There’s a lot of fuss about the overuse of Photoshop and retouching these days. But sometimes it needs to be done, or you just want to. Perhaps you have to clean up a little makeup or get rid of a stray hair or two. Maybe a temporary blemish like a zit or a cut. There’s many different ways to do it, but here’s one I typically tend to avoid. And that’s the clone stamp tool....

If you haven’t seen it by now, or even heard of it, Hardcore Henry is a feature length movie shot entirely in the first person. You can check out the trailer here. It’s a challenging concept that’s been tried before. Often badly – remember Doom? Cameras have become much smaller since 2005, though, and while still challenging, they’re much easier to shoot than they were. Hardcore Henry pulls it off rather well by comparison....

If you’re shooting the night sky with a consumer DSLR and a kit lens, you may wonder if you can make them impressive enough. Well, of course, you can. In this video, Michael Ver Sprill aka Milky Way Mike will share with you some tips and tricks for making sharp and stunning images of the Milky Way even with a crop sensor camera and a kit lens. For the sake of this video, Mike uses a Nikon D7200 and an 18-55 mm kit lens....

I share a lot of lighting setups on here and every time I do, not only am I trying to share something unique, but I’m also trying to share something that’s practical and easy to implement for as many people as possible. For the most part, I think I achieve that and although not everybody has access to all the kit I do, I still believe that certain elements of every setup I share are accessible by all....

When photographing toys, there are so many tricks that can make your scenes look lifelike and realistic. To add an extra kick to certain scenes, you might need to create mini-explosions, all of which can all be done with practical effects. In this video, Norm from Adam Savage’s Tested hosts toy photographer Johnny Wu. He guides you through his process for creating blast effects in his toy photography and shares some handy tips and tricks that you can use in your work....

I love DIY props and big scenes in photography that are well designed. Not many of us photographers have the place or money to create our own stages so I wanted to challenge myself to make one in our living room with a very low budget. I had this idea of a photo with an environmental aspect that describes greed, gluttony and overconsumption in our modern world. The scenario of this idea is in a rugged living room that has a disgusting and filthy man sitting on an old sofa and he is surrounded by all the waste of the food he has consumed....

Aurora Borealis is “the holy grail” for many landscape photographers. If you’re one of them, a hotel in Iceland has a unique offer that you may want to apply for. They will give you a month of room and board and cover your travel expenses. You don’t need to pay with money, but with your photos and videos of the Northern lights. The “aurora season” is around the corner in Iceland, lasting from September through March....

“Watch the Birdie” – that’s what my parents told me, to make sure I look into the camera before they took a photo of me. I guess lots of you guys remember this saying. With the renovation of a 140-year-old historic brass birdie, I show you the origin of this phrase. As this website reports, the earliest sightings of this kind of photographic “tool” was found back in 1879. An article by CW Davis was published in an issue of “Photographic News” referring to a mechanical bird that chirps when you operate pneumatic bellows....

A recent post on Reddit has highlighted a potential issue for users of Adobe’s perpetual license version of Lightroom 5. Basically, if you bought the digital-only version and don’t have a physical CD from which to install (or you do but you’re using a computer that no longer possesses an optical drive), you may not be able to easily download the installation files again if you ever need to reinstall it on your computer....

It seems that there’s something a little off with the latest release of Premiere Pro for users running on a MacBook Pro. After a user posted to the Adobe Forums that Premiere Pro seemed to have blown the speakers on his 2-month-old 2018 MacBook Pro, other users responded with similar reports. Andripeetso claims that while working on a project in Premiere Pro with the volume set to about half, he suddenly heard a loud screeching noise, and when it stopped the speakers were very quiet....

DSLRs & mirrorless camera internal microphones are pretty much useless. They also have notoriously bad preamps when using external microhpones. No matter how good a microphone you plug into it, when you bump up the record level on your camera, you add noise. Lots of it. The typical solution to this is record to an external unit, like the Tascam DR-70D, and then feed a line from your recorder into your camera to make it easy to sync up in post....

A group of independent researchers at AlgorithmWatch recently had to shut down an Instagram research after a backlash from Facebook. The group had been studying Instagram’s algorithm and how it works. However, they claim that Facebook threatened with a lawsuit, so they were forced to bring the research to a halt. AlgorithmWatch published a post revealing their side of the story. It reads that the research was voluntary-based. Volunteers were asked to install a browser add-on that scraped their Instagram newsfeeds....

Infinite Tools has released its new Infinite Skin plugin for Photoshop. It’s designed to help realistically soften skin tone while retaining the detail you actually want to keep. It doesn’t want to replace the retouching process, but help to give you a better initial starting point for your more in-depth retouching needs. It has obvious advantages for photographers that shoot large amounts of imagery with a fast turnaround, such as weddings, portraits, boudoir, etc....

No, it’s not a joke. After a bunch of hints and tests, Instagram is now finally ready to let its users post content from desktop. You won’t need a mobile app to share photos or short videos any longer – you can just do it straight from your web browser. It all started when Mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi discovered the upcoming feature in May this year. Shortly after that, the company confirmed that it was indeed testing the new feature, which was then launched for some users....

Nashville-based lifestyle blogger Tiffany Mitchell recently posted professional photos of a motorcycle accident she had. As if posting (and even having) such photos wasn’t weird enough, they also contained conveniently placed bottles of water. Because of this, the post seemed like it was sponsored, and she received lots of criticism from the community. People have been calling her out for glamourizing an accident, even for staging the whole thing for the sakes of product placement....

Since Instagram has become everything but a photo-sharing app, it was about time for some restructuring a bunch of features it offers. So , from now on, IGTV videos will be a part of your Feed just like other videos posted by the people you follow. Speaking with Instagram, Engadget found out that this will make longer videos play directly in your feed. However, there will also be a Video tab in profiles so you can watch more....

If you’ve always wanted a tool that would give you an insight into your kid’s activity on Instagram – well, now there is one. Meta has announced the new Supervision Tools on Instagram and VR, so you can now have more control over your children’s use of social media. Meta has added a brand new Family Center, the place which allows you to get more involved with your children’s use of Instagram....

The whole Instagram debacle over recent weeks with its focus on video content and the whole full-screen redesign – which now appears to have been halted – has caused it a lot of grief. The backlash from users has been quite vocal. After all, Instagram’s success grew off the back of the fact that it was a photo-sharing app and despite competition from apps like TikTok, that’s what Instagram users still seem to want....

After testing it out in seven countries in July and in the US earlier this week, Instagram’s now hiding like counts globally. It’s still testing the feature and how people react to it, but the company notes that the feedback has been positive so far. Maybe, then, this will ultimately end up being more than a test.Advertisements “Starting today, we’re expanding our test of private like counts globally,” Instagram’s tweet states....

As a part of its efforts to reduce the negative impact of its platform, Instagram is restricting posts about diet products and cosmetic surgery. From now on, posts like this will be hidden from users under 18 years of age, or even deleted from the platform completely. What’s more, the same rules will also be applied to Instagram’s parent company Facebook. According to Digital Trends, the move comes in response to an increased number of influencers’ posts promoting cosmetic surgery procedures and diet drinks and supplements....