It was once common for professional and advanced hobbyist photographers to have small but capable darkrooms in their homes. Often tucked away discreetly in what would otherwise be unused spaces in basements and attics. Serious shooters would process their own film, craft their own prints, and store all the chemistry and idiosyncratic accouterment that one needs to control their own analog adventure.
Mylio, the company that first appeared back in 2014 as a photo organization and editing tool, is relaunching the Mylio Photos app as free-to-use for most users with the option to upgrade to a premium paid tier.
The digitized, Internet-connected world has actually made film photography easier. As one-hour photo labs began to disappear and many camera stores ditched the darkroom, mail-in photo labs have filled the void.
Mylio has announced a new service that it says can connect the photo libraries of multiple devices together privately and securely without the use of the cloud or even an internet connection.
Intel has announced its new 12th generation Core HX mobile processors, which it says are its most powerful yet and use desktop-caliber silicon in a mobile package that delivers high levels of performance for professional creative workflows.
Film photography retailer Analogue Wonderland has announced the launch of its very own women-led processing lab, aptly named the Analogue WonderLab.
Viktor Falendysh, a Phoenix, Arizona-based photographer and film enthusiast, has announced the AuRA Rotary Assist Film Developing Machine on Kickstarter. The AuRA is touted as a simple yet powerful developing machine, especially for films that have a long processing time, since it handles the timing and rotation of the films to ensure consistently good results.
Photo organizing software Mylio (which stands for "My Life Organized") has re-emerged after nearly seven years thanks to a recent wave of updates and partnerships with influencers like iJustine. After a tepid launch back in 2014, is the service worth revisiting?
Analogico by ADEL has launched a compact and fully automatic programmable film processor called the Dev.a. This $4,290 tabletop film processor targeted at photographers in a range of environments, from a pro lab with high capacity to a casual home user.
Why do we create photos? Well, for a variety of reasons, but the one reason that connects them all is we feel we have made something that we want to share and we feel is worth time and attention. So, how can we create photos that are worthy of another’s time and attention?
Adobe just dropped a massive update to Photoshop, including a slew of AI-powered features like Neural Filters, Sky Replacement, Refine Hair selection, and more. It's an Adobe Sensei bonanza that ought to have the Skylum folks feeling both flattered and terrified.
Skylum has announced a new, AI-first version of its Lumiar photo editor. Dubbed Luminar AI, the program takes all of the machine-learning tools from Luminar 4, adds some more, and puts them all into a new app and plugin that's all about "reinventing" traditional photo editing.
LA-based analog photography company CineStill has just revealed the Cs6 "Creative Slide" 3-Bath Process, a family of slide film development kits that 'demystifies' slide processing and gives you unprecedented creative control over your results.
Photographer Chris Lee of pal2tech has created a much-requested follow-up to his technical breakdown of how ISO works when you take a picture. The followup uses Fuji cameras as an example to explain how the Extended Low, or "L", ISO setting on your camera functions.
Yesterday, Topaz Labs—the software company behind popular photo editing plugins and software like DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, and Gigapixel AI—announced that it will start charging for product upgrades. Users are understandably upset.
No presets. No one-click edits. While presets may be a welcome time-saver for wedding, portrait and travel photographers (often offering a solid base to then apply custom adjustments), editing a landscape photo is different.
Photographer Mark Denney has put together a helpful video for beginners, in which he points out five of the most common photo editing mistakes he's seen and made when it comes to shooting landscapes.
Apple made a big splash with their Pro Display XDR, promising unmatched performance for creative professionals, but "unmatched" might no longer apply. ASUS just unveiled a new lineup of ProArt Displays at IFA 2019, including a beastly 32-inch, 1600-nit 4K HDR display that promises to go step-for-step with Apple.
Building a solid workstation is critical to photographers and retouchers. We find ourselves sitting at the desk for 7-10 hours a day to meet deadlines. If you dread going to your editing station, it can make post-processing a chore that you don't look forward to, which means delayed deadlines and unhappy clients.
When you use Lightroom, do you edit globally or locally? Many (possibly most) people use the global editing sliders liberally when processing an image. But landscape photographer Thomas Heaton's most recent video makes a good case for using mostly local adjustments and leaving those global sliders alone.
Occasionally when examining a RAW file I get a reasonably clear idea on how I would like the end result to be. In this instance, I had an inner picture of trees glowing from the sun, rather dark shadows, and a sky with nice color contrast.
Here's a 16.5-minute video by OWL BOT in which photographer Omar Kenji demonstrates how you can develop C-41 color film in your own bathroom instead of passing it to a photo lab.
Here's a 24-minute video from Andrew Marr that looks at how he adds depth and drama to landscape photos during post-processing in Adobe Lightroom.
Film Washi V is probably the most unusual film announced in 2017, and I had the privilege of being present when Lomig, the founder of Washi Film, introduced it at the Salon de la Photo in Paris last year. Since then I have always wanted to try it and see what it's like to shoot with this very special film.
If you've never tried your hand at black-and-white film photography before but would like to learn the basics of developing your own film at home, here's a great 8-minute primer that'll get you up to speed.
Alongside its new X-E3 mirrorless camera and XF 80mm f/2.8 Macro lens, Fujifilm has also announced the development of a new RAW conversion program called "Fujifilm X Raw Studio." This software is different from others in that it's designed to offload work from your computer's CPU by using your camera's processor to convert RAW photos.
Lightroom is a fairly straightforward and simple piece of software to get your head around. But, like anything, there are always shortcuts and tricks you can use to improve and streamline your workflow. In this 6-minute video from Travis Transient, try out these 3 top tips for making Lightroom life flow more smoothly.
Hollywood photos and still frames often look fairly dreamy with a bit of a glow to the subject in the image. In this tutorial by the guys at Photoshop Cafe, you can learn a number of ways to do this to your own portraits.
This time-lapse of a mammoth 3.5-hour photo editing session by Anya Anti is fascinating. The concept behind the shot is that she wanted to create a self-portrait based on the term 'butterflies in your stomach'.
Here'a neat trick for you Photoshop lovers out there. If you've shot a subject in front of a gray background, you can actually swap that gray background very easily using only Blend Modes. No selection or refine edge necessary.
Developing your own 35mm or 120 film at home almost always requires a darkroom, but LAB-BOX wants to change all that. The new 'multi-format daylight-loading film tank' lets you develop your own film anywhere, even in bright sunlight if you'd like. No darkroom required.
Back in the heyday of film photography, a common part of the photography experience was dropping off your film rolls at a store or lab, placing the roll in an envelope and checking boxes with instructions for what you'd like. Here's a fascinating 5-minute video that reveals what happened to your film between drop off and delivery of your prints and processed film.
Some photographers live by a set of rules: they follow the standard conventions of exposure and image development to produce realistic photographs that correctly reproduce the world around them. Others, however, see the world through an entirely different lens. They are the rebels; they are the alternative photographers. Today, we throw aside convention to look at five alternative processes and how they can be used to foster entirely new perspectives.
An unfortunate truth about shooting in public places is that people around us often get in the way of …
If you're a film photographer, here's something you should be aware of: many film processing services at major drug and retail stores will no longer return your original film to you after developing and scanning it.
Rocket Rooster is a digital filter company that produces affordable plugins for Adobe’s Creative Suite. After creating over half a dozen styles for cinema purposes, the company set their sights on creating products for still photographers using Lightroom. Rocket Rooster’s latest filter set, the Analog Film Pack, includes 20 old school film presets and over 100 variations.
Adobe Photoshop serves as an important process in many photographer’s daily workflows. Whether you are fine-tuning your shots from a wedding or simply touching up a photograph of your cat, Photoshop can help you bring your mind’s visualizations to life. However, you may be utilizing more of your time than needed if you employ repetitive actions without the use of macros.
If you're just starting out in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, and/or landscape photography, here's a video you may find enlightening. Landscape photographer Joshua Cripps offers a quick walkthrough of his post-processing methods, turning a straight-out-of-camera RAW photo of a lake scene into a finished shot.
In March 2014, we reported that inventor Bob Crowley and his startup New55 were working on producing a new line of 4x5 instant film. That Kickstarter campaign turned out to be a smashing success. As the company continues to work on its instant film aspirations, its has released a new product that many photographers may find useful.
It's a new monobath developer called R3 that lets you develop, stop, and fix black-and-white photographic film with a single bath.
I recently stopped into the Costco in Mountain View, California with 164 rolls of Kodak Portra 400. You should’ve seen the look of the staff -- it was a look of confusion, awe, and amazement.
They were surprised that all that film I brought in was all shot by me. They were also partly worried that they would have to process all of it. I reassured them by telling them to take their time. I wasn’t in a rush. After all, I had been sitting on my film and letting them “marinate” for nearly a full year.