Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
For those of you on the fence about Topaz’s new B&W Effects plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, the introductory price on it expires next week.
It’s $29.99 now (with coupon code “bwandbeyond”), but will go up to $59.99 next week on October 3. You can also still check out the free trial to see if it’s for you.
Full details over at Topaz Labs’ website. You can also see my initial hands-on report here.
Topaz Labs’ latest plug-in, B&W Effects, is now available for Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture or Photoshop Elements.
B&W Effects is equipped with a number of presets that provide you with a solid starting point for generating a black and white image. You can also create a black and white image using only the manual controls – or do something in between by tweaking the preset to your liking. [Read more…]
Photoshop Compositing Secrets is a new book from Matt Kloskowski, who “takes you through the entire process behind creating convincing, well-executed, and captivating composites” in Photoshop.
Check out the video below for Matt’s intro to his new book. [Read more…]
Apple has updated Aperture 3 to version 3.1.3, which “addresses overall stability and performance.” You can find the entire list of fixes on Apple’s release notes. You can download the update through OS X’s internal software updates or via Apple’s support page.
Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X is a new book from Diana Weynand. As you are probably well aware of by now, Final Cut Pro X is a significant change from what we’ve been used to with Final Cut Pro 7 and its predecessors.
Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X retails for $54.99; however, it is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com for $34.64.
If you’ve followed any of the news about Final Cut Pro X since its release, then you’ve probably heard some pretty nasty things.
Apple is in full-fledged damage control mode right now in response to the backlash from pro users. [Read more…]
Right now, you can get Lightroom 3 from Amazon for $179.99. For those unaware, Lightroom 3 is a RAW image processing program that makes life working with RAW files so much easier. It also carries a hefty retail price of $300, so getting it for $180 is a real bargain.
If I could only have one photo editing program, this would be it. Here’s the link to the Amazon.com deal page.
onOne has just released a public preview/beta of a new Lightroom plug-in called Perfect Layers, which now gives you the ability to work with layers in Lightroom. [Read more…]
If you’ve been reading Photography Bay over the last couple of weeks, you already knew that you can edit video in Photoshop CS5 Extended. If you missed the prior post, check out the Bokeh 2 review where I applied a tilt-shift effect to a video file.
Still yet, I know this may be news to a lot of folks, and that’s one of the reasons it was highlighted at the Photoshop World Keynote. Check out the short clip below that shows off a few features such as adjusting curves and making lens correction adjustments to video files. [Read more…]
Bokeh 2 is a plug-in from Alien Skin that allows you to create all kinds of focus effects and vignettes. As with other plug-ins from Alien Skin, Bokeh 2 is now updated to deliver full 64-bit support with Photoshop CS5 (it also works with Lightroom 3). And, it is quite peppy even with my aging Windows Vista machine.
Software products often tend to get pushed back in the review cycle in favor of camera reviews here on Photography Bay, which is a bit of a shame for the cool stuff like Bokeh 2. When I got around to actually putting Bokeh 2 to use, I was really amazed at the power that it gives you to take your images so far beyond what is practical when using Photoshop or Lightroom alone. [Read more…]