s one time of year where creatives can expect something big is coming, it is Adobe Max. And with Adobe Max just around the corner, I’m predicting that Adobe’s biggest updates to Photoshop and Lightroom could be coming next week.

Adobe Max is a creativity conference that the software giant hosts once a year in the US (they also host a similar event in London annually). This year, Adobe Max is scheduled for October 28-30 in Los Angeles, California.

While Adobe Max is packed with workshops and vendors at the in-person events, Adobe typically also uses the event to announce some key software updates. The first keynote is happening at 9 AM PDT / 12 PM EST / 5 PM BST on October 28.

In past events, Adobe has unveiled a number of updates during the Adobe Max keynote. Last year, for example, Photoshop gained Distraction Removal and a generative workspace, all announced during Adobe Max.

Another key part of Adobe Max is Sneaks, which are the company’s teasers into what their developers are working on behind the scenes. Sneaks may not even end up making its way into actual software, but some features do. Last year, Adobe teased Project Perfect Blend, which wound up in a July 2025 update to Photoshop, although it changed the name to Harmonize.

This year, Adobe’s Sneaks are scheduled for October 29 at 5:30 PM PDT / 8:30 PM EST / 1:30 AM BST.

If the past events are any indication, creatives will likely see a number of new software features coming next week. Based on the company’s recent updates, I’m expecting AI to be a key buzzword during the 2025 Adobe Max announcements.

Adobe will stream several of its keynotes and sessions online for those who can’t make the trip to Los Angeles, and online registration is free. And we'll be there too – bringing you all the big announcements so you don't miss anything.

Along with the Keynotes and Sneaks, online attendees can still find more than 60 online sessions for learning tips and tricks across Adobe’s suite of creative software.

Online registration is open at the Adobe Max website.

• See all the news from Adobe Max 2025

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The Nik Collection plug-ins are sold as a single unit. You can’t buy them separately, but you do use them separately. And although they are typically used as plug-ins for programs like Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, they also work as standalone programs and external editors for other programs, like Capture One. If you like to shoot raw, though, you will need a ‘host’ program to do your raw conversions before sending processed images to the Nik plug-ins for editing.

So even though Nik Collection is usually described as a plug-in suite, it actually offers a wide variety of workflows. This, and its huge creative range, make it one of the best photo-editing software applications for photographers.

Taking them alphabetically, Analog Efex is perhaps the most interesting for anyone trying to recreate the look of old cameras, primitive lenses, and lo-fi film stocks. It can create bokeh effects, light leaks, borders, dust and scratches, even ‘accidental’ multiple exposure effects, and multi-camera images where photos are chopped up into panels. It’s like a wild analog playground and a world apart from DxO’s rather more sober FilmPack film emulation software. It’s weird and sometimes over the top, but brilliant.

Color Efex is perhaps the central tool in the Nik lineup. It offers more than 50 filters, which can be used individually or in combination, each with powerful adjustments and masking tools. In Nik Collection 8, Color Efex gets preset effects for each filter, so there are even more ready-made starting points for your experiments. It’s aimed at more mainstream photographic effects than Analog Efex but has its own share of striking looks alongside regular tools like levels and curves.

Dfine is the Nik Collection’s noise-reduction plug-in, but it only works on JPEGs or images already converted from raw files, rather than directly on raw files, unlike more modern AI noise-reduction tools. It’s effective in an old-fashioned kind of way, with a good deal of control over noise reduction via ‘noise profiles’ and local enhancements, but these days it’s much more effective to tackle noise during the raw-processing phase. It would be great if DxO could find a way to bring its DeepPRIME AI noise reduction to Dfine, but it’s hard to see how it could fit into the editing workflow if your regular ‘host’ program is doing the raw conversion.

HDR Efex has had relatively little attention in recent Nik Collection updates but remains a very effective HDR tool that can be used to merge bracketed exposures or just to add HDR-style shadow and highlight adjustments to single files. Some of the preset effects are throwbacks to the worst excesses of the HDR craze, though it’s possible to produce strong-but-natural-looking results too.

Nik Sharpener comes in two forms: a ‘presharpener’ to crisp up soft-looking images and an ‘output’ sharpener to optimize sharpening for different output devices and print sizes. The screen sharpening is effective if you publish your images digitally, but for this and the print sharpening to be effective, you really need to resize your images for your output device before you send them to Sharpener. I suspect most photographers will just stick to the sharpening tools in their regular host software.

Silver Efex is one of the stars of the Nik Collection and is perhaps the best-known black-and-white software tool of all. It produces remarkable richness, depth, and tonal subtlety in monochrome images, with a powerful set of adjustment tools, preset effects, and local adjustments for ‘dodging and burning’. You can also produce striking black-and-white images in Analog Efex and Color Efex, but Silver Efex is probably the ultimate digital darkroom for monochrome work.

Viveza is harder to categorize. It’s designed for detailed color adjustments, via both global adjustments and local adjustments, but it does seem to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and three of its key adjustments are now incorporated into Color Efex. No doubt Viveza has its fans, but it does seem much more limited than the Nik Collection’s other creative plug-ins.

DxO Nik Collection 8 system requirements

DxO Nik Collection 8: price

DxO Nik Collection 8 sells for $169.99 / £144.99 (about AU$260) for new users, or for $99.99 / £79.99 (about AU$150) as an upgrade from Nik Collection 6 or 7. Note that DxO’s upgrade offer covers the last two versions, so although the Nik Collection is on an annual update cycle, you can afford to skip a version without losing your upgrade entitlement. If you already have Nik Collection 7, for example, and you don’t need the Photoshop workflow enhancements that feature so heavily in Nik Collection 8, you might want to hang on for next year’s Nik Collection 9 release.

Either way, while the Nik Collection is not exactly cheap, you do get an awful lot for your money. Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and perhaps even HDR Efex are easily good enough and different enough to be sold as standalone products, and here you’re getting all the plug-ins for a single price.

DxO Nik Collection 8: interface and usability

They have different jobs, but all the Nik creative plug-ins share the same basic design. The left sidebar displays preset effects and individual filters for building your own effects, while the right sidebar displays panels for each filter so that you can make further adjustments. This right sidebar can get a little busy once you start combining effects, but the panels can be collapsed to save space.

You can also apply a wide range of highly customizable local adjustment masks via DxO’s trademark Control Points, Control Lines, and – now – Polygon masks. These work in a unique way, targeting only specific tones and colors within the mask area, so they are highly selective. The Nik Collection does not offer AI object masking, but this system is equally effective in a different way.

If you want to, you can dive very deep indeed into the Nik Collection’s filters, masks, and controls to create some stunning effects. Or, if that’s just too much to take in initially, you can pick from a long list of excellent preset effects and work back from there.

Improved Photoshop integration is a key feature of this Nik Collection 8 update. It comes with a new-and-improved Nik Collection palette displayed directly within the Photoshop interface, including the ability to save interim edits in Nik plug-ins and return them to Photoshop as layers when you’re done.

Silver Efex gets some updates too, including a color reference image display, interface improvements and local adjustments for ClearView (a bit like Lightroom Dehaze) and Selective Tone adjustments. Also, each filter now comes with pre-defined presets.

Overall, the Nik Collection workflow has been refined to a point where it’s as quick and seamless to use as possible, and you can just click a preset if you don’t want to get bogged down in tools and settings. It also has special features and options for Photoshop users.

DxO Nik Collection 8: performance

The Nik Collection plug-ins offer such a huge variety of image-editing effects, tools, and inspiration that it’s hard to know where to start. If you like a lo-fi analog look, then Analog Efex does it spectacularly well. Color Efex is like a photo editor and effects generator rolled into one, and is like a giant box of filters with endless permutations. Silver Efex Pro is capable of wonderful black-and-white imagery with comparatively little effort – though you can dig as deep as you want with the adjustment and masking tools. HDR Efex does look a little dated in parts, but is still very good at creating classic HDR Effects.

Dfine is less impressive because it’s starting from images that have already been processed once. It can reduce noise very effectively, but you can easily lose detail at the same time, so it’s some way behind the latest AI noise-reduction tools. Sharpener is interesting but perhaps a little specialized for the average user – it’s handy if you want to optimize detail carefully for screen or print, perhaps. It’s also hard to warm to Viveza, as it doesn’t do much that programs like Lightroom or Photoshop can’t, though its masking tools are effective in a different way.

DxO Nik Collection 8: verdict

You probably won’t get equal value out of all the Nik Collection plug-ins, since Dfine is somewhat dated, Sharpener is quite specialized, and Viveza’s color adjustment capabilities are neither unique nor particularly valuable for Lightroom or Photoshop users.

So, does the Nik Collection still deserve a 5-star rating? I think so, because Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex, and HDR Efex offer such a rich and varied set of image effects that, in my opinion, they easily justify the cost of the Nik Collection on their own.

It’s not just a unique set of photo effects that you’re getting here, but a practically bottomless source of inspiration and ideas. If you’re getting stuck in a rut with your current photo editor – and we all do from time to time – the Nik Collection will bust you out of that rut in a big way. We all need fresh ideas now and again, and that’s exactly what the Nik Collection delivers.

Alternatives

When I traveled to New York City earlier this summer, the only time I was able to see that iconic skyline was at the airport, thanks to fog and a jam-packed schedule. I took a quick snapshot with my iPhone – but the glare off the windows ruined the snapshot to the point that I thought it was destined for the trash. But then I remembered that Adobe Lightroom has a new tool that automatically corrects reflections.

I transferred the photo to my laptop, where Lightroom Classic recently gained an experimental distraction removal tool for reflections. And, much to my surprise, the new reflection removal was able to rescue the photo by removing nearly all the reflections in a few clicks.

Once I opened the photo, I went to the remove tool and scrolled down to the Distraction Removal section in the right-hand sidebar. Then, I clicked “Apply” under reflections, waited for the AI to do its thing, and was greeted with a photo that had nearly all the reflections removed. The AI process took under a minute (although internet connection speeds, hardware limitations, and the preview settings will play a role in how quickly the tool works).

The automatic tool removed all but one small patch of reflection from the image, which I was able to quickly remove by brushing over the area with the heal tool.

The photo isn’t going to win any awards – it’s a quick iPhone snapshot after all – but the edit is a far better representation of my trip than the reflection-marred image.

The Lightroom reflection removal tool is powered by Adobe Firefly, which is the company’s generative AI platform. I admittedly don’t love the idea of using generative AI, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to fix an iPhone snapshot with the clone tool. Firefly is also built on licensed work rather than scraping copyrighted work from the web.

A software-based reflection removal tool is so intriguing because, traditionally, circular polarizers have long been a lens filter that couldn’t be replicated with software. The key question is this: Is software going to replace circular polarizing filters?

Not exactly. While I love that I have the option to remove the reflections when I forget to pack my polarizer or I’m just taking a quick snapshot with my phone, the reflection removal tool has a long way to go.

Take a look at what happens when I tried the tool on a far more powerful reflection, where the reflection of the interior of the airport is far stronger than what’s outside the window:

Well, that’s terrifying.

The other reason that I’m not ditching my polarizer anytime soon is that twisting a polarizing filter on my lens is faster than using generative AI. Yes, the tool worked fairly quickly, and the total edit took just a few minutes. But I can twist a polarizer in seconds.

Still, the ability to rescue a photo ruined by reflections when getting it right in-camera wasn’t possible? That’s a tool that’s going to rescue a lot of images from the trash.

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For years, Fujifilm shooters have looked on enviously while Canon, Nikon, and Sony users enjoyed Lightroom Classic’s baked-in tethered capture. The only escape was Fujifilm’s own plug-ins, which a quick search online shows they have a somewhat questionable reputation. Or you could jump ship to use Capture One. Both are some of the best photo editing software, but abandoning potentially years of built-up Lightroom knowledge might not be so appealing.

That decision finally ends with the June 2025 Lightroom Classic 14.4 update, which adds native Fujifilm tethering support baked directly into Adobe’s software – amongst a host of quality of life improvements.

Do you need to tether? In certain situations, like studio photography, piping images to a large color-calibrated monitor beats squinting at a three-inch LCD, especially with a large team. You can inspect at 100%, flag selects instantly, and begin editing right away. There are compromises. You’re literally on a leash, and cables can snag and get in the way. More photographers are now using wireless solutions, but for transfer speed, you still can't beat a tether cable.

Lightroom’s tether panel already speaks fluent Canon, Nikon, and Sony, but Fujifilm’s X-Trans sensors were always left out. This update finally brings parity with other brands – and kills another excuse to disparage Fujifilm cameras for professional work.

Getting started is easy: update to Lightroom 14.4, and make sure you disable any third-party tether plug-ins you have already set up. Next, set the camera to USB Tether Shooting/PC Remote, shutter dial to T, aperture to A, ISO to C. Finally, plug in a sturdy USB-C cable, and choose File > Tethered Capture.

Supported bodies are: X-T1-T5, X-T30, X-H1, X-H2, X-H2S, X-S10, X-Pro2/3, and every GFX from the 50S and 50R to the flagship GFX 100 II.

As a Fujifilm shooter myself and an avid Lightroom Classic user, I am very happy about this news, and I can't wait to try this out on my next studio shoot!

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Between taking photos and editing photos sits one of my least favorite parts of photography: culling, or the process of choosing which photos to edit. As a wedding photographer, culling a gallery of several thousand images takes hours of clicking through to find the best shots. But Adobe Lightroom is working on a new tool that could help speed up the culling process.

In a teaser on social media, Adobe shared that developers are working on AI filters, a tool that works to recognize throw-away shots, like shots that are out of focus and blinking portraits. The AI filters, like many of the Lightroom tools, use a slider, allowing photographers to control how strictly to apply these auto-selection filters.

A clean-up slider will also help remove accidental shutter triggers, as well as shots that are over- or underexposed. The AI will also be able to auto-group similar shots together, like those taken with burst mode.

AI culling tools aren’t new – but the tools that exist are third-party platforms and plug-ins that add to the growing number of subscriptions. While I hate culling, my growing subscription aversion has prevented me from buying AI culling software. The idea of getting faster culling without another subscription is one that I can get on board with (albeit one that has recently increased in price).

I’m a Lightroom Classic user, and many of the latest AI-based tools have saved me a lot of time. If AI can do to culling what subject selection did to masking, then such a tool would save me hours of sifting through photographs.

Sometimes, accidental photos end up as happy surprises – an out-of-focus shot that still captures the emotion of the moment, for example. That’s why I’m excited by AI-supportive culling that adds speed yet still leaves the photographer in the driver’s seat. 

But where I think AI culling can save the most time is picking the best shot out of several similar images. I spent a lot of time looking at similar photos to find the one that’s the sharpest and discarding the close-eye shots.

When I chatted with Adobe during the B&H Bild Expo in New York, Adobe indicated the AI filtering would be coming later this year to both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop. AI-based subject detection has saved me hours on tasks like whitening teeth, without even using generative AI. I have high hopes that the upcoming Lightroom AI Filters tool brings more of the same time-saving shortcuts to culling.

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In today's world, shooting with a camera phone or a compact camera is undeniably popular. For many people, the advantages of using pocket-sized technology surpass those of DSLRs or mirrorless cameras, as practicality, affordability and advancements in portable imaging set new standards.

The only 'problem' one might see is the smaller sensor size – but these days, having a small sensor doesn't mean that you have to compromise on the quality of your photographic work!

While smaller sensors can introduce certain practical challenges, advancing technology means that these devices are more than capable of working as a backup to an interchangeable-lens camera, or as a portable alternative.

Of course, if there's a photographic situation that challenges any sensor – especially small ones – it's low light. To demonstrate what small sensors are capable of, we chose to shoot a scene with poor light intensity and a dominance of blue and red – the worst possible scenario for image signal-noise ratio.

Here's how we increased the image quality from a mobile device in super-challenging conditions. While these techniques are shown on a smartphone, the principles are the same if you're using a compact camera.

Shooting Tutorial

1. Select RAW mode

Most of the latest and best camera phone models enable you to shoot in RAW format. Just as in larger cameras, this opens up greater control at the editing stage – which is essential with images from a small sensor. Set the highest file quality so that you are using all the pixels available.

2. Use Pro mode

You need to take as much control over your camera settings as you can. Switch to Professional mode and avoid increasing the ISO beyond the native settings. Where possible, shoot at ISO100-200, but in the end it's still better to increase sensitivity rather than brighten the image in post-processing.

3. Choose your lens

Smartphones have several lenses that can be activated for different situations. However, not all of them have the maximum stated aperture rating. Select the optic that offers the widest possible f-stop – in our case, the medium zoom had an aperture of f/1.5.

4. Shoot wide open

Select the widest aperture you can, to allow as much light into the sensor as possible. Don’t worry about depth of field: the smaller sensor area of a camera phone will produce much more depth than a Micro Four Thirds, APS-C or full-frame sensor. Check the preview for underexposure.

5. Activate anti-shake

Slow the shutter speed to correctly expose the image, avoiding a histogram that’s bunched up on the left side. To reduce camera shake, dive into the shooting menu and make sure image stabilization is turned on if you have it. This may not be activated as standard, especially if you’re using a third-party camera app.

6. Adjust the shutter interface

Activate the self-timer so that you can concentrate on steadiness once the shutter is triggered. Activate the touch shutter so you can focus and shoot with a gentle touch and consider adding a second shutter button icon for a more comfortable, smoother hand movement to reduce vibration.

Pro Tip

Deactivate auto processing

If you’ve gone to the effort of ensuring the maximum possible quality at the shooting stage, make sure this control is retained once you’ve triggered the shutter. Turn off any automatic noise reduction your camera app might have, and leave this for more precise treatment of the RAW files in an external image editor.

This doesn’t always apply to video, where anti-noise or banding processes can’t be easily applied in non-professional software apps. But for stills, check your settings in both the phone’s native camera app and additional third-party applications you have downloaded.

Editing Tutorial

1. Reset noise sliders

Noise is always going to be more pronounced with a small sensor, but you can avoid loss of detail by preventing automatic noise reduction in your editing app. Start by moving the Luminance slider to zero to assess how much noise reduction is pleasing to your eye.

2. Set Blacks and Whites

With the noise reduction applied, you can add basic contrast adjustments while keeping an eye on noise visibility. In this high-contrast scene, set the Black and White points to prevent too much shadow and highlight loss but don’t worry too much about detail in the light sources.

3. Adjust the contrast

To add some weight to the shadows, we applied a light S-curve using the Tone Curve tool in Lightroom. Look at the histogram regularly to ensure you are not clipping individual channels – in our shot, we had to be careful not to blow the detail in the reds in particular.

4. Apply custom Noise Reduction

With tonal adjustments applied, you’ll better understand the noise challenges present. Move the Luminance Noise slider in your software to the right in small increments to smooth out random noise patterns. Focus on the flatter tones, like the smooth concrete in our shot.

5. Apply noise treatment

Grain doesn’t have to be a problem, as it can add a sense of sharpness in moderation. However, in central areas of the subject, we need to minimize distracting noise patterns. Here, we used the Adjustment Brush (K) to reduce banding in local shadow areas.

6. Target sharpening

Keep your sharpening targeted to essential details by masking flat tones. In Lightroom, we dragged the Masking slider to the right to reduce sharpening to the flattest tones, where noise is most probable. We also applied a round of local sharpening using the Sharpen tool in Photoshop.

Before and After

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Recent news that Adobe just quietly upped the cost of Lightroom and Photoshop – one plan by a whopping 52% – is the latest bout of controversy to hit the best photo editing software developer. Add to that the US government's lawsuit regarding customer protection laws. That AI policy. The fact that Photoshop Elements is no longer yours for life. And the recent fall in stocks. 

Adobe and controversy have gone together like mashed potatoes and gravy in 2024.

So, what’s going on?

Well, it certainly hasn’t been all bad news for the titan of post-production software. Revenue is actually up. Despite explaining that stocks are down 15%, Forbes details an 11% year-on-year increase in revenue during Q4, with 13% and 17% year-on-year growth in Q4 for media segment sales and document cloud sales respectively, with the news outlet stating: “The company is benefiting from the migration of customers to high-priced subscription variants, driving the average revenue per customer higher.”

This I found particularly interesting because it made me look at the new photography plan prices in a different way. Firstly, none of the yearly lump sum prices have changed, only the monthly payment plans, which have changed as follows…

• Lightroom (1TB) plan has gone up by $2/£2.01 to $11.99/£11.99 – although it now includes Adobe Lightroom Classic which is a plus point.
• Photography (20GB) plan has gone up by a huge $5/5.01 to $14.99/£14.99, which includes Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Lightroom Classic. And this will now only be available to existing customers.
• Photography (1TB) plan remains the same, $19.99/£19.97.

I find it extremely interesting that the Photography (1TB) plan remains unchanged, while the 20GB plan has been hit by a huge 52% price hike for existing users (and won't be available in future to new customers). Once the ire of those affected by the price increases has moved on, you’re left with a 1TB plan that’s temptingly close to the 20GB plan. You might as well go for it! Clever, eh?

So what do I think about all this? Well, I recently wrote an article detailing how I thought Adobe Creative Cloud was better value than the old Creative Suite and came to the conclusion that cumulative monthly payments meant it wasn’t during long-term usage.

However, I ended that article with a neat Wikipedia fact: "When Photoshop 1.0 was released, digital retouching on dedicated high-end systems (...) cost around $300 an hour for basic photo retouching. The list price of Photoshop 1.0 for Macintosh in 1990 was $895." Puts things into perspective, right?

The problem is that Adobe’s pricing has always been controversial. People moan about Creative Cloud now, but can you remember how much it cost to buy the software outright during the Creative Suite days? There’s a reason I’d never purchased any Adobe software prior to the Creative Cloud subscription model.

And yet, the Photography (20GB) plan has risen exponentially… I mean, come on, 52% is one heck of a price increase. Let me put that into perspective, the current pricing right now for annual monthly payments totals $119.88/£119.76 and after the price hike on January 15 2025 that’ll be $179.88/£179.88.

But what really got my goat was this statement on the Adobe Blog where the pricing changes were detailed. “For more than a decade, we’ve brought photographers hundreds of innovative features in Lightroom and Photoshop without changing the price of our photography plans. Today we’re announcing an update to these plans to better reflect the value that the apps deliver.”

I mean, on the one hand, kudos to Adobe for not changing the photography plans’ pricing, but maybe save the back-patting if you’re going to increase one of the plans by 52%!

So where has this aggressive price hike come from? Well, I’m only throwing in my two cents here, but despite revenue figures looking very good, it seems as though Adobe’s investment in AI could be the reason for the notable drop in shares. Financial news outlet Finimize put this into perspective: “Investors are uneasy about Adobe’s significant investments in artificial intelligence (...) analysts are uneasy about the unclear path to monetization.”

So, there you have it. If you’re unhappy about your Creative Cloud Photography Plan going up, AI could inadvertently be the culprit.

If you want to avoid these price hikes as best you can, my colleague and US Editor, Hillary K Grigonis, explains how in her report on how Adobe just quietly upped the cost of Lightroom and Photoshop.

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In a teaser of features planned for 2025, Adobe shared that it's working on adding a tool to speed up the culling process in Lightroom. The list of Adobe’s 2025 sneak peeks include a feature designed for choosing the best photos faster with a tool that automatically notes the best images on import. Adobe also teased that more time-saving AI tools are planned for next year, along with more one-click editing options and new sharing tools.

Culling is the industry term for the often tedious process of going through hundreds, or sometimes even thousands, of digital photos to choose which ones to edit. In a blog post, Adobe said that it's working to dramatically streamline this process “by automatically identifying the best photos during import.”

Adobe didn’t clarify how the tool would work, but looking over the company’s 2024 announcements and similar photo-culling software from competitors, an AI-based tool seems most likely. The past year the software giant has launched a number of AI-based tools that now include options like generative expand, generative remove, and an AI-based distraction removal.

As a wedding photographer, culling photos is my least favorite part of the process. While I’m not sure I would trust an AI to choose the best emotion, I would trust software to eliminate the shots that ended up out of focus, or to choose the group photo where no one is blinking.

Adobe’s list of updates – which also includes a planned price hike for monthly subscribers – include “more power, precision, and time saved with AI.” Adobe didn’t specifically name which time-saving AI tools would arrive in 2025, but said that it plans to add “features similar to Generative Remove in Lightroom and Distraction Removal in Photoshop, that make it easier to remove people, wires and poles, improve blemishes and remove dust from images.”

From that statement, I wouldn’t be surprised if Photoshop’s new distraction removal tool for removing power lines and people from the background also launches to Lightroom in 2025. Does “improve blemishes” mean an AI-based tool for removing acne? I can only hope, but such a tool would also need to have the ability to differentiate acne from things like freckles and moles that should remain intact in portrait editing.

Adobe also said that it plans to introduce more intelligent one-tap edits by expanding the Quick Actions. Finally, Adobe says that “streamlined sharing” is also on the list of planned updates for 2025.

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There are a multitude of ways to sharpen images in Adobe Photoshop – one of the best photo editing software suites on the market. But by applying the High Pass Filter in Photoshop CC, you can selectively paint a sharpening effect onto your images. This means you can choose where to sharpen your image, likely your focal point. 

The advantages of this include the ability to direct your viewer's gaze, since they'll be naturally drawn to the sharpest area of the image, while also limiting the sharpening effect to where it's needed. This is particularly helpful if you're working with a shallow depth of field or motion blur, since you're unlikely to want to sharpen these ethereal areas of the frame. Sharpening can also accentuate noise, so the ability to apply it sparingly in low-light shots is invaluable. 

Another plus of sharpening in an indestructive manner on layer-based editing software is that you can change the Blending Mode and opacity of your sharpening layer right up until you decide to export your image. So, if you want to selectively sharpen a set of images? Here's how to do it… 

1. Add the High Pass Filter

Open your chosen image in Adobe Photoshop CC. Duplicate the background layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and select Filter>Other>High Pass. Move the Radius Slider until your subject's outline is barely visible on the gray overlay – I usually find around 1.8-2.0px works well – and hit OK.

2. Change the Blending Mode 

Change the Blending Mode to Vivid Light. This will remove the gray overlay, but increase the contrast of any edges to sharpen the image. You can lessen the intensity of the sharpening effect by reducing the layer opacity or changing the Blending Mode to Hard Light, Overlay or Soft Light. If you're unsure, Overlay represents a good middle ground.

3. Apply a layer mask

Select the 'Add layer mask' icon and invert the mask (Cmd/Ctrl+I). Paint over and 'sharpen' your subject with a soft, white brush. The red overlay (\) indicates what you have sharpened – switch to a black brush if you want to remove parts of the mask.

That's all there is to it. Add a High Pass Filter, change the Blending Mode and apply an inverted layer mask to selectively paint the sharpening effect, only onto the areas of the image you want sharpened.

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Unless you're fluent in the best photo editing software on the market, there's a good chance you've avoided the saturation vs vibrance debate. After all, they both ostensibly do the same thing. Heck, you might use them interchangeably, depending on your mood or you might ignore one of them altogether. 

If either scenario sounds at all familiar, chances are you've been favoring the saturation slider and leaving vibrance to its own devices. Fledgling image editors quickly learn to boost shadows, reduce highlights, add a drop of contrast and sparingly boost saturation. Vibrance is more of an intermediate tool, but it's an easy one to grasp. 

The difference between the two sliders is relatively simple. And once you know it, you're almost certainly going to start adding vibrance into your editing regime... 

You see, saturation boosts all of the colors within an image equally, whereas vibrance favors boosting the saturation of less-dominant colors within an image. Say – for example – you have a photo of a person holding a bright red umbrella in an otherwise dull street and you want to boost that dull street. Boost the saturation slider and the red umbrella may clip long before you reach the desired saturation levels in those duller areas of the image. This is the perfect time to use the vibrance slider, which will allow you to boost the dull surroundings much more intensely before the red umbrella eventually clips.

Vibrance is also much kinder on skin tones. The image at the top of this article illustrates this well. Even boosted to 100% the model's skin tone has been more or less preserved. However, with the saturation boosted to 100%, the skin tone has been pushed noticeably too far. 

Of course, you can also use vibrance to desaturate an image. In this instance it will still prioritize less dominant colors and you may find that even at 0%, you can still see remnants of the punchiest hues. 

But this isn't to say you should ditch the saturation slider altogether. Personally, I like to use the two sliders in tandem. If I want to boost punchier colors in an image, I’ll start by boosting the vibrance to bring the flatter colors into contention. Then, if I still think the overall image needs a boost, I'll bump up the saturation.

Vibrance sliders can be found in a variety of editing suites including Adobe Lightroom CC , Photoshop CC and Photoshop Express, as well as Affinity Photo 2.

There used to be a variety of reasons why you'd switch from Lightroom CC to Photoshop CC, but the line between two of the best photo editing software packages has become increasingly blurred. 

This is largely thanks to once-exclusive functions in Photoshop – such as masking and cloning – making their way into Lightroom, giving Adobe CC users fewer and fewer reasons to enter the post-production giant’s flagship photo editing suite. But for more complicated photo edits that require layer-based tweaks or specific editing tools, Photoshop still reigns supreme. 

As such, you may find yourself performing simple tonal edits in Lightroom and importing your image into Photoshop for additional tweaks. But did you know, you can return said image to Lightroom once you're finished? Best of all, it doesn't matter whether you're using Lightroom Classic – like me – or Lightroom CC, the process is the same. Here's how to do it…

1. Move from Lightroom to Photoshop

If you're used to editing in Lightroom you're probably aware that, by right-clicking on your chosen image in the Filmstrip, you can select Edit in > Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2024. Alternatively, you can simply right-click on the image itself and select the same menu options. 

You may receive a dialogue box; if so, ensure that 'Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments' is checked. This will import the image in question directly into Photoshop, with any changes you've made in Lightroom, so you can continue your editing workflow seamlessly.

2. Move from Photoshop back into Lightroom

What you might not know is that you can reverse the process by importing the image back into Lightroom with your Photoshop changes still intact. To do this you simply select File > Save or File > Close > Save. 

Hitting 'Save As' used to be a recipe for disaster, but recently I've found that hitting 'Save As' and saving a TIFF, Photoshop or Large Document Format file works, even if you change the file name. However, I personally avoid doing this as I've found in the past that renaming a file can break the link to Lightroom.

3. Continue editing in Photoshop 

Once your image is safely back in Lightroom, you'll notice that a copy has been made with the Photoshop changes – so your original Lightroom edit is still available. You're now free to continue editing the copy and can even import the copy back into Photoshop for further tweaks, if you so wish. 

So there you have it. If you didn’t already know about this painfully simple tip, it might just revolutionize your photo-editing workflow in Adobe CC.

DxO PhotoLab 8 is DxO’s flagship photo editor, combining image browsing and organizing with advanced non-destructive editing of both raw files and JPEGs. Its key features are its AI-powered DeepPRIME XD2s noise reduction process and bespoke lens correction profiles, both improved in this version. It's one of the best photo editing software tools on the market.

DeepPRIME XD2s is the latest iteration of DxO’s denoising and detail enhancement process. It denoises and demosaics raw file data at the same time to give the best possible results. DxO says PhotoLab 8’s version is the best yet, and it works here alongside improved lens softness algorithms. DxO’s unique custom-made lens correction profiles don’t just correct distortion, corner shading and color fringing, they also counteract the edge softness almost all lenses exhibit towards the edges of the frame.

One of the limitations of the DeepPRIME process is that it is pretty hardware-intensive, so it’s not possible to display the effect in real time while you’re editing. DxO has got round that in PhotoLab 8, however, with a new Preview panel which can be displayed in two sizes and different magnification levels. This does allow a preview of the DeepPRIME effect almost instantaneously, and gets its own button on the toolbar.

Other improvements in DxO PhotoLab 8 included a new and improved Tone Curve panel which displays a histogram in the background and has a Tone Picker gadget for dragging up and down directly on key areas of the image. You can now enter numerical input/output values directly. These enhancements put PhotoLab’s Tone Curve tool on the same level as Lightroom’s Tone Curve adjustments – but PhotoLab goes further, with a new Luma channel adjustment for brightness values only.

PhotoLab also has very unusual and powerful U-point local adjustment and masking tools, and these get a further boost in PhotoLab 8 with a new Hue Mask option. You can select a specific hue range within the image and then use the regular masking tools to restrict the mask to specific areas or objects.

DxO is also promising multiple performance enhancements and bug fixes in this latest version.

DxO PhotoLab 8 is available now. It comes as a full-powered Elite version (recommended) or as a cheaper but less powerful Essential version. Full pricing is below:

• DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite full version: $229 / £209
• DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite upgrade: $109 / £99T

• DxO PhotoLab 8 Essential: $139 / £129
• DxO PhotoLab 8 Essential upgrade: $75 / £65
• DxO PhotoLab 8 Essential ‘uplevel’ to Elite version: $99 / £89.

There is also a 30-day free trial if you haven’t used PhotoLab before and want to try it out before committing.

DxO PhotoLab 8 is the latest version of DxO’s flagship photo editing software. It’s an interesting alternative to Adobe Lightroom and Capture One, with perhaps a little less emphasis on photo organizing and cataloguing tools and a lot more on high-quality raw processing. In fact, if you shoot raw files in order to get the best possible quality from your camera, then DxO PhotoLab 8 definitely needs to be considered amongst the best photo editing software applications for the job.

PhotoLab 8’s key features include DxO’s proprietary DeepPRIME noise reduction and detail enhancement process, which can achieve amazing results with high ISO images, and its lab-derived lens correction profiles, which don’t just correct distortion, corner shading and chromatic aberration, but also the progressive loss of sharpness towards the edges of the frame shown by most lenses.

PhotoLab 8 also has powerful local adjustment tools and masking options. These don’t follow the current trend towards AI subject recognition but instead use DxO’s own U-point masking technology, which is a very different, but very powerful alternative.

PhotoLab 8 comes in two versions. We’re reviewing the Elite version, but there is a cheaper Essential version. This does not have all of the advanced tools in the Elite version, though. You can check the pricing and upgrade options below.

DxO also publishes the Nik Collection, DxO FilmPack and DxO ViewPoint. You can launch the Nik Collection plug-ins, if installed, direct from PhotoLab 8, while the FilmPack film simulation and ViewPoint perspective correction tools will integrate directly with the PhotoLab interface, as well as working as standalone applications and plug-ins.

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: What’s new?

DxO PhotoLab appears to be on an annual upgrade cycle, so the burning question is what’s new in PhotoLab 8 to make it worth upgrading to? That will depend on which version you are on a the moment, but here are the key changes:

PhotoLab 8 now comes with an improved DeepPRIME XD2s denoising process. At first glance it does appear to offer some slight gains in performance if you look closely, but it does feel like an evolution rather than a breakthrough. For the record, DeepPRIME XD was already so good at noise reduction and detail enhancement that it hardly left any room for improvement.

If you use a Fujifilm camera with an X-Trans sensor, though, like many of the best Fujifilm cameras, you’ll still be restricted to the original DeepPRIME XD process. That’s also very good, but apparently the X-Trans color filter array is trickier to work with than a regular bayer layout, so this is still a work in progress.

DxO is also claiming improved lens softness correction via an updated algorithm, to produce images with no color fringing or artifacts. My test so far do seem to show slightly better results at the edges of the frame – though again, this will depend on your cameras, lenses and how closely you look.

DxO’s DeepPRIME processing offers exceptional results. The one issue that it’s hardware-intensive and can’t be displayed in real time – you need to export a processed image to see the effect.

That hasn’t changed, but DxO has added a large preview ‘loupe’ which can show DeepPRIME effects with very little delay, and this is a huge improvement over the tiny preview display in the Denoising panel which was all you had to go on before.

The Tone Curve panel gets a major update in PhotoLab 8 too. It now offers both Luma and RGB curve adjustments – adjusting the Luma curve changes the contrast but not the saturation – and, even better, there’s now a Lightroom-style Tone Picker tool you can use to drag directly up and down on areas of the image to create and shift a tone curve point for that tone. The Tone Curve panel also now displays a histogram.

DxO continues to develop its already powerful U-point masking tools, and in PhotoLab 8 it adds a Hue Mask tool for selecting specific colors within the mask area. However, PhotoLab 8 does not include the elliptical and polygonal masking tools we’ve seen in Nik Collection 7.

On top of these new features, DxO is highlighting a new Compare mode, faster and better scrolling and display for LUTs, faster image loading and various bug fixes.

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite : Price and availability

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite is sold only as a perpetual license and is not available on subscription. This will please subscription haters, though it should be noted that PhotoLab is updated annually, so if you do want to keep up with the latest version you will need to keep paying upgrade fees, so there is still an ongoing cost of ownership – though you can of course skip versions.

PhotoLab 8 Elite costs $229 / £209 for new users and $109 / £99 as an upgrade for existing users. There is also a 30-day free trial if you haven’t used it before and want to try it out before committing.

PhotoLab 8 Essential costs $139 / £129 for new users and $75 / £65 as an upgrade for existing users. If you do decide to ‘uplevel’ to the Elite version later, that will cost $99 / £89.

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: Interface and usability

PhotoLab 8 does have a more technical appearance than many photo editors, especially Lightroom, but its interface is organized on a similar basis.

There are two main operating panels. The PhotoLibrary panel is where you can browse all your folders, view image thumbnails and create Projects (albums) for specific photo collections. The PhotoLibrary also has some effective search tools, where you start typing what you’re looking for and the search box automatically starts matching this to picture information such as EXIF shooting data and filenames. It’s not as sophisticated as programs like Lightroom or Capture One, but much more powerful than a simple file browsing tool like Adobe Bridge.

The main editing work is done in the Customize window, where you also get access to all of PhotoLab 8’s editing and local adjustment tools in the right sidebar. These are quite deep and technical-looking the first time around, but DxO has steadily improved the tool organization so that now related tools are organized into tabs for exposure adjustments, color adjustments, detail and more. There’s also a search box to help you quickly find the tools you need.

However, you can use PhotoLab 8 very effectively without getting drawn into any complex adjustments at all. One of its key features is that it will automatically detect your camera and lens combination and apply (or download) a correction profile to optimize it automatically. You can also choose from a selection of preset effects for an instant ‘look’.

All of PhotoLab 8’s adjustments are non-destructive, so you can go back at any time to make changes. You can also create Virtual Copies to try out different adjustments or looks on an image without having to duplicate the file.

You will need to export/process images to share them. You can create regular TIFF or JPEG images, or output a part-processed Linear DNG file with all of DxO’s lens corrections and denoising applied, ready for use in another program, where it will look and behave exactly like a regular raw file, with all the extended tonal and color information intact – though  if this is all you want to do, you might be better off with DxO’s raw batch processor, PureRAW 4.

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: Performance

PhotoLab 8’s DeepPRIME XD2s processing is simply spectacular. What it can do with the raw files from older cameras or raw images shot at high ISOs on any camera can leave you rubbing your eyes with disbelief. When you combine its exceptional denoising capabilities with its powerful and effective lens corrections, you have a tool that can dramatically elevate the performance of even quite mediocre camera gear. In fact, the more ‘average’ your gear, the bigger the improvement. Some of the best DSLRs, for example, are a few years old now, but PhotoLab 8's processing and lens corrections brings their image quality right up to date.

It’s not an instant process, though. While PhotoLab 8’s regular adjustments take place in real time, just as with any other photo editor, its DeepPRIME process takes a few seconds, even on a faster computer. This means that you can’t just zoom in and out of an image as you work to see the effect of the DeepPRIME process. However, in this version, the new, large preview window is an effective solution, meaning that you can examine large sections of your image in real time as you work to see how the DeepPRIME process will render your image. You no longer have to export it to find out.

DxO PhotoLab 8 does not have quite the same range of presets as programs like Lightroom, Capture One or ON1 Photo RAW, for example, but it definitely rewards a more considered, manual approach. Its local adjustment tools are particularly effective and, once you get your head around their particular way of working, the U-point control points in particular let you enhance areas and objects in a very fast and intuitive way. 

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: Verdict

DxO PhotoLab 8 will appeal most to photographers who shoot raw and are happy with a more painstaking approach towards image quality – and if that’s a key priority for you, then PhotoLab definitely delivers. The results that can be achieved from raw files are simply spectacular..

If, on the other hand, you process dozens or hundreds of images at a time following a shoot, and you’re more interested in a consistent style and a rapid, easy workflow, then you’re probably better off with Lightroom or Capture One.

Photographers’ needs do vary, and not everyone can be bothered with pixel peeping. But once you’ve seen what DxO PhotoLab can do with lens corrections, detail rendition and noise removal, it can be hard to go back to a regular photo editor.

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: Alternatives

Tablets sit in a strange place these days and have lost the explosive growth they saw in their early days. But this hasn’t stopped computer manufacturers from producing ultra-portable and lightweight hybrid tablets and laptops with Microsoft leading the way with its Surface line.

The Asus ProArt PZ13 is a direct competitor aimed at creatives on the go, offering a fantastic OLED screen alongside AI-powered processing. It’s undoubtedly a powerful device considering its impressively svelte and lightweight design, but it offers nowhere near the power of the Asus ProArt PX13 and the Asus ProArt P16.

That said, it is a Copilot+ PC for creatives who need a small and lightweight device for photo and video editing on the go. The PZ13 offers the form and function of a tablet alongside the convenience of a laptop with the processing power required for general editing tasks.

The small screen and lack of compatibility with some creative software such as Adobe Lightroom Classic are frustrating, although Lightroom CC and Photoshop are compatible, do reduce its useability. But to be fair you can get most of the tasks you need completed with the PZ13.

I love small and portable devices, including cameras, for obvious reasons. In most cases, you do have to make a handful of concessions because, with a smaller size, limitations of one kind or another are inevitable. The PZ13 makes up for this with a comfortable-to-use detachable keyboard and the Asus Pen that allows you to use it as a pen display/graphics tablet.

Asus ProArt PZ13: Specifications

Asus ProArt PZ13: Price

The Asus ProArt PZ13 is available to buy now, and although the marketing says up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, this is the standard spec available at the time of writing. A lower spec in these regards would be debilitating for creatives so it would be surprising if lower-end models are released.

The PZ13 costs $1100 / £1200 and is also a whisker less expensive than the Surface Pro, Copilot+ PC (11th Edition), which is the closest Surface model available and direct competitor. This suggests the PZ13 is well priced when you consider that the Surface is the 2-in-1 market leader. Plus, the build quality and overall performance of the PZ13 that’s on offer, which we’ll cover in more detail later, can’t be faulted.

Asus ProArt PZ13: Design & Handling

I have to confess that I’ve always had a soft spot for 2-in-1 laptops/tablets, mostly down to their compact size and lightweight which make them the most capable balance between these two types of devices. I also have to admit that I don’t own one, simply because I prefer the processing power available with more traditional laptops, at the expense of portability in comparative terms.

The PX13’s footprint is similar to a sheet of A4 paper and is 0.35in / 90mm thick with a weight of just 0.85kg / 1.87 lbs. It’s undoubtedly small and portable, but the build quality like all of the ProArt range oozes quality. Asus claims it can perform in extreme environments up to 70°C and as low as -30°C, and has been tested against all sorts of situations most people wouldn’t subject a device to.

It’s also rated against water and dust ingress to IP52, so with all this in mind you should be able to use the PZ13 pretty much anywhere and in most weather conditions. The weak point would have to be the screen in the case of a drop, but the included detachable keyboard and rear stand that act as a case might provide some protection here.

The Asus Pen can be stowed in the rear part of the case, which doesn’t magnetically latch onto the PZ13 quite as well as you’d hope when in stand mode, but it works. The Asus Pen works well in place of a mouse and comes into its own for photo and illustration software where the PZ13 is transformed into a pen display. In tablet mode, you have no physical keyboard, but if the keyboard is attached you can lay the screen and the keyboard flat to use keyboard shortcuts or use the rear stand.

The keyboard itself is comfortable to use, but not so much so that you’d want to use it all day for typing, just like any keyboard of this type. The size of the keys is good, although the Shift and Control keys are small like the other ProArt laptops. There’s also backlighting, which is a great feature for typing in low-light or dark environments.

The main downside to the PZ13 is the lack of ports, which to be fair is unsurprising given the small size of the device. What you do get are two USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C that support power delivery and display, alongside an SD card reader. Yes, you read that correctly, the PZ13 has an SD rather than a microSD card slot. You even get a microSD adaptor in the box.

This means that you’ll have to use a USB hub if you need to attach any USB-A devices, or a USB-C hub if you need to attach more than two USB devices or more than one if you’re charging or running from power. This isn’t out of the ordinary for this type of 2-in-1 and is essentially what you sign up for when you purchase one.

There are front and rear-facing cameras with the front 5MP /1440p camera aimed at video streaming / video calls and Windows Hello face recognition. Image quality is fine for these purposes but not great for taking photos, as you might expect. The rear camera is 13MP and can capture video in 4K. Quality is much better as you’d expect, but JPEG processing is heavy on both, especially in low-light situations.

Asus ProArt PZ13: Performance

For general tasks such as web browsing, typing, and watching movies, the PZ13 sails through these and the ability to use it in tablet mode makes the latter a clutter-free experience. When it comes to editing photos and videos, it has the power required but with only 16GB RAM and no discreet GPU, it’s not going to blow you away. It’s capable, but certainly not commanding in this respect.

Capable is good though, don’t get me wrong, and the Snapdragon X Plus X1P 42 100 Processor with AI capabilities does a stellar job in most situations. Using Photoshop and Lightroom CC, since Lightroom Classic is incompatible, I was able to do everything I needed to in terms of photo editing but more intensive processing tasks require patience. For example, applying Super Resolution in Adobe Camera Raw, where file size is quadrupled, took a whopping three minutes and 34 seconds.

The overall size of the PZ13 means that it’s not a device I’d want to use all day every day as my main computer, but on the go, it can get the job done. Running Davinci Resolve 19 (Windows ARM 64 version), The PZ13 was able to run the software, which is optimized for this type of device, although it’s much slower than a more powerful laptop. Outputting a 10-minute 4K video at best quality settings took 43 minutes, which is a long time.

The PZ13 was also tested with Geekbench and Cinebench, although the latter was unable to perform tests because the Snapdragon X Plus CPU doesn’t have AVX2 instruction support. For Geekbench, however, it scored 2369 for single core, 11218 for multi-core, and 9598 for graphics. It’s middle of the road, but not a bad score when you consider just how small and thin the PZ13 is, and how tightly packed the components are.

The 3K (2880 x 1800) 13.3-inch OLED touchscreen is small yet sufficient for a device of this type, but the on-screen image is fantastic. Asus claims it can display 100% of the P3 color space, and when calibrated using a Spyder XPro it was displaying 97% P3, 95% Adobe RGB 1998, and 99% sRGB, which is good enough for color-critical work. And as an end note, the sound quality is absolutely fine but not as good as the ProArt P16.

Asus ProArt PZ13: Verdict

The Asus ProArt PZ13 is never going to be your everyday computer if you’re a creative, simply because it lacks the processing power that’s currently available in higher-spec machines. More intensive tasks require time and patience because processing times certainly aren’t short, but what you might call standard laptop tasks are fine.

The thing with this device is that it’s not designed to be a main computer; it’s small, lightweight, and highly portable which brings with it compromises in terms of processing capabilities. But for general photo editing tasks in Photoshop and Lightroom CC, it performs adequately and the Asus Pen allows it to be used as a pen display for more precise editing.

Alternatives

There has been a long-winded debate over many years since the iPad first came into existence, and when our mobile phones began to become more powerful: are even the best photo-editing laptops really necessary?

I've been a professional sports photographer for nearly 20 years and I always used a laptop – but since I've switched to street and documentary work, I began to realize that everything I do on my laptop can be done on my phone. 

In fact, its been just over a year since I have been exclusively editing all my images on my phone with Adobe Lightroom. And it's made me think: is the laptop dead for the working photographer?

I first began testing out the Adobe Lightroom app on the phone I was using at the time, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4, and I was very impressed with the ease of use. Thanks to the Android system I was able to attach a USB-C to USB-A adapter, along with a small USB-A card reader, and export all my images from my SD card right to my phone and into Lightroom.

Most of my edits tend to be an adjustment to contrast, vibrance, or slight crops, and with my black-and-white for film and digital work it tends just to be little tweaks. And you know what? My phone does a much better job than my laptop ever could – and let me explain why.

First you have to understand my workflow, consisting of film and digital – more film than digital these days, which I've spoken about before on DCW. My digital work is simple: shoot, upload to phone, edit, and save to Dropbox ready to share to the masses when I feel like it.

Obviously shooting film has a few more steps, like developing it and then scanning it – but it's after that when my phone becomes the perfect solution over a laptop. When I have a digital file, I simply upload that into my Dropbox and then edit these scans of my negatives anywhere I am. 

Yes I could do this on a laptop, but there is something so intuitive about just being able to edit images on the train with no fuss, or in the coffee shop without being that clichéd photographer.

I tend to share all my images across social media platforms like Threads and Instagram, so your user experience might vary. But for me, my phone is more than able to cope with my Leica M-E digital files or my 30MP equivalent digital scans of my negatives – enabling me to be laptop-free forever.

Honestly, have you ever wanted to be able to share images you have just taken on your wonderful camera? You might think about things like WiFi or Bluetooth – they do exist on modern cameras, but they certainly don't on any of my film bodies!

So my only option is to upload images to a device to be able to share them – and seeing as I always have my phone on me, this phone-only workflow suits my style of editing and sharing images perfectly! 

I've seen many other photographers make the switch from a computer to an iPad and they say they have never looked back. And while I wouldn't mind a bigger screen to see my images on, a phone is good enough because guess what – everyone looking at my images is seeing them on a phone anyway! So if you think about it, it's the best way to view and edit them, as I will see them exactly how most users will see them too.

It has been just over a year now that I have not used my laptop to edit my images. And it's the freest and most liberating feeling, leaving the laptop and its bulkiness behind and just being able to shoot-edit-share in a seamless fashion. I even tried this method for three paid assignments, and 'the system' didn't put a foot wrong; I shot everything on my camera, uploaded the images to my phone, edited them, put them into a private Dropbox folder and emailed them off to the clients. Simple!

It's the ease of use that makes this editing setup fantastic, either for those in fast-paced environments or those that don't tend to edit their images a lot. And that's why I think the laptop is dead for the working photographer, as the phone and iPad killed it!

Take a look at the best iPads for photo editing and the best tablets for photo editing,  along with the best flip phones and fold phones. 

Photographer and YouTuber Jared Polin, also known as Fro Knows Photo, has recently helped out another aspiring photographer as part of his Fund A Photographer project.

Started in 2021 in collaboration with Canon, Polin regularly gives away camera gear to aspiring photographers starting out in their careers.

The initial giveaway included 50 cameras and 50 lenses given to Polin by Canon, after he contacted them and shared his vision for Fund A Photographer. Think Tank Photo, ProGrade Digital, and Adobe also contributed bags, memory cards and Lightroom memberships. 

This time, Polin has a fresh batch of camera gear from Canon.

“We’ve got everything from Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, 5D Mark IV’s, even EOS R’s because we’ve entered the mirrorless world. But even better, every lens you could imagine, and we’re talking good lenses,” Polin said in a YouTube video.

Polin has everything from 8-15mm lenses, all the way up to the best Canon telephotos, like the 800mm f/5.6, as well as a range of Canon L-series lenses, to give away.

This time, Polin is focusing on Jeff Blount, a recent high school graduate. His teachers reached out to Polin before he graduated, “because one, they didn’t have a lot of gear and they wanted to get gear specifically for the kids, but they also they thought that Blount had great promise and was already starting to make some money, but could use a bit of help because his camera was broken.”

Polin said he got the high school seven bodies, lenses, and SD cards, which Blount used until recently, when Polin presented him with a special surprise.

“It’s been going great,” said Blount who likes to shoot sports and lifestyle sets, “been shooting a lot of content, a lot of pictures, and literally anything that has to do with a camera, I feel like I always got to be behind it or either in front of it just creating.

Thinking that his time with the gifted camera gear is nearly up, Blount said he would work towards buying more gear, maybe borrowing some from a friend and “staying busy.”

“Well the good news is that you’re not going to need to borrow anything from a friend because we got this, we’re stepping you up,” as he presents Blount with a Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, 24-70 f2.8 lens, and 70-200 lens, and a 200-400 lens.

“Well I really appreciate it, big time, this is really going to step my career up,” said Blount, “even if I’m not booked up working, just take a picture anyway.”

Make sure to keep an eye on Blount’s YouTube channel, and check out his photography on his Instagram page. If you know anyone who would benefit from some new gear, you can nominate them on the Fund A Photographer website.

Take a look at our guides to the best Canon cameras, the best Canon RF lenses, and the best cameras for beginners. 

Photo editing software rarely fails to capture the imagination with developers working hard to make their software stand out from the crowd. And, indeed, differentiate themselves from the market leaders who dominate this competitive sector. Zoner Photo Studio X is one such offering which proclaims itself as a Lightroom and Photoshop alternative, but one that's for Windows only.

The main difference here, and one that makes it similar in some ways to ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2024, is that it's all-in-one software offering a single interface made up of Modules. These modules provide image cataloguing, Raw processing, pixel-based editing, photo printing and even basic video editing. 

This streamlined approach to the interface is an interesting concept and one that could make it one of the best photo editing software options for beginners and intermediate photographers. I guess the main issue with Zoner Photo Studio X is that it's not that well-known at the moment, and that's always going to be a significant hurdle to overcome.

The software is intuitive and easy to use, especially if you already have experience with photo editing software. So much so, that you can pretty much hit the ground running with it if you're familiar with Lightroom, Photoshop, Affinity Photo 2 and similar software. Absolute beginners will, however, still face the same steep learning curve they would with most editing software.

Zoner Photo Studio X: Specifications

Zoner Photo Studio X: Price

Zoner Photo Studio X is available with a yearly subscription that costs $59 or $5.99 per month, making it one of the more cost-effective subscription-based options available. But where it's different is that there's no limitation in the number of installs so you can have, but this is for one person. You even get some free photo prints thrown in as well as 20GB of Zoner Photo Cloud storage.

A family license is available for $5.99 per month and this allows members of a household to have their own Zoner account with access to the software. There's also the 'ZPS X: The Complete Guide to Photo Editing' PDF book which costs $29 and is available on the Zoner website. It may be useful, but this is pretty much the same price as a physical editing book, if not more expensive than many, so this does appear to be too expensive regardless of its usefulness.

Zoner Photo Studio X: Interface & Usability

The Zoner Photo Studio X is intuitively laid out and follows what you might call the standard layout most photo editing software uses, so there are no surprises here. As an experienced photo editor, I found it incredibly easy to use with the interface split into Modules with Manager, Develop, Editor, Print, and Video; these are all pretty much self-explanatory in terms of what each is for and you can skip seamlessly through these as your workflow demands.

The Manager section is where you can manage your images by selecting, rating, rejecting, inputting metadata, and then opening your shots into the desired part of the software. As standard, this uses a file tree on the left so you can access image folders on your computer or external drive, or you can import images to the Zoner Catalogue to take advantage of Smart Raw previews for higher resolution previews.

This works well, but if the Raw format being installed isn’t supported, the software suggests installing Adobe DNG Converter to expand Raw-loading support. Zoner Photo Studio X then has to be configured to work with the DNG Converter. Even if you don’t want this functionality, I found that when trying to edit Fujifilm Raw files without this functionality still required Adobe DNG Converter to be installed. So, while there's a fix for unsupported Raw files, which is great, it's still frustrating to have to install further software.

The most impressive part of the software is the Develop Module which provides professional-level control over adjustments. It's not as fully featured in terms of localized adjustments as Lightroom, but you ultimately have every control you need at your fingertips to edit your shots. The Print Module is just that, allowing you to print at home or to order prints online through the software. You can also create other types of prints including calendars, canvases, contact sheets, and more with ease.

The Editor Module is the equivalent of Photoshop where you can work with Layers, masks, and other pixel-based editing controls, but it's closer to Photoshop Elements in the level of control available. The Video Module is useful because it provides an easy-to-use video editor with the ability to also create slideshows and time-lapse videos from stills, but its functionality is limited. But it is still useful to have for basic video tasks. This Module can suffer from slowdowns, so it's not as smooth as dedicated video software.

Zoner Photo Studio X: Performance

With Zoner Photo Studio X, you can achieve high-quality edits so image quality isn’t an issue. While you don’t get the level of control available in Photoshop and Lightroom, there are enough controls, particularly in the Develop Module, to meet the needs of beginners and intermediate photographers. The Develop module is by far the best, but the Editor Module can require you to work on copies of the Background Layer due to the limited Adjustment Layers available.

The fact that this is also an all-in-one editing solution helps to maintain a streamlined and consistent workflow, which is never a bad thing regardless of your editing ability. But for beginners especially, only having to use one program to meet all of your editing needs in a single interface can make things easier.

The most advertised feature of Zoner Photo Studio X is that it offers True HDR editing when the software is used with the latest HDR monitors. To cut a slightly longer story short, this ultimately means you can enjoy greater detail when editing with more realistic tones and faithful color rendition. But to enjoy this functionality, you have to be using an HDR monitor or a laptop with an HDR screen.

The main downside here is that although many higher-spec laptops these days come with HDR-enabled screens, as is the case with mine, turning on HDR reduces the color gamut of the monitor so I always edit in SDR for more accurate colors. You can buy wide gamut HDR monitors, and if you already have one, fantastic, Zoner Photo Studio X will be great in this department. But if not, these monitors are expensive when compared to wide gamut SDR options, which are expensive in their own right.

As someone who has been editing photos professionally for many years using SDR monitors and has a high-end professional monitor, I certainly don’t feel the need to rush out to replace it with a wide gamut HDR monitor to take advantage of this feature. However, when upgrade time comes around, and these monitors are the standard, they will inevitably reduce in price.

Zoner Photo Studio X: Verdict

Zoner Photo Studio X is an interesting offering and the affordable price of subscriptions will no doubt be attractive to beginners and intermediate users. I don’t think that it has what it takes to prise professional users away from Adobe and Capture One, but at the same time the Develop Module offers an impressive array of tools and controls.

These aren't quite at the level of professional software, but since this software is clearly aimed at a different audience it shouldn’t be a problem. The most important aspect of the software is that it does everything beginners and intermediate users need, and more, all in one intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

Looking into new software takes a little thinking outside of the box, especially when you're presented with something new that you may not have heard of, but don’t forget that this is Windows-only software so it's limited in terms of operating systems.

Alternatives

We’re beginning to see some real-world examples of AI-generated content’s utility go mainstream, thanks in part to the weight of companies like Adobe and OpenAI going all out to bring generative AI technology to the masses.

A year after its release, the latest iteration of Adobe Firefly is starting
to look like a real contender as a tool for AI content. Not least because it sits as part of a rapidly evolving ecosystem in Adobe Creative Cloud, which has recently begun to introduce some paradigm-shifting generative AI features. Some of the most impressive things that are now available include AI object removal and editing for video in Adobe Premiere Pro, along with video clip extension and smarter selection tools within Photoshop and Lightroom. 

Now that Adobe is all in on generative AI, early predictions about AI’s promise
are turning into practical realities for creative professionals who use its tools.

I recently came across the work of filmmaker Paul Trillo, who is credited with creating the first music video using OpenAI’s text-to-video tech, Sora.

The video for the song The Hardest Part by indie artist Washed Out (see above) is a fascinating interpretation of the theme of being with someone and then moving on from that relationship. To depict this, Trillo deploys a technique he refers to as a ‘high-speed infinite zoom’, where the perspective of the video is of the viewer zooming into and through the scenes of these people’s lives. It’s a unique and thought-provoking aesthetic that would have been extremely difficult to achieve through conventional methods. 

Above: In this pop video, Trillo uses AI video generator Sora to produce a high-speed infinite zoom effect

Trillo has been at the cutting edge of film technique for many years and has built a reputation for pushing content creation technology to its limits. As well as the Washed Out video, he recently demonstrated some powerful practical uses for other AI tools to create VFX scenes, just like he did in his short film project Notes To My Future Self.

In the breakdown video below, Paul describes how “bad compositing comes from bad green screen lighting in which no one knows what the final background is going to look like”. He overcame that problem by generating backgrounds using Stable Diffusion and extending them with Photoshop, then upscaling them with Topaz Labs, Magnific and Krea to get them up to 8K resolution. 

He also used Runway Gen-2, a multi-modal AI system, to create moving elements in each scene, such as swaying branches or dynamic lighting. These details helped to sell the VFX illusion that each scene was grounded in the real world, despite being entirely AI-generated. 

What’s clear from Paul’s pioneering work is that the utility of these tools is undeniable. AI as creative aid is already helping people bring ideas to life that were far too impractical to shoot without an exhaustive budget and without wasting precious time on something that may not even work.

AI helps speed up the trial-and-error aspect of creation and reduces the cost of failure when it comes to exploring new ideas. That’s important because failing is a key component of success. 

Take a look at the best AI image generators. You might also like to read more of Jon Devo's Scanning Ahead blogs.

You’ve become something of a Lightroom expert, and you’ve even made a dent in Photoshop, getting comfortable with compositing and retouching. Not only that but you love the edit as well as shooting. You can do everything you need done. Or can you? 

The biggest fact in life about any subject, is that for a long time you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s only when you start to dig a lot deeper that you begin to see how much you still have to learn. Some of it is the Dunning-Kruger effect, and some of it is just knowing enough to get by.  

This could be stopping you from trying out plugins for Lightroom Classic or Photoshop CC. Even if you usually stick to Lightroom Classic, it’s worth going to Photoshop for plugins as you can use Smart Objects to let you edit plugin settings. 

What’s the biggest thing you spend, but can never get more of? Yes, it’s time, of course. Now, time doing things you enjoy is never wasted time, but making those things easier is definitely worth the time saving. Plugins can do a few things for you. Plugins that do a job faster, like the Retouch4Me plugins, can give you back precious time editing people and relieve the tedium of repetitive editing.

More importantly, plugins can make you more creative. Take Boris FX Optics or Corel Particleshop. Both allow you to add effects to your photo, taking you in directions that wouldn’t be able to do easily otherwise. Optics does both light effects and particle effects, while Particleshop does particles, but it in a very different way. The key element in both is fun. 

So how can you extend that knowledge? Well, most plugin makers have free trials. Some allow you to see the effect without saving, others will create a watermarked output, while others again give full use but for a limited time. This is one place where spending a little time to save you more is worth it.  

• Photography Tips & Photoshop Tutorials
• Photoshop tutorials: 100 editing tips
• 32 Lightroom tutorials to try today

Is your editing feeling a little jaded? Does your processing leave you feeling stale? Well buckle up, I’ve got something that’ll boost your photos, your editing and your creativity. Even more, you’ll inject a shot of fun into your computer time. 

Optics 2024, from Oscar-winning Boris FX, gives big-screen quality effects on your still images. After years of doing walkthroughs on hundreds of plugins, this is hands down my favorite plugin ever. 

Optics 2024 was created as a mix of the old Tiffen Dfx, which had cool gobo effects (drop gothic window light in anyone?), blurs, film stocks, and color grading combined with Sapphire and Particle Illusion, two of Boris FX’s popular movie plugins. The plugin suite works with Photoshop CC, Lightroom, or Photoshop Elements.

Sapphire: the editing gem

Sapphire is a light-generating engine that does everything from light leaks to night skies. Want a scene that has the night sky from the date on location you were born? No problem. Fancy a little JJ Abrams Star Trek lens flare on your nighttime portraits? Easy. Rays, sparkles, or vignettes? Again, all part of the fun. Or maybe Glow which adds a soft, ethereal light, enhancing portraits with a dreamy quality or making your landscapes appear otherworldly. 

Use your Particle Illusion

Particle Illusion provides powerful tools for adding dynamic particle effects. Imagine enhancing a dancer's leap with sparkling dust trails, creating a magical sense of motion. These effects are fully customizable, allowing you to adjust particle size, velocity, and color to enhance your creative vision. Fog, smoke and explosions sit alongside transporter effects and wormholes. Because this tool is video-based, you can choose frames in a timeline for a more unique effect. 

The Film Look

I love the concept of color grading like the movies but don’t know how to balance colors. Optics has you covered. Whether it’s choosing a film stock, damage, or cross-processing, Film Lab will come to the rescue.

Masking made EZ

You may not want effects on the whole image, and Optics has a range of masking options, like Paint, Gradient or Spot. The king of masking tools within Optics is EZ Mask. Left-click and paint where you want to keep, right-click for where you don’t want the effect, and EZ Mask will detect the transitions automatically. It’s especially useful for placing effects behind your subject. 

Step Back

Optics runs seamlessly as a Smart Object, so your photo can always be edited and tweaked in the future, effectively making it non-destructive. It also remembers your last edit, so if you’ve messed up and take the original image back into Optics, you can regenerate your layers and tweak again. 

I see the Light!

Boris FX Optics was love at first sight for me. The pristine lens flares, where you can build your lenses from scratch or modify existing ones, had me hooked immediately. Of course, that’s one of the 180 filters with thousands of presets to get you started. Take your editing in directions you never thought possible and inject that fun back into your post-processing with Boris FX Optics. 

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We have been wowed by the powers of Adobe’s generative AI across the company’s suite of apps, with AI popping up in video, graphics and photo applications to aid content editing and generation. According to Adobe, Firefly has been used to generate over 7 billion images worldwide across Adobe creative tools since its initial debut in March 2023. 

For photographers, we have been treated to some seriously impressive photo editing powers in Express and Photoshop apps for the last year or so now, from AI-powered object removal and replacement to Generative Expand imagining brand-new data around the edges of an image to increase the canvas size.

Adobe’s Lightroom software has so far felt a little left out of the AI party. So far very little of the company’s focus has been directed at what is perhaps its most beloved app by photo editors. That is about to change, however, as Adobe has unveiled the first Firefly-AI-powered tools in the Lightroom ecosystem – via Lightroom CC on mobile, desktop, iPad, and web, and Lightroom Classic.

The first new AI tool in Lightroom’s toolbox will be Generative Remove. Perfect for removing distractions from photos, Generative Remove empowers you to effortlessly eliminate unwanted objects without altering the original image. (As with all Lightroom edits, Generative Remove is non-destructive and can be undone in a click.) 

Generative Remove uses Firefly AI to replace the removed area with AI-imagined content that it hopes seamlessly matches the look and feel of the original image. 

Not stopping there, several other new features are also making their way to the software in the latest update. Lightroom’s AI-powered Lens Blur tool, which aims to artificially create the background blur of using a wide aperture lens, is now generally available after spending some time in an early access beta over the last few months. Adobe has added some all-new presets to the tool, giving more choice over the aesthetic blur effects applied to the photo.

Adobe is also expanding tethering support to Sony cameras, making it more of a seamless experience to shoot and capture images directly into Lightroom to speed up the import and editing process. Lightroom already supports tethering for Canon and Nikon cameras. 

HDR Optimization has been improved, which should enable anyone capturing HDR photos to edit and export their photos with brighter highlights, deeper shadows, and more vivid colors. Instant access to photo libraries in Lightroom mobile and desktop apps should also make getting into photo editing that much quicker. Finally, Lightroom’s mobile experience is improved with an all-new mobile toolbar to prioritize the most popular features, which should make it faster and more intuitive to edit.

The specter of AI will continue to make many creatives wary. For anyone worried about using AI content in their work, Adobe is keen to point out that Firefly is trained on licensed content, including Adobe Stock, and Firefly should generate content suitable for commercial use that does not infringe on copyright and intellectual property rights such as trademarks and logos. And, with Adobe being a founding member of the Content Authenticity Initiative, when using Generative Remove in Lightroom, Content Credentials will be automatically attached to photos edited with the feature.

All the features above including Generative Remove will be available today to all Lightroom users in an early access form. You can find the new updates in the Adobe CC app, or you can manually kick off the update in Lightroom under the ‘Help’ menu. 

For more choices in editing your images check out our guide to the best photo editing software.

I’ve tried every filter-adding app out there, from Instagram to VSCO. And I’ve been playing around with presets and filter tools in Lightroom for just as long. I even have a folder called "lens flares and light leaks" which I'll occasionally open in Photoshop when I need to jazz up a landscape image in a hurt. So what?

Despite all that, I still firmly believe in using the best filters over adding digital ones in the editing suite. The visuals are just better when you filter the light during capture, especially for creative effects. The results are more accurate. More realistic and more believable. But only if you have good quality glass. That’s why I was interested to try the relatively new Kenko Anamorflare filters, designed to replicate the characteristic flare you get from anamorphic lenses... without the cost and faff of actually using anamorphic lenses.

Kenko released its set of six Anamorflare filters in late 2023. It claims they help photographers and videographers to capture "impressive light rays without impacting your budget". Once mounted, you can capture and angle flare from strong light sources and recreate the look of your favorite cinematic movies in-camera. But are the results a gimmick, or do the Anamorflare filters have a place in the kit bag of creators? I tried them all to find out.

Kenko Anamorflare filters: Specifications

Kenko Anamorflare filters: Price

Kenko's Anamorflare filters come in six different flare colors: blue, green, yellow, red, clear, and rainbow. Currently, the filters are only available in an 82mm thread size, but you could use a stepping ring to convert them for different lenses. 

The filters aren't yet widely on sale in the US, but are available on Kenko's website for $109. In the UK the filters are available on Amazon for between £100-£120 at the time of writing. This sounded pricy to me at first, especially if you want to get a few for different colored flares. Similar alternatives (albeit from lesser-known names) also cost a third of Kenko's version. Still, I suspect you're paying for the brand, its associated quality, and the currently limited availability. And you'll spend much less sticking one of these filters on your lens than investing in an anamorphic lens setup.

Kenko Anamorflare filters: Build and Handling

The design of the Kenko Anamorflare filters will come as no surprise if you've ever used Kenko filters before, or circular polarizing filters, for that matter. The round, slim black frame is made from sturdy aluminum that doesn't feel like it would dent or bend easily. 

There's a thin textured thread on the inside of the filter to mount it onto your lens and a rotating ring on the exterior which you turn to angle the flare in an image (more on that later). Each filter contains straight lines across in the corresponding color to the flare produced.

Anamorflare filters only come in an 82mm thread size, which was ideal for testing with my Canon RF24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM lens but could be slightly limiting if you don't have a lens to fit already. I guess Kenko is still testing the appetite for these filters or a wide lens area is needed to create the pronounced flare effects.

Screwing the filter onto the lens takes seconds, and once it's on securely there's no way that you can unscrew it accidentally. I like that the filters are designed to allow a lens cap to sit on top so you can replace it and protect the filter in between shots. Changing filters is easy too, and Kenko provides a clip-shut rectangular plastic box with foam padding to store the filter in. It's not the most luxurious container, but it feels hardwearing and stows in a camera bag neatly.

Kenko Anamorflare filters: Performance

Once mounted, the Anamorflare filters work best when pointed toward a strong light source such as the sun, car lights, or streetlights. It doesn't need to be a direct light, and I got some pretty, diffused results when I used the rainbow filter and caught rays of light dappled through a woodland. The effect of the rainbow filter includes the colors you get when shooting through a prism, which makes sense. It's the filter I used and enjoyed the most,

I tested all six filters, including the clear, colored, and rainbow versions. It's hard to describe the visual results you get in one or two sentences, as these depend so much on the light source, and its strength and distance. But in the same situations, I found that each filter produced an equally strong light ray effect. The clear filter is best when you want neutral flares, such as in strong daylight, but I also found myself matching the filter color to the light source for a complementary effect.

One of the features of the filter is that you can alter the angle of the light beam by rotating the front element to change the direction of the lines on the filter. I found this very agile for angling the light around a subject but with the rainbow filter it also changed the order of the colors. I was pleased to note that none of the filters introduced a noticeable color cast or vignetting to my images, although Keno does suggest leaving the camera's White Balance in Auto mode for the best results.

The focal length affects the appearance of the light ray, and Kenko suggests using anything from 50mm and longer. That's because when you go wider than this the ray will distort and no longer appear as a straight line. Aesthetically, I don't have a problem with the curved flare lines, it just isn't necessarily something you'd get from a traditional anamorphic lens. Like all creative outputs, it's yours to make your own.

I did have a slight problem with the stripes appearing in the out-of-focus areas (the bokeh) which Kenko says is down to the structure of the filter. These aren't obvious unless you zoom in slightly and look for it, but once I'd noticed the effect, I found it quite irritating in my stills at wider apertures. And speaking of apertures, smaller apertures can break up the light rays, but I found I could shoot up to around f/8 without encountering this.

When you introduce creative filters onto the front of a lens, there's always a worry that it will impede the autofocus speed and accuracy. And I thought the filters' lines would cause my lens to hunt for the right subject. It's also difficult for any lens to focus onto a thick beam of light if that's where you're pointing it, but there were only a few rare instances where I struggled to lock on to the right target with the filters attached. When this happened, I simply shifted my focus position slightly and got a sharp, well-focused result.

Kenko Anamorflare filters: Verdict

If I'm assessing the Anamorflare filters purely on whether they do what they're designed to, I have nothing but praise. Each filter achieves a distinct and noticeable light ray when pointed toward a light source, and the ability to angle the ray allows you to tailor the shot to your subject - be it a portrait or a scenic. Changing the flare direction is also a cool effect when filming, and the filter rotation is just smooth enough to avoid camera shake (although it could do with a few notches for more control).

These filters add a distinct creative effect to your content, but it won't be for everyone. Some may find the flare effect too overcooked for their tastes and may lament the ability to remove it after a shoot. Generally, I found the filters upheld the quality of my telephoto lens well, which is another bonus for pros. For creators who love the look of flare and want to enhance the colors of lights in their stills and videos, I can see the Anamorflare filters being a great tool. Yes, you can add flare in post-production, but nowhere near as organically or intensely.

Alternatives

The DxO Nik Collection now consists of seven different plug-ins, five of which are designed to offer creative inspiration and effects, while two are more ‘corrective’ image enhancement tools. We call them plug-ins, and they can indeed be used from within Lightroom Classic, Adobe Photoshop, Capture One, DxO PhotoLab, and Affinity Photo, but they can also be used on their own as standalone applications.

We've long considered the Nik Collection to be one of the best photo editing software suites on the market, so what exactly do you get?

The creative plug-ins include Nik Color Efex, Silver Efex, Analog Efex, Viveza, and HDR Efex, and while there is a degree of crossover for black and white photography and color adjustments, each one is aimed at a particular style or genre of photography.

With Nik Collection 7, Color Efex becomes the principal photo editing tool, with its ability to apply over 50 different filter effects, combine them as presets, and mask each one with DxO’s fast and effective control point adjustments.

Color Efex 7 gets the lion’s share of updates in this version, with new preset management options, ‘dynamic’ filters which now include (improved) HSL controls, grain effects, and DxO’s own contrast-enhancing ClearView effect. It also has three new filters taken from the Viveza plug-in to extend its potential for image enhancement and effects.

The other plug-ins benefit from new control point options too, including the ability to reshape circular control points as ellipses and a new polygonal control point tool. It’s now possible to switch images to a different Nik plug-in while you work and to export a version of an image straight from the plug-in without having to return to the host program first.

Nik Silver Efex 7 specializes in black and white photography, with powerful tools and controls that reproduce the depth and richness of analog black and white photography, while Analog Efex 7 replicates the flawed, faded, and distressed look of old analog photos and adds in camera effects like double exposures, lens blur and bokeh.

HDR Efex 7 is little changed from previous versions but is a very effective tool for merging bracketed images into high dynamic range composites with a range of preset effects and manual adjustments. Viveza is a simpler tool aimed at color control and enhancement using both global adjustments and DxO control points for local adjustments.

Nik Dfine 7 and Nik Sharpener 7 are different and perhaps a little dated in their appeal. Dfine is a noise reduction plug-in that’s effective enough in a modest way but outclassed by today’s AI-drive raw denoising tools. Sharpener 7 is very good at ‘output’ sharpening for specific devices, but you can almost certainly do this in your host software too.

The plug-in missing from this release is Perspective Efex. This makes sense because there was always a rather confusing crossover (duplication, even) with DxO’s standalone ViewPoint software. Besides, most host programs like Lightroom Classic and Capture One have perfectly effective perspective correction tools of their own, which you can apply before or after sending images to the Nik plug-ins.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Price

DxO Nik Collection 7 is available to download now. The full version costs $159 / £145 (about AU$243), but existing users can upgrade for $89 / £79 (about AU$136). Alternatively, if you just want to see what it can do, there’s a 30-day free trial.

You do get a lot for your money. A new license will cost a little more than an annual Adobe Photography Plan subscription, but it’s cheaper than a Capture One license and in the same ballpark as other software tools. It’s also a perpetual license, so if you don’t need any of the new features in subsequent editions, you can use this one indefinitely. It doesn’t work directly with raw files, so it won’t be made obsolete by new cameras and lenses.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Interface and usability

Typically, the Nik plug-ins follow a standard modern layout, with presets in the left sidebar and manual controls, including local adjustments, on the right. There are differences in the details, though. Nik Color Efex 7 offers both individual filters and presets (combinations of filters) in its left sidebar, and the ability to change the stacking order of filters in the right sidebar – changing the order the filters are applied will change the appearance of the image.

Silver Efex 7 is slightly different in that the left sidebar has presets, but there are no filters as such, just adjustments you can apply in the right sidebar, and you can’t change the order – though that really doesn’t matter very much.

Analog Efex 7 has presets too, but not filters as such. Instead, it has different tools and effects under a ‘Camera Kit’ heading which you can select manually, and they then appear in the right sidebar where you can make detailed adjustments.

HDR Efex 7 is different again. In Lightroom, this has to be launched via the ‘Export’ menu rather than the ‘Edit in’ menu, and the interface layout is similar to Silver Efex, with presets on the left sidebar and manual tools on the right.

So while all the Nik plug-ins share the same family resemblance, they do operate slightly differently. It’s not a problem and you very quickly get used to it and think no more about it, but it’s worth pointing out that they are not identical.

If you’re launching them from Photoshop, you have another potential workflow. The Nik Collection installer adds a Nik Collection 7 palette which you can use to launch the plug-ins directly. There’s also a section for ‘Meta presets’, which are automated combinations of plug-ins and settings you can apply with a single click – though it’s a relatively small selection and you can’t create your own.

The Photoshop workflow is interesting because you can apply the Nik filters to Smart Objects, which means you can go back and change the filter settings later – it’s a non-destructive workflow.

But you can also achieve a non-destructive workflow from Lightroom and other host applications, or even when launching the Nik tools as standalone apps. There’s a non-destructive TIFF file option that does double the file size, but stores both the original image, the edited version, and the processing instructions needed to achieve it.

This non-destructive route is not new, but the plug-in switcher and quick export options are. These are genuinely useful additions to Nik Collection 7. They don’t change any of the creative options available, but they do make it possible to swap to another of the plug-ins if you realize you didn’t launch the best one for the job or to export one or more versions of your image while you’re still in the plug-in.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Quality of results

Nik Silver Efex enjoys a near-legendary reputation amongst black and white photographers for its ability to produce rich, dense, and dramatic black-and-white images. It also offers a set of tools that properly reflect the way photographers see and manipulate black-and-white images.

For me, though, Color Efex has always been the star of the show. Its filters are powerful, inventive, and genuinely useful day to day, and the range of permutations and presets you can create are practically infinite. The improvements in Nik Collection 7 make it better still.

I also love Analog Efex, though its presets can be a little heavy-handed and its sometimes odd photography jargon firmly rooted in the Google era – this is the one plug-in added by Google during its tenure before DxO took over. But what other tool gives you multiple-exposure effects, lens distortion, motion blur, and multi-lens effects like these?

I also like HDR Efex 7, though its HDR presets can look a little over the top by today’s standards. If you want naturalistic high dynamic range imaging, you are better off in a program like Lightroom, Capture One or Affinity Photo, where the HDR tone mapping is designed to be invisible, not exaggerated.

Viveza seems, to me, less valuable. It offers global and local color adjustments you can apply just as easily in Color Efex. Indeed, Color Efex 7 now includes three core components of Viveza as new dynamic filters.

Dfine seems a rather old-fashioned approach to removing noise in images that have already been processed. It can do a useful job on noisy old JPEGs, but if you shoot raw you would be better off with one of today’s raw denoising tools. Nik Sharpener 7, meanwhile, can apply subtle sharpening enhancements for printed output, but again seems a bit of a throwback to older ways of working.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Verdict

This review points out some inconsistencies in the Nik Collection 7 plug-ins and perhaps some areas for improvement. This might make it sound like a rather average sort of product. It isn’t.

The fact is, Color Efex 7, Silver Efex 7, Analog Efex 7 and even HDR Efex 7 are just so spectacularly good you could forgive the Nik Collection 7 anything. Viveza seems less useful and Dfine and Sharpener are distinctly old fashioned and limited. But who cares? Those first four plug-ins are so good they easily carry the rest.

These Nik Collection plug-ins are classic photo editing tools that have stood the test of time and then some. DxO has constantly updated them without ruining them, enhancing and developing them with a care and sometimes an ingenuity that’s kept them right at the cutting edge of photographic creativity. AI? Who needs it, when you have software that so perfectly releases the photographer’s own human intelligence?

Nik Collection 7 is not perfect and perhaps never will be, but it’s so good that it hardly matters.

DxO Nik Collection 7: Alternatives

Sunsets are probably one of the most popular natural phenomena to photograph. Most people are awake for them, they occur daily (even if they’re not always super impressive) and they can completely transform a landscape with dazzling hues of pink, orange, blue, yellow and purple. But I’ve recently made a rather peculiar promise to myself – to never take a boring sunset photo again.

I love a sunset as much as anyone, but for me, even really good photos never quite portray their magic. I was sat on a beach in Koh Tao trying to capture the sun setting over the horizon and I found myself looking at the photos completely uninspired. To me, photography is meant to elicit some kind of emotion or remind you of the finer details of that particular moment. So if I’m capturing a sunset that could be taken on any beach in the world where (so long as the sun sets beyond the horizon) I’m not meeting either of my photography criteria.

That’s not to say I’ve stopped taking sunset photos entirely, I’m just deadset on putting a lot more effort into the framing and composition. Instead of taking a sunset shot at the shoreline, I’ll take it from much further back where I can frame it with greenery and include people or boats to add some interest. I look for leading lines that draw your eyes to the focal point or birds that are creating an interesting shape in the sky. Since I’ve started really thinking about it, I’ve fallen in love with taking photos of sunsets all over again. By challenging myself to think outside the box, move around, change my shooting height and experiment with depth of field, I’ve managed to take some sunset shots I’m not only proud of but that I can instantly identify as being a specific beach.

There are a few other things you can do to up your game when it comes to shooting sunsets. If you can afford to, it’s well worth investing in a filter holder kit and a set of graduated filters. Picking one of the best graduated ND filters you can apply a gradual ND filter to either the top or bottom of the image while lining it up with the horizon so you can perfectly expose the highlights without crushing the shadows. Shooting in RAW will also enable you to darken the highlights and bring out the shadows so you can keep the details in the image while the colours of the sky are as true to life as possible. Adding a slight colour grade with warm pink tones in Lightroom, Photoshop, or your chosen photo editing software will make your sunset photos pop – just make sure you don’t go too crazy you don’t want your sunset looking fake!

Although I don’t see nearly half as many (or probably a quarter as many come to think of it), I actually much prefer shooting sunrise. There’s something exciting about capturing the start of a new day yet to unravel, rather than saying goodbye to another one. No matter whether you’re an early bird or a sunset worshipper, you can use these tips to start taking much more impressive sunset photos that will make you more confident in your photography and perhaps even earn themselves a place on your wall. 

Read about what I shouldn't have taken with me.

Launched in January this year, Fundy Designer V11 is the latest iteration of the Fundy album design (and more) software that first saw the light of day in 2008. It’s aimed at wedding, portrait, and social photographers seeking to expand their product offerings with minimal additional workload or complication. 

The software simplifies the creation of high-quality albums, wall art, and cards, and in some cases enables photographers to design and order products directly from their chosen labs. The inclusion of an online proofer within the Pro Enhancements package ensures that clients can swiftly approve designs, facilitating a seamless transition from approval to order placement.

Fundy Designer: Specifications

Fundy Designer: Key Features

Fundy Designer V11 integrates into a photographer’s existing workflow, accepting rated images from popular software like Photo Mechanic, Adobe Bridge and Lightroom. Photographers can export their edited images as JPGs to a folder, then import them into Fundy Designer.

The significant addition to V11 in comparison with V10 is the arrival of the new all-in-one ‘Design Wizard’. Where V10 has an ‘Auto Design’ feature that creates an album with a single click, V11 can now extend this to include wall art and card creation as well. 

Fundy Designer: Interface

The interface of Fundy Designer V11 is logical and intuitive. The first step after launching the software is to import photos by tapping the ‘Add Photo’ button. I found it took just over 90 seconds to import 135 images (1.98GB). 

With some images imported, you’ll see thumbnails along the bottom of the screen and you have the option to make selections and ratings or hit the Design Wizard button straight away.. 

While Fundy Designer can work with the ratings that are applied in other software, you can also add them quickly within the software itself. Simply double-click on any of the thumbnails to open the image browser and start clicking on the stars and hearts as you like. 

If you wish, you can also select a few images as ‘main’ images to occupy a whole page in an album, select the cover photo, mark images to be shown as panoramas across two pages and group images to be shown together on a page. There’s also the option to tag images to indicate what they depict. When the shoot type is set to Wedding, for instance, there are options such as Location, Details, Bride Getting Ready, Groom Getting Ready, etc. Other shoot types include Portrait, Seniors, Event, Boudoir, and two custom options.

Once you’ve finished tagging and grouping images, clicking on the album icon returns you to the main page with the thumbnails along the bottom and the Design Wizard button. Hitting that button opens a new window to select settings for the album, wall art, and card creation. By default those three creation options are set to ‘on’, but they can be turned off if you prefer to just create one or two of the product types.

If you haven’t tagged or ‘favorited’ the images you’re working on within your editing software, it’s worth doing so in Fundy Designer. It’s also useful to have given some thought to which images would work best by themselves, with other, and as panoramas and tag them accordingly.

Fundy Designer: Performance

Fundy Designer selects some default settings for each of the products you want to design, but there are dropdown options available to change the format, cover style, and design style of the album, and the format and design style of the wall art and cards. Clicking on the ‘Advanced Options’ link gives you further control, including the ability to select the lab with which you wish to print your work. 

GraphiStudio, Millers, and Renaissance Albums are listed as ‘Direct Labs’ for album creation, which means you can order the product with them from within Fundy Designer. There’s also an extensive list of other labs including Bay Photo Lab, Bobs Books, Digitalab, Loxley Colour, nPhoto, and many more, which aren’t fully integrated but have products listed for selection so their dimensions are imported. However, if the lab you wish to use isn’t available, use the Custom Size option in the Album Company window and then set the dimensions of the album you plan to create. 

This is also where you have the ability to set the number of images you want to include across your preferred number of pages.

The list of labs available to make wall art is shorter than the album list, and there are none listed for the card creation, but again, it’s possible to set the size you want to print. 

After you’ve finished selecting the settings for the album, wall art, and cards, click on ‘Design Project’ and then the icon for the product you want to see. I created a square album with 40 pages and 60 images from 135 supplied by Scott Johnson of The Edge Photography and the preview was visible as soon as I clicked to see it.

The album design isn’t set in stone, it can be tweaked until you get exactly what you or your clients want. Clicking on any of the spreads in the album puts a yellow box around it and reveals a few icons that allow you to make quick changes like shuffling the images around or moving the spread to a different location in the album. You can also drag images from the thumbnail bar onto a spread and the software adapts so that everything fits nicely automatically. 

Double-clicking on a spread opens its preview and allows further changes such as changing an image’s aspect ratio or alignment.

Once you’re happy with the album, you can move on to the wall art and card designs by selecting them from the menu bar at the top of the page. 

By default, the wall art is shown against a default background image of a room to give it scale. There’s a selection of room images to pick from, or you can put them on white or black. Alternatively, you can upload an image of your client’s rooms and scale everything appropriately. As with the albums, you can swap images around and change their print size and the like. The idea is to help clients see how your images could look on their walls and to encourage them to order more or larger prints.

When all the editing is finished, click on the export icon in the top right corner of the screen. This reveals options to upload your creations to your selected lab or download the files ready to upload to your lab. You can also create a design proof to share with clients, export it for web use, or save it as a design set for future use.

Fundy Designer: Verdict

The Design Wizard is the standout feature of Fundy Designer V11 and with a little guidance, it creates good-looking, neatly arranged albums within seconds. It also makes creating an attractive wall art design and cards so easy that professional photographers can create them on the off-chance of making extra sales to their clients. This is backed by Fundy Software’s excellent drop zone technology that makes it easy to move images around and perfect a design or tweak it to a customer’s preferences.

While Fundy Designer V11 is most likely to appeal to wedding photographers, it can also open up new revenue streams to other photographers who may not have previously considered selling albums, large prints, or cards. Crucially, it doesn’t add a huge amount of work and can slip into an existing workflow.

Generative AI has quickly emerged as one of the most transformative and controversial technologies of our era. For photographers and photo editors, the implications are profound. Will it just make our jobs easier? Or will it replace them altogether?

At the center of this unfolding revolution / disruption / total calamity (delete as appropriate) is Adobe's Firefly, a groundbreaking generative AI model now baked directly into Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop.

You might have ignored Firefly up until now, assuming that it's a temporary phenomenon—a mere blip or novelty that will soon be forgotten about. But if that's the case, then Zeke Koch, VP of product management at Firefly, is here to tell you (warmly and diplomatically) that you're very wrong. As far as Adobe's concerned, Firefly is the future, not just of Photoshop and Lightroom but all of its creative software.

To give us more details, Zeke sat down with us to discuss how Firefly is transforming the creative process and why photographers shouldn't fear this disruptive new tech. Even though all the images that accompany this article were generated entirely by AI, with no actual photographer needed.

What's new in Firefly 3.0

Koch, a product veteran who has worked on Adobe Stock and Photoshop, explains that the AI model has been trained on a vast dataset of images and concepts, allowing it to understand and generate a wide variety of visual elements.

In plain language, that means the software has trawled millions of photos in the Adobe Stock library, and learned how to automatically craft new images that will look similarly "real" and professional.

"We're trying to teach the model to understand reality, so it can really go to photographic reality," he explains. "We're trying to teach it to understand how a camera would understand the world. And then to better give you the kind of image you're trying to generate, we've introduced the Reference Image feature. That means you don't have to rely on words in your prompts, you can upload an image to show the AI the kind of thing you're looking for."

If you've tried Firefly in the last year and found it unimpressive, it worth noting that this week, Firefly has been updated from model 2.0 to model 3.0. And it's quite the game changer.

This update delivers, in the words of the release notice: "stunning advancements in photorealistic quality, styling capabilities detail and accuracy along with greater variety [and] significant advancements in speed of generation [that] make the ideation and creation process more productive and efficient". 

These are not just flowery words. Koch explains that there are real, verifiable software enhancements behind all the hyperbolic adjectives.

"There are a couple of different measures of the complexity that the model understands objectively," he begins. "And so one is what we call the latent space. It's effectively how many concepts you have. Those are more tied to the words in the prompt than they are to the picture. But essentially if you type something like 'bear with guitar' how many different variants are there of the bear guitar and what's in the background and all those different things.

"So that represents all the concepts that you can explain in the network. And so we've made the latent space twice as big as it was before. And then the other thing is the imagery part: the part that tries to render what we think you want. That's about three times as big as it used to be. And then the third thing is called attention. It's basically, when we take your prompt and try to convert it into an image, how much does the model look at all the inputs that you give it? How much attention does it paid all those things? So we've also about tripled that."

What this means in practice is that Firefly delivers higher-quality image generations, with better details and variety. Koch showed me a number of pictures produced by both 2.0 and 3.0 versions of Firefly. And, once he zoomed into the details, it was clear that the clarify of images produced by the latest version is palpably higher, as well as being more representative of real photography.

Officially titled Firefly Image 3 Foundation Model (beta), the new model is available for use in Photoshop (beta) and on firefly.adobe.com.

How it can help photographers

The short version is that this is impressive tech indeed, with its powerful AI capabilities, not to mention increasingly seamless integration with Adobe Creative Cloud. But what's it all actually for? Kock is clear on this one: Adobe believes Firefly is poised to become an essential tool for photographers, image editors and indeed creatives of all stripes.

"Generative AI doesn't replace creativity: it turbocharges and extends the creator's abilities," he stresses. "The creative spark still comes from you as the photographer. The AI amplifies your efforts so you can create, ideate and iterate much faster."

In other words, Koch sees Firefly as a "supercharged editorial assistant" handling tedious tasks like background removal and object insertion, while the human being continues to drive the overarching artistic vision.

"We're not just doing text to image generation from scratch," he points out. "That's been on the Firefly web app from the beginning. But the magic in Photoshop is using generative AI to augment and accelerate your existing creative process on real photos you care about."

Specifically, he points to new tools like Generative Fill which allows replacing backgrounds, adding objects, or tweaking visual elements in one click instead of tedious editing. "We're trying to make the model understand photographic reality as closely as possible, so it can do the rote editing tasks for you, while you focus on your creative vision."  

By providing a starting point and a range of options, Firefly can help photographers explore new ideas and push the boundaries of their craft. Ultimately, Koch believes that Firefly and other generative AI tools will become an integral part of the creative workflow, just as digital cameras and editing software have transformed photography over the past few decades. 

The ethics of it all

Whether or not you buy the argument that AI won't replace our jobs, there's also the separate issue of how AI is learning from our existing work by studying it online. To many people's minds, that's simply another form of piracy.

On this issue, Koch is keen to stress the ethical nature of Firefly, based on the fact that it doesn't scrape content people haven't agreed to be scraped. "We're creating models with deep expertise in areas like imagery, video and design," Koch explains. "And we're building these commercially-safe models only using data we have proper rights and licenses for, like Adobe Stock."

As an added bonus, Adobe embeds content credentials for transparency on whether something was computer-generated. "As this technology proliferates, understanding where content comes from and if it was AI-generated is crucial for maintaining trust," he adds.

The future of Firefly 

A more functional aspect of Firefly that sets it apart is its integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps beyond Photoshop. "There's text to vector in Adobe Illustrator. There's text effects in Express, there's generative images in Adobe Express," Koch explains. "There's a little bit in Adobe Stock. So there are a bunch of different systems that can work together seamlessly."

Lightroom is noticeably absent on the list for now, but as Terry White teased on stage at Adobe Max London it's not been forgotten: generative AI capabilities will be coming to Lightroom on desktop and mobile soon.

In the future, such integrations will allow for a seamless workflow, where photographers can use Firefly to generate initial concepts or fill in gaps, and then refine and polish them using their favorite Adobe tools. "Having AI in Photoshop allows you to quickly remove the things in a picture that don't meet your needs," Koch says. "Or you can start with a blank canvas, get something started, for your inspiration."

• Gen AI is coming to Lightroom
• How to make Adobe Firefly generative AI work for you, not against you
• “It's awesome. It's also terrible, and that's what I love about AI"

Lightroom users have been left high and dry so far when it comes to generative AI. And indeed, at Adobe Max London this year there were no new Lightroom features announced at all – with a big emphasis on new Generative AI features in Photoshop.

But they were keen to express that they haven't forgotten about Lightroom users. And at Sneaks, a segment in which they tease stuff they're currently working on, Adobe evangelist Terry White announced that they're currently working on bringing the same generative AI features that are already in Photoshop to Lightroom too. 

Terry went on to show us an example of those in action. 

His demo involved a restaurant scene, where there was a blurry and distracting sign in front of a pile of napkins. Currently, you could try using the Remove tool on this, but realistically that tool is more for simple blemishes than something as complicated as this object. 

With the new tool, though, removing it was as easy as drawing roughly around it, clicking a single box and watching it disappear. And Terry demonstrated how we'll be able to do so on both the desktop and mobile versions of Lightroom.

There was a still a while to go in Sneaks, so the audience anxiously waited for the third and final announcement. And when the Premiere Pro logo came up on screen, we all drew an excited breath. 

Sadly, this was just a reheated roundup of the new Premiere Pro features teased in this YouTube video a week ago. If you missed that story, though, it is worth paying attention to: you can find all the details in our article Adobe's generative AI in Premiere Pro looks like a total game-changer for video editing.

If you're looking for the best photo editing software then Radiant Photo has a smashing deal for you, that was only on offer on the floor of The Photography & Video Show, but now for a limited time only (1 Day, 24 hours) you can grab the latest version of Radiant Photo for just $122.03 / £100!

This Radiant Photo show special offers a stand-alone version of Radiant Photo as well as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic plug-ins while also offering a Perpetual license with no subscription needed, while also being able to run on two devices, which also includes presets and Looks packs.

So, here's the scoop on Radiant Photo - it's like having your own personal editing guru right at your fingertips! With its AI-powered magic, this software works wonders on your photos, bringing out the best in every shot. The latest update is all about portraits. They've sprinkled some extra magic dust to make those faces shine even brighter.

They've fine-tuned things this time around, especially when it comes to skin tones. Now, every complexion looks flawless and oh-so-natural. Plus, there are some cool new color-style tools thrown into the mix, making editing a breeze for photographers of all skill levels. According to Radiant, this update is all about preserving and enhancing the unique beauty of every skin type and tone. Sounds and looks like a game-changer to me!

Now with a 50% discount, this is probably the best time to take the plunge and grab this deal before the clock strikes midnight!

When did you start out in your current photographic genre?

I shoot three genres – travel, people (portraits, beauty and fashion) and sports. I guess I really just shoot people – it’s just that some are moving very fast! I started shooting film in the 1980s, but in the early 90s, I got burned out and stopped shooting altogether. I put my studio hot lights, cameras, light meters and flashes up in my attic and didn’t touch a camera again until I held my first Nikon DSLR at a show around the year 2000, and that reignited my passion for photography.

What are your favorite aspects of talking at events like The Photography & Video Show?

I love getting to talk with other photographers from all different backgrounds, and The Photography & Video Show brings together so many photographers from many backgrounds. I also love teaching in front of a live audience. So much of what I do these days is creating online courses, but nothing beats the energy and instant feedback that you get from a live audience – especially the type of audience The Photography & Video Show brings in. They’re passionate, totally engaged and not afraid to have a good time. Plus, there’s a shared feeling that we’re all in this together – everybody is so willing to help each other, share what they know and compare tips and techniques – it’s an incredible atmosphere to teach in, making it a really special event. 

Who and what else are you excited to see at The Photography Show?

I absolutely love visiting the vendor booths and watching the demos and presentations from leading photographers. There is so much education on the show floor, and I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from sitting in the audience at the Canon, Nikon or Sony booths, and even the smaller booths – I so look forward to that. Plus, I just like seeing the new gear. I’m a bit of a gear junkie, so this is like visiting new gear heaven, so I’ll be busy scoping out all the new goodies. I can’t wait!

What key skills are needed for your line of work?

I think a crucial skill is the ability to tell a story. We are essentially visual storytellers, and instead of a typewriter or computer, our camera is the tool we use to weave our stories, so I think having that skill is hugely important.

Outside of professional assignments, what are your personal photo interests?

My personal photo interest is simply capturing a visual history of my wonderful family and my life, and I do most of that with my iPhone. I also want to start shooting more videos this year, especially when I’m doing a workshop.

My favouite kit

Canon EOS R6 II 

This full-frame mirrorless camera sports a 24.2MP sensor, an advanced Dual Pixel CMOS AF II system and excellent low-light performance at high ISO settings. It's small and lightweight, while the handling is unmistakably Canon. It's a perfect companion for travel and landscape photography. 

Canon RF 24-240mm f/4-6.3 

This superzoom lens is the ideal choice for travel photography, offering both inclusive wide-angle and telephoto focal lengths in one optic. It represents a new breed of full-frame superzoom optic, an area of the lens market traditionally reserved for APS-C and Micro 4/3 cameras. The image quality is great for everyday photography, with nice sharpness and contrast, while the aperture range remains useful even in dim light, especially when paired with an IBIS-equipped body like the EOS R6 II.

Canon RF 14- 35mm f/4L IS USM

The so-called 'trinity' lenses get all the hype, but this f/4 zoom offers excellent image sharpness, even at the edges of the frame and provides even more wideangle reach than its far more expensive Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM cousin. The IS system is also exceptional, allowing handheld shots at very low shutter speeds, which is highly useful for travel and interiors, where a tripod is not allowed. 

Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3

For grabbing close-up shots of athletes and sports cars, this affordable super-tele zoom enables frame-filling shots even when the subject is further away from the camera. It's perfect for athletes and track sports, as well as motorsports, allowing the photographer to capture both far and closer action, which normally requires a change of lens.

Shooting food is one of the easiest ways to enjoy still-life photography. A bowl of fruit and a basic camera are all you need to get started. If you want to take it further, you’re only limited by your imagination and creativity.

Bea Lubas is a leading practitioner of food photography and will speak at The Photography & Video Show this month. As a Lightroom Ambassador, she will share her tips for editing food photos in the popular software application. 

We caught up with Lubas to find out more about her and her upcoming talk. ‘Tools and techniques in Lightroom’ with Bea Lubas takes place at The Photography & Video Show on 18 March at 1pm, in the Editing & Post-Production Suite, and is free to attend. Click here to buy your tickets.

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A longer version of this interview appears in the April 2024 issue of Digital Camera magazine, on sale from 1 March. Click the link below to see our latest special subscription deal!

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If you had to describe Scott Kelby’s career in one word, it would be prolific. He’s written over 100 books and is best known to many as the CEO of KelbyOne, one of the most comprehensive online training platforms for photography and image processing. And yet the qualities that stand out when speaking to Scott (or reading one of his books) are his warmth, humility, and sense of humor. 

To illustrate all of these qualities, Scott will be appearing at The Photography & Video Show in Birmingham, UK next week from March 16-19, with not one but 5 talks and several book signing sessions. But he hasn't always been taking photos, as I recently found out.

During his twenties, Scott was making a living by playing keyboards full-time in bands and clubs, or as he puts it, “mostly fulfilling the dream of being a starving musician”. After a brief stint in the finance industry, Scott quit to start a graphic design business with his wife. This led to him starting a local newspaper for Macintosh enthusiasts, which over time grew into a national magazine available on bookstands. That got him into writing and eventually a book publishing deal, and helped him launch his first live Photoshop seminar.

“I would sound a lot more intelligent if I said it was all carefully planned”, says Scott, who believes that a lot of his career was luck, a door opening when he least expected it, or one thing leading to another. It’s easy to be carried along by his optimism and energy, and it feels like he’s been making much of his luck all along. Here, we find out what he makes of AI photo editing, what the success of having the world’s best-selling photography book means, and what to expect from his talk for Canon at The Photography & Video Show 2024.

You can meet and greet Scott Kelby at The Photography Show & Video Show between 16-18 March, 2024. Find out more about his talks here.

If you have an older camera and you can’t afford pro lenses, don’t worry – PureRAW 4 can harness the power of AI to transform your images, delivering the kind of image quality you didn’t know your gear could even achieve.

PureRAW 4 can be used as a batch processing tool, taking a folder full of regular raw files and outputting new DNG versions with DxO’s remarkable DeepPRIME XD2 noise reduction, new and improved in PureRAW 4, and with advanced lens corrections that can compensate for the edge softness visible with almost all camera lenses. Sometimes even the best photo editing software needs a little outside help, and that's s where PureRAW 4 fits in.

It can also be used as an Adobe Lightroom Classic plug-in, so that if you decide one of your images needs the PureRAW treatment, you can simply ‘round-trip’ it to DxO’s processing tool within Lightroom – and any edits you’ve already applied will be added  to the new version automatically.

What’s new in DxO PureRAW 4

PureRAW 4 brings a new and improved version of DxO’s DeepPRIME XD raw denoising process – ‘XD’ stands for ‘eXtra Detail’. DeepPRIME XD2 is said to offer crisper and cleaner fine detail for “unprecedented” clarity and detail. 

It includes improved edge softness correction based around DxO’s own detailed lens testing procedures, which list tens of thousands of camera and lens combinations and measures softness across a range of focal lengths and aperture settings for a specifically tailored approach that simple global sharpening tools don’t provide.

The other key part of the PureRAW 4 proposition – advanced noise reduction – has been given increased control with optional ‘Luminance’ and ‘Force Details’ sliders for balancing noise and detail  rendition more precisely.

There are also some workflow upgrades in this version, with a preview window to check adjustments prior to processing, plus automatic memory card ingesting and advanced batch renaming for photographers who want to use PureRAW 4 right at the start of their editing workflow.

DxO PureRAW 4 price and availability

PureRAW 4 is available now. It costs $119 / £109 (about AU$182) for new users and $79 / $69 (about AU$121) as an upgrade for existing owners.

If you use Lightroom, Capture One or some other software to view and process your raw files, you’ll have formed a good idea of the quality you can get from your images. If you try DxO PureRAW 4, you might just have to change your mind.

Almost all image editing tools can now process raw files. They do this using the software’s own proprietary ‘demosaicing’ process to turn the red, green and blue sensor data into full colour images. Some do this raw processing better than others, however, and if you use Adobe Lightroom, for example, you might end up with a completely different idea of your camera’s image quality than if you use Capture One. Even the best photo editing software can have weaknesses, and sometimes it's the raw processing quality and noise handling.

Now normally this is somewhat academic because you’re at the mercy of your photo editor’s own raw processing, but PureRAW 4 changes all that. It generates part-processed ‘Linear DNG’ files, with all of DxO’s demosaicing, DeepPRIME noise reduction and lens corrections baked in, but still with all the extended color depth, dynamic range and editability as regular raw files. 

PureRAW 4 can be used as a standalone batch processing tool for converting folders full of raw files into processed Linear DNGS. It can also generate regular JPEG or TIFF images for photos that don’t require any further editing.

But it can also be used as an export plug-in with Lightroom Classic, so that if you decide a raw file you’re working on in Lightroom needs the DxO treatment, you can export it to PureRAW 4 for processing, after which it’s automatically re-imported back into your Lightroom catalog. And if you’ve already done some editing on the original in Lightroom, these edits are automatically applied to the imported Linear DNG.

Effectively, then, PureRAW 4 can either be used as a standalone batch processing tool at the start of your workflow, or from within Lightroom on an image by image basis.

DxO PureRAW 4: price

PureRAW 4 is available now from the DxO website. It costs $119 / £109 (about AU$182) for new users and $79 / $69 (about AU$121) as an upgrade for existing owners. That's not far short of the cost of a full year's Adobe Photography Plan or a full-blown photo-editing suite like ON1 Photo RAW, so is it worth it? Bear in mind too that Lightroom users already have access to Adobe's own noise reducing Enhance tool, which does some of the same work.

It depends on whether you shoot raw files, how highly you value outright image quality and, ultimately, how much of a pixel-peeper you are. There is a fully featured 30-day trial, so you have plenty of time to decide for yourself if the improvements to your raw files are worth it.

DxO PureRAW 4: design and usability

For an application that does so much, PureRAW 4 is exceptionally simple to use. In both standalone and Lightroom plug-in modes, it will automatically identify the camera and lens profile pairing that it needs and download it if it’s not already installed. From there you simply need to choose your processing parameters and start processing.

These parameters aren’t complicated. You simply need to choose the processing settings and the output options. It’s in the processing settings that you find some of the new features in PureRAW 4. For a start, it has a new DeepPRIME XD2 process which DxO says gives even better edge correction with fewer artefacts – this does not yet support Fujifilm X-Trans sensors, however. With these cameras it will fall back on its older (but still highly effective) DeepPRIME XD process.

DeepRIME XD2 now has additional controls. These include a Luminance slider for further noise control and a Force Details slider for controlling the amount of detail recovery. PureRAW 4 is so effective at its default settings, however, that you might not bother with these at all.

Below this are switches for enabling Lens Softness correction, Vignetting, Chromatic Aberration and Lens Distortion correction – you would only disable any of these if you had issues with any specific camera and lens combinations.

The drop-down menu under the Lens Distortion switch deserves a closer look. If you’ve ever applied lens corrections in other software, you may have noticed that some programs can reveal extra image area outside the default crop. If you set this menu to ‘Maximum Rectangle’, PureRAW 4 will crop the images to include this extra image area – it’s most often found with wide-angle lens corrections.

The output options are pretty straightforward. You can choose the file format to export in – you choose DNG if you want Linear DNG files – and where you want the processed images to be stored. New in PureRAW 4 is a powerful token-based renaming system where you can choose how your processed files are named.

The regular batch processing workflow doesn’t give you any idea about what your processed images will look like, but PureRAW 4 has a new Process with Preview mode which shows a split-screen preview of your image – though you do have to keep updating the preview manually with a button at the base as you move around the image. It’s also hard to see much difference when changing the processing settings.

The Lightroom Classic plug-in is just as straightforward. It takes no longer to export an image to PureRAW 4 than it does to use Lightroom’s own noise-reducing Enhance option, and both produce a processed Linear DNG file that’s automatically imported into the catalog when processing is complete.

The results, however, are somewhat different.

DxO PureRAW 4: performance

It’s hard to describe PureRAW 4’s performance without lapsing into superlatives. Its ability to produce clean, sharp results at high ISOs is quite uncanny – you’re left checking the EXIF data to make sure you’re definitely looking at the same image. 

Improvements in image quality will vary from one camera to another, and with low-ISO shots on the best full frame cameras, you may not see much difference. But as the ISOs go up, and especially with crop sensor cameras, the difference between what PureRAW can do and what Lightroom’s default raw processing can do is just embarrassing – for Adobe, at least.

Lightroom’s issue is that it’s not very good at fine detail and noise. Even at base ISO settings, you can often see a faint patina of noise over even-toned areas, and if you use any kind of sharpening, that quickly becomes prominent. At higher ISO settings, Lightroom seems to struggle even more. Very often, the camera’s own JPEGs are sharper and smoother.

But what about Lightroom’s Enhance feature? It’s true that this can do a remarkable job of reducing noise, but it really can’t match PureRAW 4’s detail enhancement at high ISOs or its improvement in edge sharpness at pretty much any ISO setting. The better the lens, the less you will notice – but we don’t all have the best lenses.

So while Lightroom Enhance is built into Lightroom and PureRAW 4 is a paid-for extra, it does deliver a clear step up in quality.

PureRAW 4 is not quite faultless. Its ‘Standard’ detail enhancement can be just a bit too ‘crunchy’ for camera and lenses which are quite good already, and the ‘Soft’ option looks more natural. It can’t fully correct poor quality lenses which are just blurry at the edges – its real strength is in enhancing the edge detail of those countless ‘average’ lenses on the market which are not bad, but not great either. It doesn’t simply apply a global sharpening effect but uses tailored edge correction calibrated for each lens, each focal length and each aperture, using profiles developed in DxO’s own labs.

There is a processing overhead. The DeepPRIME XD2 process can’t be displayed in real-time and can only be seen in exported files. DxO says, though, that the latest version is faster than ever, helped by GPU acceleration. I found it typically took 8-12 seconds to process a 24MP raw file on my Mac Studio, while the older DeepPRIME XD process took around 50% longer. That’s a lot faster than the old days, when images could take a couple of minutes each – though back then I was using less powerful hardware.

In my tests I found it just a little faster than Lightroom Enhance. Both tools, however, produce large DNG files which does, alas, go with the territory. It’s because the original raw data is demosaiced during this process so that the new files have full color data for each pixel rather than the red, green or blue raw data. It’s no worse than saving your images as 16-bit TIFFs, though, and rather more flexible for further editing work.

One thing you might need to check in Lightroom and other programs is that sharpening and lens corrections are disabled for the new PureRAW DNG file. These have already been applied, so don’t let your software do it twice! If PureRAW’s DNG files are accidentally double-sharpened in this way, they will look horribly over-processed.

DxO PureRAW 4: verdict

PureRAW 4 has an improved workflow and improved DeepPRIME XD2 processing which are both welcome but perhaps only a small gain for existing users. In fact, if you have PureRAW 3 and a Fujifilm X-Trans sensor, you might just as well stay with the old software until PureRAW 4 adds X-Trans support to its DeepPRIME XD2 process. The best Fujifilm cameras in the X-mount range use a unique color filter array on the sensor which has to be handled differently to regular 'bayer' sensor data.

If you already have an older version of PureRAW you won’t need any convincing about its spectacular transformative properties. New users might need some convincing, but for this there is a 30-day trial which will be more than long enough to see what this software can do with your raw files. 

You might not see too much difference with good quality cameras and lenses at low ISOs, but the higher the ISO, the smaller the sensor and the more ‘average’ the lens, the more spectacular the transformation becomes.

If you’ve been thinking the performance of your old cameras and lenses just isn’t up to scratch any more, don’t do anything until you’ve tried PureRAW 4. DxO’s raw processing software could and probably will change your mind about what you think your camera is capable of.

The world’s leading digital photography magazine, Digital Camera launched in 2002 and has been helping photographers of all skill levels to improve their images ever since. 

Every issue is packed with technique tips, tutorials, inspiring images and expert buying advice, plus the latest news and equipment reviews, as well as a selection of free gifts (see below). 

Landscape photography is a very popular pursuit, so how can you make your captures stand out from the crowd? 

Discover how taking a fine-art approach could let you do just that – it’s April’s cover feature. Choose from 11 different approaches, including long-exposures, intentional camera movement, and creating multiple exposures in software… plus much more! 

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to Digital Camera magazine and get the magazine delivered to your door every month. Choose between a print or digital subscription, or a bundle of the two. 

In our current deal, UK customers can get six issues of the UK’s best-selling photography magazine from just £4.31 per issue (billed at £27.99 every 6 months/ 6 issues). 

For overseas readers, a print subscription starts from $9.08 per issue (billed at US$29.49 per quarter/ 3 issues). 

Ten more technique projects await in Photo Active, including some seasonal-themed ideas. Garner some successful strategies for capturing outdoor Easter events, March hares, and a flat-lay tableau using found items from nature (above). 

Plus, we walk you through using a set of portrait toning profiles in Lightroom and Camera Raw, included in this month’s digital gifts, and reveal how to showcase spring fauna in a whole new way by using a telephoto lens to produce a macro look.   

You’ll also discover how to deploy symmetry effectively when photographing scenic views, in the latest adaptation from ’The Landscape Photography Workshop’ by Mark Bauer and Ross Hoddinott (above).

Our latest monthly reader challenge is ’Water’, so to be in with a chance of winning a £50 voucher towards Cewe Wall Art, submit your best photo that celebrates the essential element of the medium. You’ll find all the details in project 10 on page 38. 

Other highlights in April’s Digital Camera

Our Camera Clinic series continues, with how to get the most from prime lenses. Find out more about their pros and cons, and how to tune your photography technique to their optical strengths. 

Leading imaging writer and freelance photographer Will Cheung is your guide – whether you’re a beginner or an experienced enthusiast, you’ll benefit from his expert insights. 

Hotshots features the winning entries from Close-up Photographer of the Year 5 (2023). 

Founded in 2018 and supported by Affinity Photo 2 image editing software, this competition aims to encourage photographers to slow down and discover beauty in subjects that are often overlooked. Enjoy the latest set of superlative images from page 42.

This month three inspirational professional photographers feature in Digital Camera: food photographer and Adobe Lightroom Ambassador Bea Lubas, cave photographer Sam Davis and multi-award winning dog photographer Jess McGovern.

All three are speaking at Europe’s largest photo and video event, The Photography & Video Show, which takes place in Birmingham from 16-19 March, and we hope to see you there – our stand number is H404.

Click here to buy advance tickets today and use the code DCAMTPS24 to save 20% on the price. 

This month’s Practical Photoshop delivers another trio of in-depth tutorials that demonstrate the latest features in Photoshop and Lightroom. 

Things get under way in Tool School (above), which explains how Content Credentials work in Photoshop and Lightroom. 

As the use of Generative AI continues to become more widespread, Adobe has partnered with leading brands in the photography industry to prevent the work of photographers being misused by AI image generators. 

Get the Look (above) walks you through four quick ways to use the Multiply blending mode in Photoshop – see how these techniques can benefit your images. 

And Fundamentals shows you to add a fine-art border to landscape shots in just a few clicks, using the powerful features available in Adobe Lightroom. 

This month’s reviews start with a new release from a storied photography brand. While the Hasselblad 907X isn’t actually new, the CFV 100C medium-format digital back definitely is – it offers users 100MP of resolution, doubling what’s available when using the CFV 50C digital back, which was released in 2020. 

As the CFV 100 can also be used with Hasselblad 200 and 500 cameras, this latest cutting-edge tech is doing its bit for sustainability by offering a new lease of life to older cameras. 

Also tested this month is a trio of new lenses. The Canon RF 200-800mm F6.3-9 IS USM is a new affordable super-telephoto for wildlife, sports and action shooters, while the Lumix S 100mm f/2.8 Macro for L-Mount cameras racks up a few world-firsts in terms of design and features. 

Plus, the Viltrox AF 27mm F1.2 Pro is a ’pro’ lens for Fujifilm X and Nikon Z APS-C bodies but with a consumer price tag – discover what our reviewer made of it, from page 118. 

The latest issue of Digital Camera comes with an unrivaled selection of digital gifts 

This month’s bonus gifts include nine all-new photo tip cards, four packs of Actions and Presets for Photoshop and Lightroom, 45 minutes of video tutorials, and a 250-plus page camera gear guide eBook. 

• Nine new photo tips cards covering landscapes, wildlife, macro – and more! 
• 45 minutes of video tutorials for Lightroom and Photoshop 
• 25 software extras for Lightroom and Photoshop
• 250-page Camera Buyer’s Guide eBook packed full of buying advice

Subscribe now

Every issue of Digital Camera magazine is packed with tips, techniques, pro advice, reviews, news and inspiration. 

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to Digital Camera magazine and get the magazine delivered to your door every month. Choose between a print or digital subscription, or a bundle of the two. 

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For any readers who would like to enjoy every digital back issue from 2022, plus all the bonus gifts, a special Digital Camera 2022 Collection USB stick for Windows and Mac users is on sale now. 

Using Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, you can browse, search and print out issues 250-262. The Digital Camera 2022 Collection is available for UK readers for £19.99 including postage – for international readers, overseas postage fees will apply. 

With the debate and arguments about which platform is best for creatives well and truly over, it’s safe to say that these days you can use both Apple and Windows computers effectively for creative work. There will always be people who prefer one platform over the other for different reasons, but with Windows laptops like MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo - A13MT, creative users can take advantage of features not available in their Apple counterparts.

The MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo is a 2-in-1 Windows 11 laptop that’s aimed at creatives thanks to offering a 16-inch touchscreen with compatibility with the MSI Pen; this effectively turns the laptop into an all-in-one pen display and computer, allowing you to make direct inputs into software such as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to increase precision and comfort. But, without the requirement for additional hardware.

This is a reasonably powerful laptop with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, 1920x1200 IPS screen but like many 2-in-1 Windows laptops, it only offers Intel Iris Xe Graphics. This makes it a mid-range option that should be able to meet the needs of enthusiasts for photo and video editing, and to some degree low-end professional use, but for more demanding professionals more RAM and a discreet graphics card (GPU) would be essential.

The main draw of this laptop is the simple fact that it can be used as both a traditional laptop and a tablet, using either your fingers or the MSI Pen instead of the trackpad or a mouse. And at £1299 this mid-range 2-in-1 is reasonably priced for the enthusiast market. It’s undoubtedly a capable laptop that performs well, but it’s certainly no powerhouse when it comes to processing power.

MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo: Specifications

MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo: Design & Handling

MSI is generally known as one of the higher-end gaming laptop and gaming PC component manufacturers, with design and build quality held in high regard. The Evo Flip Evo is reassuringly well-built and looks refined in matte black with a glossy MSI logo on the lid. It’s a great-looking laptop that sports a large trackpad and a fingerprint reader alongside Windows Hello face recognition, so nothing to complain about here. Although, the matte black body is a fingerprint magnet.

The Flip Evo is a weighty beast at 1.9 kg / 4.19 lbs, but this is an average weight for 16-inch laptops whether Windows or Apple models. It’s just something to bear in mind when purchasing a laptop that you intend to carry around often, and if this weight is problematic you may be better served with a laptop offering a smaller screen size and a consequently lighter weight.

Being a laptop aimed at creatives, the screen itself is just as important as the processing power provided by the internal components. And while the 16-inch 16:10 screen is fantastic in terms of screen real estate, it’s let down by the mediocre 1920x1200 resolution when many current laptops sport QHD or 4K screens. This resolution coupled with the large screen means that you can sometimes see pixelation in software interfaces and images when zoomed in.

The full keyboard is nice and rigid and doesn’t flex during typing. There’s not a great deal of travel in the keys, but the typing experience is comfortable and the fact that there’s a number pad to the right of the Qwerty keyboard is useful. This is a reduced size compared to desktop keyboards with a number pad, but it remains comfortable to use. The keyboard also offers three levels of white backlighting which can be switched off when not needed to conserve battery power. 

When it comes to ports, there are two Thunderbolt 4/DP/USB-C (w/ PD Charging), Two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, an audio combo jack, HDMI 2.0, and a MicroSD Card Reader. The latter is always something of an oddity because, for most people, a full-fat SD card reader is preferable since this is the more common card type for cameras and microSD cards can be used with an SD adaptor.

The ability to PD charge speeds up the process, but this comes at the expense of one of the USB-C ports, so it’s swings and roundabouts here. Battery life is naturally better with less demanding office tasks, web browsing, and watching streaming services, providing enough charge for a day’s use, but this is dramatically reduced to just a few hours when using photo and video editing software that use more hardware resources which, in turn, require more power.

MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo: Performance

In terms of performance; web browsing, using office apps, and performing general tasks, the Flip Evo showed no signs of slowdowns or stuttering, which is to be expected for this type of undemanding use. Loading more demanding apps such as Photoshop, Lightroom and even Davinci Resolve is surprisingly fast. However, when working within these applications, heavier processing loads do take time to render because of the 16GB of RAM and the reduced hardware acceleration as a result of only having an integrated graphics chip.

Davinci Resolve was the slowest when switching between pages and making adjustments, but it’s not painfully slow and this is extremely demanding software. A basic 30-second 4K video took a minute to render, which is pretty good. Lightroom, on the other hand, was by far the best performer, and this is great for enthusiasts since many only use Lightroom for organizing, editing, and outputting their Raw files and JPEGs depending on the file format they capture. 

The 512GB hard drive is on the low-capacity side, so it will fill up quickly and make using an external hard drive a necessity for photo and video storage. This would allow you to use the internal storage mainly for the operating system, applications, and office documents with much lower storage demands to avoid quickly filling up the internal SSD. A 1TB SSD would be better, but 512GB is a workable capacity.

For photo and video editing, a discreet graphics card is always preferable but naturally drives costs higher. For a 2-in-1 laptop with an Nvidia 4060 GPU, the cost of the 2-in-1 laptop roughly doubles with the sweetener being that you typically get more RAM and storage thrown in. But even with the integrated graphics offered by the Flip Evo, 32GB of RAM would make a huge difference to overall performance when it comes to photo and video editing.

In the specs, the screen is advertised as being capable of displaying 100% sRGB. When the screen was calibrated using a Datacolor Sypder X Pro, it was indeed displaying 100% of sRGB. Alongside this, it was displaying 82% of Adobe RGB and 87% of DCI-P3. This is fine for enthusiasts using the Flip Evo for photo editing because you can get by with a screen displaying 82% of Adobe RGB, although this isn’t quite a wide enough color gamut for more demanding users and the most color-critical work. The overall brightness and contrast are also a little lackluster – adequate, but far from outstanding.

The Flip Evo performs well in tablet mode with the screen flipped back at an angle to allow the device to stand up, or fully rotated flat. It’s comfortable to hold in one arm for a short time, but it is a heavy laptop so it doesn’t take long before you feel the need to lay it on your lap with the screen facing towards you. When in tablet mode, the keyboard is disabled so you can’t accidentally press the keys, but this means that you’re unable to use keyboard shortcuts in photo and video editing software, and is annoying if you use them.

You can get by using the menus and toolbar in Photoshop, for instance, and using the MSI Pen is both comfortable and precise alongside providing a tactile editing experience. But I couldn’t help feeling frustrated that I had to fully rely on menus. For changing tools and some settings I simply used the fingers on my left hand while using the pen on my right. The overall experience is akin to using a pen display, but the functionality and general workflow aren’t as efficient.

MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo: Verdict

The MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo is a great productivity and general-use laptop with the ability to handle enthusiast-level photo and video editing. It does struggle with heavy processing tasks in Photoshop, but with Lightroom, it handles Raw file processing much more effectively; many enthusiasts only use Lightroom to organize, edit, and output their Raw or JPEG files with little to no need for Photoshop, and the Flip Evo can comfortably handle this.

To be fair, it can manage what you might call ‘standard’ Photoshop editing and even basic video editing, but it only takes longer to perform the more demanding editing tasks professionals are likely to throw at it. To put things into context, if you’d like a 2-in-1 laptop that’s much more capable, you’d roughly need to double the reasonable cost of $1699 / £1299 of the Flip Evo and once in the $2500 price bracket, you could get a much more powerful ‘standard’ laptop so jumping up to the next 2-in-1 rung isn’t quite so clear cut.

In terms of design and build quality, the Flip Evo can’t be faulted and the matt black body looks sleek and refined. It’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but this is often the case with black laptops so nothing out of the ordinary. The large screen is great in terms of size and is as crisp and clear as you can get with a 1920x1200 resolution. It’s a shame it’s not 2560x1600 because this would deliver a significantly improved picture and a wider color gamut, increased contrast and brightness would be a huge bonus.

MSI Summit E16 Flip Evo Alternatives

If you use Adobe Lightroom to edit your images, you might want to check that you have the latest version installed, as Adobe has recently released several photography-related updates. 

Adobe Lightroom is ranked among the best photo editing software on the market, and it has a great reputation for issuing updates to ensure that it can support newly released camera equipment, as well as fix any reported issues. Its February update has done just that, meaning that the new cameras and lenses can be recognized and recorded by Lightroom.

Why is it important that Lightroom recognizes my equipment?

In short, it allows your camera and lenses to have a direct discussion with the software, transferring recorded information such as Exif data. It also enables you to make the most of Lightroom's clever features, such as lens corrections and the camera's color profiles - especially convenient for those ever-popular Fujifilm film simulations!

February's updates have corresponded with the release of new cameras such as the Hasselblad 907X & CFV 100C and the OM System OM-1 Mark II.

Some camera firmware updates add new features, and this is also taken into consideration. The Nikon Z8 has just received its first major firmware update that gains a new pixel shift feature, enabling higher-megapixel images. Adobe has updated Lightroom to support this new addition.

It's not just new camera updates that need support from Lightroom, but lenses also, and recent releases from Viltrox and Sony will now be recognized. These lenses are the Sony FE 300mm f/2.8 GM OSS, Viltrox AF 20mm f/2.8, Viltrox AF 27mm f/1.2, and the Viltrox AF 28mm f/1.8.

Updating Lightroom is often overlooked if you do not have it set to auto-update. However, when purchasing new equipment and or even updating old, you should remember to update Adobe Suite at the same time, to get the most out of your gear.

To update Adobe Lightroom you must first launch Lightroom, then Help >Updates - simple as that!

You may be interested in our guides to the best laptop for photo editing, the best tablet for photo editing, and the best Wacom tablets. 

Now you can put your hand into your pocket and buy Apple's Vision Pro AR headset, in the USA at least, it needs a purpose, and Adobe is here to help – for photographers at least.

Apple being Apple the Vision Pro's purpose was unlikely to be triple-A games (developer kits have only been around a few months) and nor is it likely to be, ahem, well, you know, the kind of entertainment for people over 18 that has traditionally driven internet technologies but that Apple don't allow into their App store.

No, Apple's plans are very much about creating a device for professional creative use. All credit to Apple, the Vision Pro is actually surprisingly reasonably priced given the tech compared to true mixed reality devices, not to mention smaller and more elegant. (It's costly compared to consumer VR gaming devices, which have lower resolution and no 'pass through', but that doesn't seem to be what Apple is going for either).

Since visionOS only needs you to look at the text box and speak what you want, you'll be able to ask the Firefly AI for images within a purpose-built UI. Generated images include metadata indicating that they are generated, and Adobe have also been teasing the possibility that the visionOS version will be able to create panoramas and 360-degree wraparound environments. For now, though, you can populate your AR surroundings with generated images.

A native Lightroom photo editing app was already on the cards since the original Vision Pro announcement in June, and will clearly derive from the iPad edition but from the screenshot looking cleaner and simpler to navigate using hand gestures and eye movement.

Apple's developer kit for the Vision Pro allows all apps for iPads to work – they appear in a compatible apps folder – but creators of those apps can decide to disable that option, as Netflix has famously done (though you can use Apple's web browser to watch video).

Adobe, however, have gone the other way, which is encouraging. Mac users can also use their VisionPro as a virtual giant monitor for their computer, so in a way the device will also let you use the full Creative Suite!

Apple are also hoping that people create their own content for their visionOS products, the Vision Pro presumably only being the first of many (though things didn't work out that way for Google Glass). You can already use your iPhone to record spatial video with a 3D effect. 

AR glasses – better than XR glasses? Yes, but the XR glasses are cheaper.

You’ve got an Android phone and a Windows computer and want a big-screened, high-end tablet for photo edits and on-the-go apps – an iPad seems altogether too Apple – so your obvious choice is a Samsung slate like the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. After all, Samsung is the go-to for premium Android tech, known for excellent software, design and pen support (ideal for Lightroom). Most of all, Samsung’s premium tablets are known for having the best screens around, also critical for photo edits, a highlight we really appreciated when testing the Tab S8 Ultra. 

Over the last year, though, the Android tablet space got shaken up. Lenovo’s Tab Extreme, another 14+ inch Android behemoth, was launched, and so too was the smaller OnePlus Pad, a much cheaper alternative. Even Google got in on the action, launching the first-ever Pixel Tablet, complete with a booming docking station.

Never one to back down from a challenge, though, Samsung’s loaded up the new Tab S9 Ultra with the very best Android tablet hardware and software. And with its latest update to OneUI 6.0, it also enjoys many of the same features as the new Galaxy S24 series and IP68 water resistance. 

But with a punchy price tag and a potentially awkward, oversized body, would you be better served with an alternative from Samsung or the competition, or is the Tab S9 Ultra a perfect photography companion?

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Design

Despite its massive footprint thanks to that 14.6-inch screen, the Tab S9 Ultra is super-slender at just 5.5mm thin (thinner than any mainstream phone out now). Before you think it’s a featherweight, it isn’t. Clocking in at 732g, it’s relatively heavy, so it isn’t comfortable for long bouts of one-handed use. 

Over the last few years, Samsung’s premium design has been a benchmark for Android phones and tablets, and the Tab S9 Ultra carries this quality forward. Its Gorilla Glass front and aluminium frame and back create flat sides and curved corners, making it both easy to grip and not too sharp as the corners nuzzle into the hand.

The only premium tablet with IP68 water resistance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra can be submerged without fear, and its you can write on it using the S Pen underwater.

Dotted around the frame is a quad-speaker system, an SD card slot, a USB-C port and the power and volume buttons. The back panel has a dual camera and a magnetic charging point for the S Pen, and on the front is the screen, a notch for the selfie camera and an under-display fingerprint scanner.

Available in Beige and Graphite, while we tested the Graphite model, the Beige option looks like it would fend off fingerprints a bit better and it also has a bit more of an ooh la quality to it.

As long as you’re okay with the size, the Tab S9 Ultra is a winning package from a design point of view. The only area it falls short is accessories. Samsung’s official keyboard folio isn’t particularly comfortable for laptop typing, so it isn’t ideal for a commute. Apple’s Magic Keyboard for iPads and Lenovo’s Tab Extreme keyboard folio are much more fit for purpose. So, if you’re picking up the Tab S9 Ultra for productivity, ensure you do most of your typing at a table or desk.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Screen

The Tab S8 Ultra’s excellent screen was only let down by a modest maximum brightness. This resulted in a mediocre view in direct sunlight, but the Tab S9 Ultra remedies this by with its brighter panel that peaks at a beaming 930 nits peak brightness. This might sound low compared to flagship smartphones, but tablet peak brightness is always significantly lower.

Bright and sharp, the Tab S9 Ultra is also has a 1848 x 2960 resolution, which equates to a pixel density of 239PPI. With its smooth 120Hz refresh rate, menus glide, and the widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio is a perfect pairing for 16:9 shows, especially when set against much more square iPads and their heavy letterboxing.

Samsung is one of the few tab makers that makes its own screens, so it’s little wonder the AMOLED display on the Tab S9 Ultra looks glorious, especially in darker areas and when playing back HDR content. There is a caveat, though. If you watch atmospheric, dark content in a bright environment, you may lose some detail in the shadows, but when watching indoors or in a darker space, no other tab can touch the Tab S9 Ultra’s rich, atmospheric quality.

The Tab S9 Ultra has a notch for the two front cameras. This keeps the bezel extremely slim, and falls outside the viewing window for 16:9 content and wider, so we didn’t find it interrupted our view.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Camera

Tablet cameras are generally significantly lower-spec than smartphone cameras, so we will touch on the Tab S9 Ultra’s cameras without going into too much detail and focus more on ways the Tab S9 Ultra can fit into a photography workflow.

Starting with the cameras, the Tab S9 Utlra has two on either side. Around the back is a 13MP main camera and an 8MP ultra-wide. On the front are two 12MP cameras for selfies and video calls. The main camera is good enough for a document scan and is the only camera on the tab with autofocus, with the rest featuring fixed-focus lenses.

As for the front camera mix, it’s great for video calls – in bright environments, it’s sharp enough for an HD feed – and all the cameras can shoot 4K 30fps video except for the ultra-wide rear camera. Drop the lights, and none of the cameras – front or back – hold up particularly well.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Productivity

Samsung pre-loads a few powerful apps on the Tab S9 Ultra to give creatives a jump start, bundling in a two-month trial subscription to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, as well as a full version of Good Notes for a year, and a half-price offer for LumaFusion video editor.

Running Android 14 with OneUI 6.0, the Tab S9 Ultra features DeX, Samsung’s desktop UI. This year, we have two versions of the interface, a Classic DeX and New DeX. While the Classic version is a full-blown Windows-style interface, the New version looks like familiar Android but adds resizable floating windows to the mix. These two forms of DeX are very powerful, with Classic DeX working perfectly when projecting to an external monitor – ideal for big-screen editing – and New DeX looking better on the tablet itself, particularly suited to the keyboard folio cover or a keyboard and mouse setup.

While DeX works better than anything else in the Android space for both standalone and monitor-connected productivity, the Lenovo Tab Extreme’s second USB-C port supports video input, and gives it a slight edge in a creative workflow, enabling it to double up as a second screen for your MacOS or Windows device. The Tab S9 Ultra is only a wireless second screen for Windows computers – so Lenovo's tab is more versatile.

Samsung’s pressure-sensitive S Pen is also a powerful creative tool. Whether using a brush with precision in a drawing app like Concepts or with the Heal tool in Lightroom, the S Pen’s 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and almost brush-like feel on-screen has always been a tonic to Apple’s hard plastic Pencil.

The main creative limitation of the Tab S9 Ultra is Android and, more specifically, app support. Yes, Concepts, Lightroom and LumaFusion are excellent. Still, with apps like Adobe Illustrator, DaVinci Resolve and ProCreate available for iPadOS, it is the better creative tool.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Performance

Thanks to a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset matched with 12GB RAM, the Tab S9 Ultra does an excellent job of 4K video edits and 3D gaming. The interface glides, even when loaded up with multiple apps on-screen, or projecting DeX to an external monitor. It’s very impressive to get into a rhythm with the tablet, smash out a load of work and realise, it was all powered by a skinny slate.

There’s also plenty of storage on offer, with either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB internal storage and a microSD card slot, so you can bump that up by an extra 1TB.

Talk about multi-function – the Tab S9 Ultra can charge phone in a pinch with its huge 11,200mAh battery – you just need a USB-C to USB-C port. You’ll probably have capacity to spare with Samsung’s tablet easily lasting a few days or longer with modest use – an episode and some browsing here and there. For more intense workloads, expect one or two days out of it. It also charges up at 45W, taking around two hours to power up fully.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra: Verdict

The Tab S9 Ultra has the best screen of any tablet we’ve tested, and the fact it’s water resistant makes it an obvious choice for anyone who needs a slate that can withstand the elements. Paired with your camera’s companion apps, it makes for an impressively oversized external monitor, and there are enough great photo editing and productivity apps for Android to make it the most capable Android tablet around.

There are some red flags to bear in mind before picking one up. This tablet is huge, so make sure the S9 Ultra is what you need, not the more modest, manageable Tab S9 Plus. The keyboard dock isn’t well-suited to resting on a lap; ergonomically, this isn’t a laptop replacement. Finally, even if you have a Windows laptop and an Android phone, you might still be better off getting an iPad, thanks to iPadOS’s superior creative app support.

If none of those caveats faze you, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra could be the best tablet of 2024 for you and should add a brilliant, big-screened boost to your workflow.

Harness the power of ON1 Effects for free if you download it before January 31, 2024. The versatile editing tool gives users the freedom to explore a range of one-click presets, filters, backgrounds and, textures plus it includes intuitive AI tools such as Super select AI and Mask AI.

Sitting comfortably among the best photo editing software, ON1 Photo RAW offers powerful photo editing tools at a very affordable price. With non-destructive editing, support for layers and a great range of effects, you can transform your photos in just a few clicks. ON1 Effects is a plugin renowned for simplifying the photo editing process even more so by offering an extensive range of one-click presets, filters, LUTs and textures as well as several powerful AI tools.

Compatible with both Mac and Windows, the software can be used as a standalone application or seamlessly integrated as a plugin for popular photography applications like Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity Photo, and Corel Paint Shop Pro. Users can select from presets such as Sun Glow, Golden Autumn or Vivid Landscape and multiple effects can be stacked or applied to specific areas of an image giving users complete creative control. 

One of the standout features of ON1 Effects is the intuitive Super Select AI tool which gives users the ability to select specific regions with a single click making it easier to make blue backgrounds, change something's hue, or lighten an area. Users can also say goodbye to time-consuming brush selection thanks to Mask AI which uses advanced machine learning to create precise masks so users can quickly select objects, people or regions to edit. 

Dan Harlacher, the Vice President of Product at ON1 said, “We are excited to offer ON1 Effects for free until January 31st, allowing new photographers to explore its powerful features and have a lot of fun styling their photos. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a passionate photography enthusiast, this limited-time offer provides a unique opportunity to enhance your creative process at a tremendous value.”

To take advantage of this offer, head to the ON1 website here you can download ON1 Effects for free. After January 31, ON1 Effects will be available to buy at the regular price of $69.99/£68.52 so don't miss out on your chance to explore everything ON1 Effects has to offer.

Any creative with a Creative Cloud subscription will be pleased to know that they can get immediate access to Adobe Portfolio for no extra charge. This website builder is specifically tailored towards creating online portfolios rather than building websites with multiple different features, such as shops and forms. Adobe portfolio is therefore really just a simple extension of your work. It takes it off your device and presents it to the world in a beautiful way. 

Adobe Portfolio is incredibly easy to use, with clear workflows and icons to guide you through the process of creating a portfolio. The downside to only being a portfolio builder and being so simple is that it really lacks any advanced features that really let you create a more substantial online presence. One of the biggest limitations is that it is not possible to change the layouts of the templates. 

Adobe Portfolio: Who is it for?

Adobe Portfolio is a part of the Adobe Creative Suite that offers the ability to create an online portfolio. This website builder is ideal for any creative who has already hitched their cart to Adobe and its subscription package. This has the added benefit of not having to pay any additional fees for the luxury of an online presence. 

Adobe's offering is a very simple portfolio builder and really lacks the wider tools to take a photography business to the level of selling prints. Creatives who are happy creating a simple set of web pages that showcase their work will be pleased with the easy workflow and hassle-free templates. More serious artists wanting to more extensively customize the look of their website will need to look elsewhere.

Adobe Portfolio: Price

Adobe Portfolio is included with any Creative Cloud subscription. If you don't have this subscription, then you won't be able to access this builder, and I'd say it's not worth the subscription fee to get the benefits of only Adobe Portfolio.

If you don't have an Adobe subscription, then the Adobe Photography plan starts from $9.99 / £9.99 per month (when you sign up for an annual contract) and gives you access to Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Lightroom CC, Adobe Lightroom Classic, as well as online access to Adobe Express.

Adobe Portfolio: Key Features

All of Adobe Portfolio's features center around the presentation of media, including photos and videos. Adobe has worked hard to integrate both Lightroom and Behance into the feature set of Adobe Portfolio.

Layouts and responsive design - Adobe Portfolio includes a range of different themes for showcasing your work. If you begin with one but then change your mind, don't worry; it's incredibly easy to swap between them. Unfortunately, what isn't possible is the customization of these themes. The rigid nature of the workflow means you're pretty much stuck with however that theme dictates what your portfolio will look like.

Responsive - As with most website builders, Adobe Portfolio produces a completely responsive design. This means that whatever platform or device your viewers are looking at your website on, it'll adjust accordingly. This is ideal for viewing larger portfolios on mobile devices that would be cumbersome to navigate around unless presented appropriately for that type of device.

Sync with your Behance projects - Behance is an Adobe platform for showcasing creative work. In essence, Behance does almost everything Adobe Portfolio can do, with the addition of being able to socially connect with others and discover new artists. When you choose to sync your portfolio projects with your Behance profile, millions of viewers can discover and interact with your work.

Adobe Portfolio: Design & Ease of Use

Adobe Portfolio centers around your portfolio, so all the tools and blocks are customized with that in mind. I found it relatively easy to navigate around the interface with a simple tools and properties bar located on the left-hand side. Because Adobe Portfolio has such a limited number of features, there aren't really many tools to display. This has the added benefit of resulting in a very clean and uncluttered interface.

Once I created a page and populated it with media, I quickly became frustrated with the layout tools available. Rather than preset layouts that would quickly and easily determine the location of my images relative to each other, I was presented with photo grid tools that were limited to dictating the number of images per row. This lack of presents made it very difficult for me to get the look I wanted.

When inserting specific images, rather than using the photo grid, it is possible to change the size of the images using a simple slider icon. This was fine, but in no way makes up for how easy it is to create galleries on the likes of Editor X and Squarespace.

There are much easier website builders and portfolio builders on the market, and I would think twice before choosing this one on the merits of how easy it is to use.

Adobe Portfolio: Results

The final results of my creative portfolio with Adobe Builder were satisfactory but in no way filled my heart with joy. The limitations of themes and gallery layouts meant that it was almost impossible to inject my style and creativity into the final output. As a result, I didn't really have the enthusiasm to want to share my resulting portfolio with anyone.

Adobe Portfolio Alternatives

Format and SmugMug are probably the most direct competitors for Adobe Portfolio although those options offer more considerable features beyond simply displaying a portfolio of work. Creatives who want to go beyond that will need to look at the likes of Squarespace and Weebly.

Last week I laid out the problem I'd come to as a Mac user; I had decided to buy an M3 MacBook Pro and nearly did it, right up until I was confronted with Apple's confusing and apparently greedy pricing structure which was pushing me toward spending $4,000 for what felt, to me, like the equivalent of a $2,000 computer. I didn't feel like all of that could be blamed on inflation so I decided to keep my money in my pocket and even investigate all the best laptops for video editing, including PCs.

Certainly, I feel the joy I used to experience in buying a new computer of my own every half-decade has been supplanted by a feeling of fear and dread at making a hideous expensive mistake, and voicing that made me feel far from alone.

One respondent told me that they'd thought of switching to Mac a number of times: "As an always PC person, I have always been universally been envious of the obvious build quality and engineering of Macs and the fact they are always pretty!" Fair enough – that's probably what drew me to Macs in the early 2000s. He wasn't tempted, however: "Although I will pay for quality, I won't have my eyeballs ripped out nor will I compromise a lot on my ability to do what I want on it or with it. Memory is where Apple has always generated the margin on their products. I can't see that changing imminently."

I think he's right. I'm old enough to remember when it was possible to buy a MacBook and then put the memory you wanted in yourself for rather less than Apple charged, but the last model that allowed for that was the intel-powered Mid 2012 MacBook Pro (which was available in 13-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch). They also had an 8x "SuperDrive" DVD drive and FireWire 800 ports.

Another told me how they still used a 2013 Mac Pro – the cylinder (or trash can, depending on your perspective). They told me they had "64GB memory and a 2TB SSD, connected to 32TB of RAID 5 storage" – sounds plentiful for "Photo manipulation using Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and 6 other photo processing tools along with Painter." He said that: "Adobe is pushing me to get a new Mac by implementing features that do not work well on Intel chips." I sympathise (though I struggle to see why Adobe, who charge a subscription, would do this).

His tip, though, did make sense – he'll be looking at the Mac Mini instead of a new Mac Studio; I should look at the MacBook Air. Sadly, of course, I want the sockets including the SD port without a dangling accessory, but it was wise counsel. But otherwise this seems very sound advice. Not that the next respondent agreed...

Another reader – who accused me of making my title a bit 'baity' (though in my defence it was absolutely how I felt) told me: "I have used Macs and PCs since the latter part of the ‘80s. Since the modern era of the Mac, OS X, to the present, there has been no question as to which platform I’d rather use. I don’t consider myself a “fanboy”, just a pragmatic user who has worked in IT since the mid-eighties."

That seems reasonable – though I'm in my mid-40s and have also used both platforms (and others too – any RISC OS fans out there?). Still, he continued: "I find it difficult to believe someone would consider leaving a platform for petty reasons."

Petty? I disagree – My point was that Apple's options are designed to encourage you to buy above your needs through fear of missing out. That isn't petty. 

He said: "That would be analogous to leaving your Tesla for a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle because there are too many choices to make with a Tesla."

Interesting point. I do have a bit of beef with Teslas – I like an instrument cluster in front of me, not off to the side, and I like some more physical controls. I much prefer the Jaguar I-Pace. All the more odd because I did like Apple's touch bar which is not exactly a well-loved – and now discarded – piece of laptop design that's very analogous to the Tesla's touchscreen centre control panel.

Anyway, back to the correspondent, who finished with a flourish: "As one who was once an avid PC user who built my own PCs because of the choices it offered me, I became disillusioned with PCs primarily because of the poor operating system choices. Windows is an all-out failure; I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Though Windows has made strides over the years, it’s still a poor choice for an OS, especially given its MS-DOS roots. Failing to shed its single-user, insecure DOS roots has caused users infinite nightmares. Linux is a good OS, but it doesn’t support the software that a photographer and videographer needs. That is why I switched to the Mac in the early 2000s.

I believe if you were to switch to a PC/Windows platform, you’d soon be writing an article about why you were returning to the Mac."

He might have a point. I'm off to look at the Apple Store and the Samsung store right now... 

Check our guide to the best laptops for photo editing and the best budget laptops to see how many Apple manage to get on that list!