A few days ago, Adobe had another price increase for its Creative Cloud programs. Annoyed by this change, Twitter user Ghost Malone created an extensive list of alternatives, in case you don’t feel like paying more for major Adobe CC programs. They cover different areas, from image editing to building websites, and all of them are free. — ? kerrigan ? (@anKerrigan) January 11, 2019 Adobe increased prices in spring last year, and now there’s another increase for the USA, Canada, and Mexico....

Christmas is coming, and so is buying gifts for your loved ones. In case you have film photographers among your friends and family, Noah of Analog Resurgence has some great gift ideas. In this video, he doesn’t only give you ideas about what to buy. He also offers lots of useful advice on how and where to find these gifts and make a film photographer in your life happy this Christmas....

2017 is almost out the door (maybe it already is in Australia). As we say goodbye, I wanted to come back to our top ten popular posts of 2017. I was surprised at some of those. Art student figures out you can save money on Wacom nibs by using spaghetti Internet “entrepreneur” shocked that copyright owner sued him for stealing their work NASA makes their entire media library publicly accessible and copyright free This is why you don’t want to trash your clients on Facebook Harvard is putting a 13 module photography course online for free This campaign promotes pet adoption through brilliant optical illusion photos Photographer mom shared a photo of her son and his father in a shower – and now she’s going to court Ready player one poster ridiculed for bad Photoshop, turns out to be accurate GoPro Hero 6 vs GoPro Hero 5, is it worth the upgrade?...

Golden Hour and Blue Hour are the optimum times for us photographers. It’s been drilled into us since day one. We have apps that tell us when the sun will rise and set, and tell us in which direction. The thing is, it’s only worth knowing that information if the sunset or sunrise is going to add to our shot. There’s a science behind beautiful sunrises and sunsets. This article aims to arm you with the key factors which make for a beautiful sky....

If the recent reports are true, we are only a day away from the official announcement of Z50, an APS-C mirrorless camera from Nikon. Some specs and expected prices have already leaked, and there’s now the first photo of the camera paired with the upcoming 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens. https://twitter.com/nokishita_c/status/1181630169796104192 The Nikon Z50 will be a mirrorless equivalent to the D7000 and other Nikon’s DSLRs from the D7xxx series. Since it’s the first APS-C mirrorless model from Nikon, it will be released along with two accompanying lenses....

Ansel Adams is, without a doubt, one of the greatest and most influential American landscape photographers. In his latest video, Martin Kaninsky looks at not only Ansel’s work, but his life and what influenced his work to become as recognizable and influential as it was. If you’re a fan of this great photographer’s work, I’m sure you’ll love this video and the presentation. I like the fact that Martin reflects on Ansel Adams’ early years and his relationship with parents....

I wanted a device that can throw light patterns onto a wall or a model. There are some commercially available but they are quite expensive and I this was only for occasional use. I thought that this is something that can be 3D printed. I bought a Bowens mounting ring and some cheap macro extension tubes (For the Nikon F mount since I already have lenses for it) from eBay and designed an adapter between them....

Nearly every professional studio I’ve ever used has these ‘polyboards’ and you‘ve probably even seen them yourself but may not have known what they’re used for. Polyboards are polystyrene boards that usually measure 4 feet wide by 8 feet high and are normally 2 inches thick. One of the other defining characteristics is that they are often white on one side and black on the other. This dual colour is very important as this gives them two key uses....

For those that shoot film, developing and dealing with chemicals isn’t usually the biggest hassle. Often it’s scanning the resulting film into the computer. Many lower end scanners simply don’t have the quality. Higher end ones, even flatbeds like the Epson Perfection V850 are out of the range of many film shooters. Drum scanners like this Hasselblad are even more expensive. And that’s their cheaper model. So, what else can we do to digitise our film shots?...

Street photography is a weird genre of photography. So many want to try it, but they’re afraid. Afraid of rejection and potentially hostile reactions. There are two schools of thought when photographing people in the street. The first is to just shoot, and worry about consequences later. Legally, that’s fine in many parts of the world. The latter is to obtain permission first and then shoot the photo. There is the argument that asking takes away the spontaneity....

You know those Facebook photos where you move your phone or your mouse and they move. Kinda like making you feel you are in the photo? Well, Unmesh Dinda totally nails it in explaining to to create those photo directly from your PC (ok, ok, or Mac) and upload them to photoshop. The trick is done using depth maps. And as you may guess, those are maps that tell Facebook what is the depth of each part in the photo....

Retouching skin with dodge and burn is one of the most valuable skill a photographer can learn. It can have such a dramatic effect on your image, but it does it completely non-destructively. While dodging and burning has been around since the darkroom days, the precision of a digital workflow gives us so much more control. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. In this video, photographer and retoucher Zoë Noble talks us through her process....

The one certainty in photography is that the closer we get to our subjects, the shallower our depth of field becomes. If we’re shooting with a macro lens, we have the option to stop our lens all the way down to increase the depth of field. Sometimes this can be enough to give us what we need. And sometimes it can’t. If you’re shooting down a microscope, though, then changing the aperture isn’t really an option....

Freckles are one of those strange things in life. Many who have them try to hide them. Many who don’t absolutely adore them. Sometimes, though, you get a subject in front of your lens covered in freckles and extremely proud of them. That’s the ideal situation for a photographer who loves freckles. Photographer Mathieu Stern’s on the side of loving them. And if you saw his recent UV video, then you can see why....

If you’ve ever tried doing a facebook live session you know that using your phone’s onboard microphone really sucks. Here is how we solved this problem with a $15 cable from rode. Of course, we do assume that you have a microphone capable of producing great sound (we are using Rode’s Filmmaket kit). So it is not $15 for great sound, it is extra $15 to bring your (already awesome) sound into your smartphone or tablet live broadcast....

For anybody who’s seen the movie, Logan, there’s one scene that sticks out. If you haven’t seen the movie, then you may not want to keep reading (unless you’re not interested in seeing it but want to know the effect anyway). The scene is set in a Vegas hotel. Charles kinda loses it and Logan, quite literally, claws his way back to the room to save him. The folks at Film Riot explore three ways to create this and similar effects....

Sometimes you want to create a stunning portraits indoors but you are stuck with those seamless white, black and gray sheets as backgrounds. Well, how about creating a about creating a bokehlicious wall like this? I love using out of focus bokeh circles, they are beautiful, unique and pretty dramatic. There are many ways to create those bokeh shapes in the background (I;ve seen light bulbs and LED lights used before)....

Even if you don’t photograph products regularly, they’re great test subjects to learn lighting. You get to play around, experiment, and explore how light interacts with different surfaces. And you get to do it in a very controlled way. But high end cosmetics typically have a certain look to them that can be difficult to achieve with modest equipment at home. Canadian photographer, and pretty good keyboard player, Dustin Dolby is here to help....

Most photographers know of the aesthetically pleasing qualities of certain geometric shapes and patterns. There’s all kinds of “rules” based around them. Triangles are a common compositional tool, as are squares for the “frame within a frame”. Whether we choose to follow those rules or not is down to each individual. But is there more to it than just making things visually appealing? This interesting short video from Now You See It dissects the shapes found in several animated and live action movie characters....

Taking a break from their usual “X tips in Y minutes” type videos, COOPH interviews concert photographer Michael Agel in this one. It’s a peek into the world of somebody who’s been doing music photography for a living for over 30 years. COOPH caught up with Michael during the Montreux Jazz Festival, where offers up some advice for budding concert photographers. Light is Key As with just about any other kind of photography, the key component is light....