Software Reviews

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George Schaub  |  Jan 24, 2018  |  0 comments

Shutterbug, a member of the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA), once again joined forces with 30 other member magazines from around the world to choose the winners of the annual TIPA Awards for the best photo/imaging products in 40 different categories. The award process began in early 2017 with an initial selection of a wide range of products conducted by TIPA’s Technical Committee, on which Shutterbug’s Editor-at-Large George Schaub serves. 

George Schaub  |  Nov 09, 2017  |  0 comments

I have been using Epson’s Advanced B&W Photo printing mode for many years in a series of the company’s desktop printers but always wished the print software offered a way to see my image adjustments in real time. So, when Epson announced their new Print Layout software, which offers a “live preview” (among other controls) in Advanced B&W Photo mode, I contacted them to give it a whirl. 

Joe Farace  |  Oct 24, 2017  |  0 comments

There’s more to black-and-white photography than an absence of color. One reason purists refer to black-and-white images as “monochrome” is that it’s a more precise term covering photographs made in sepia and other tones.

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Aug 24, 2017  |  0 comments

If you’ve ever had the itch to paint—or to turn one of your digital images into a great looking painting without taking up a brush—then Corel Painter Essentials 5 may be just the ticket. 

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Jul 30, 2017  |  2 comments

Maybe you can’t fool Mother Nature—but who says you can’t give her a facelift? 

Jack Neubart  |  Jan 27, 2017  |  0 comments

I’ve worked with all the popular film emulators and black-and-white conversion plug-ins, looking for the one that met my workflow and esthetic requirements. After countless hours, I’m still not fully convinced of their efficacy as such. Still, they are fun to use and do fill a niche. So far, I’ve found Alien Skin’s Exposure X2 does the most convincing job so that I feel comfortable enough within my own alien skin—see what I did there?—that I’ll continue to use it, so to speak.

Steve Bedell  |  Dec 06, 2016  |  0 comments

It appears our friends at Anthropics Technology are at it again! Not content with software that can practically take the face of Fido and turn it into Angelina Jolie using PortraitPro, the London-based company has introduced PortraitPro Body, an image editing program that can potentially transform that wimpy teenager down the block into Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, or add curves to any woman that would make a Kardashian green with envy.

Joe Farace  |  Nov 08, 2016  |  0 comments

Proving you can, in fact, change your tune; Paul Simon revised the lyrics to “Kodachrome” when performing the song in Central Park in 1991 to “everything looks better in black and white.” Picky photographers insist “monochrome” is more precise because it covers images made using sepia, blue, or other tones, while images using only shades of gray are black and white.

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Oct 06, 2016  |  1 comments

The monochrome mode on most digital cameras is a convenience that is best avoided. Conventional wisdom says that it’s far, far better to shoot Raw and convert to monochrome—or at least to start with a color JPEG. But Fujifilm suggests that their ACROS film simulation mode might even top the best Raw converters. Does it? 

George Schaub  |  Sep 13, 2016  |  0 comments

Creating a web page for your images these days is fairly easy, and there are numerous web apps available that offer a wide variety of colors and backgrounds. But organizing your images before you even consider the template (or “skin” as it is called in the trade) is perhaps the biggest challenge, given the proliferation of images we all have made with various cameras and mobile devices stored on flash drives, hard drives, and even memory cards.

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Aug 25, 2016  |  0 comments

The moon was full last week, and two lunatic things happened to friends of mine. One got a bad case of ransomware on her Mac (yes, that’s Mac as in MacBook Air). The other had a microSD card self-destruct in his Android cell phone. Bad things happen in threes and, oh yes, I hit a curb and blew out a tire.

The difference was this: I had a spare in my trunk. I didn’t wait until the curb bit me to prepare for the disaster. My two friends? Well…

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Aug 05, 2016  |  0 comments

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a budget-friendly image editing package that’s designed for casual users and amateurs. Under the hood, however, there are dozens of advanced features and hidden capabilities that are accessible via plug-ins. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could unlock, say, 130 of those features with one add-on product that costs less than fifty bucks? Then here’s good news: you can. 

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Jun 16, 2016  |  0 comments

The folks who brought you PortraitPro, the software that turns average looking men and women into superstars (or as John Oliver might say, “Turns ones into tens faster than a South American counterfeiter”) now brings you LandscapePro, a similar application you should think of as “cosmetic surgery for Mother Nature.” But is this a case of “liking what you get,” or “getting exactly what you like?” That, my friends, is the $59 question

George Schaub  |  Jun 07, 2016  |  1 comments

Digital Ice and similar dust and scratch cleanup tools for scanning color negative and non-Kodachrome slides was a boon for those looking to archive/digitize their film files. This software/hardware solution worked with numerous scanners by isolating the offending dust and scratches on a separate infrared channel that it then dumped when the final scan was made.

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