Software Tips

Lately we’ve been sharing basic image-editing primers designed to help you get up to speed with Photoshop and Lightroom. In this installment, you’ll learn how to work faster and more efficiently by customizing your workflow with tool and brush presets.

Got Questions About Photography? Professional Photographer and Photoshop Expert Scott Kelby Has Got Answers.

The first thing I thought when I saw this new update to PortraitPro was “What happened to Versions 13 and 14? I’m still on Version 12 and never saw anything about any other updates.” That’s because there aren’t any. Maybe Anthropics Software is superstitious about the number 13 and just decided to skip 14 as well. Who knows! We’re on to PortraitPro 15 now.

Software programs for imaging can be simple or complex. The complex ones offer a steep learning curve and allow you to refine images to your heart’s content. Simple programs, although complex under the hood, allow you to make quick choices to create a wide variety of looks. And while they can be used for “instant” art, they also allow for nuances that multiply your options a thousand fold, using sliders that modify each look from the menu. One such “simple” program is Alien Skin’s Snap Art 3 (www.alienskin.com, $199 or $99 for an upgrade from previous versions). This is a plug-in and a standalone program, which means it works within the architecture of Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom and Elements as well as other image processing programs so you can create Layers from the work that can be further refined (leading to many more options) or within Snap Art 3 alone.

I’ve worked with DxO's OpticsPro imaging software for several years and have watched this program evolve and make great strides as a Raw image converter. What the new DxO OpticsPro 10 version of the software brings to the table is a cadre of new features and improvements. But are these enough to catapult this software into the top tier, or is it still playing catch-up?

Adobe has just announced that final releases of Lightroom 5.7 and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 8.7 are now available. These updates offer several key features including a new tool to import files from Apple’s now defunct Aperture professional software, and from its current iPhoto consumer imaging software to Ligthroom.

There’s a considerable difference between resizing, which means maintaining the same pixel dimensions and adapting to different document sizes at the same print resolution, and resampling, which means building additional pixels from the original file to enable printing larger documents at the same resolution. Say you have a 24MB file, obtained from an 8 megapixel digicam, that will normally fill an 8.5x11” print at 300 dpi when printing. But you just got a 13x19” printer and want to try your luck at that size, still at 300dpi. Well, for that you would need a 62MB file.