Panasonic’s LX-series of compact cameras have been favorites of both customers and reviewers alike for many years. Photographers who have been waiting for a more enthusiast-slanted LX can finally get out their wallets, because the Lumix DMC-LX100 is here. Find out what we thought about what sounds like the ultimate enthusiast compact camera in our First Impressions Review. Read on.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Enthusiast photographers have been waiting in agony for a replacement to the Canon EOS 7D for five years. Their wishes have finally been granted – and in a big way – with the arrival of the EOS 7D Mark II. With a new sensor, improved AF system, faster image processor, and Full HD video, we think that it was worth the wait. For a lot more on the 7D II, read our detailed First Impressions Review.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The D750 is Nikon’s latest FX format camera, which borrows features from the D810 and marries them with a 24MP sensor, offering a faster frame-rate than any non-professional full-frame Nikon DSLR. Aimed squarely at enthusiasts and full-frame upgraders the D750 boasts a comprehensive video and still photography specification which includes a tilting rear LCD screen and (on paper) an improved version of the 51-point AF system found in the D810. We’ve been using a pre-production camera for a few days – click through for our first impressions.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Macphun Software, a photography app developer with over 20 million users worldwide just recently released their latest photo editing software program, called Tonality. This is a program dedicated entirely to editing your photos in black and white, and it is so much fun to use!
You may already be using a Macphun program – they have produced a whole suite of useful consumer photography editing tools, such as Intensify Pro, Snapheal Pro, and Focus Pro. This latest addition to their software collection is really a powerful one, for professionals and hobbyists alike.
I played around with the software a bit and there are quite a few things I liked about it, and just a couple of things that I found non-intuitive. Read on to discover more about this program.
From my recent trip to Mongolia
Tonality is easy to pick up right away if you are familiar with Lightroom or Photoshop RAW editing tools. The designers intentionally created an editing panel on the right hand side of your viewing window that looks almost exactly like Lightroom’s editing panel. It includes familiar tools like Exposure, Tone Curve, Split Toning, and Vignetting.
There are some other effects here that are not so familiar, and do interesting things when you play with the sliders. Clarity & Structure is a section unto itself that provides the user with highly controlled clarity effects. In the Exposure section there is an ingenious slider titled Adaptive which allows you to adjust the exposure while preserving the highlights, something Lightroom should have had in place a long time ago. There is a section called Glow which does exactly what you think it would do; add glow to your images, like a balloon lit from the inside casting a nice glow over everything. You can add Grain, adjust the overall Opacity of the changes you are creating, and there are options for Texture Overlay and Frames, which are pretty fun with black and white images.
One thing that is really fantastic is that ability to edit with layers. This is something that I found (and still find), rather non-intuitive, but allows for huge possibilities in editing, especially with textured layers. When you add on a new layer and insert a texture via the Texture Overlay panel, you can brush through via masking and only texturize parts of the image, like the background in this image:
Editing with the Textures Overlay panel. I added a metal texture in one layer and a paper texture in another layer, and painted through on the girl’s face using the layer mask so the texture didn’t affect the smoothness of her skin.
Here I added a metal texture in one layer and a paper texture in another layer and painted through on the face using the layer mask so the texture didn’t affect the smoothness of the girl’s skin.
The non-intuitive part for me is in actually using the layers and brushes to mask out parts of the image. If you have grown up on Adobe Photoshop then you might not find this familiar at all. It’s not impossible, it just requires a different way of thinking about how layers work and how the masking works. It will simply slow down your workflow slightly, but as with anything new, there is always a learning curve.
When I first saw the software I thought to myself; “I can edit in black and white just fine with Lightroom. Why would I need another program to do such a simple thing?”. But just as Photomatix is brilliantly designed to do just one thing (tone-map HDR images), Tonality is designed to do just one thing perfectly: create black and white images like you could never do in Lightroom or Photoshop. I took a couple of black and white images from Lightroom that I was satisfied with, and tried them out in Tonality. Just using the presets alone as a jumping board for editing in Tonality shows an astounding difference in quality, sharpness, and texture.
See these two images side-by-side and notice what Tonality can do to really make a photo pop:
Edited in Lightroom for a simple black and white look |
Edited in Tonality for some movie poster “pop” |
Perhaps some won’t like that HDR look, but I happen to love it. It makes an otherwise bland black and white photo cause me to pause and take a second look. Which is what we are always trying to accomplish with our photos, aren’t we?
Find Tonality Pro and Tonality here on the Macphun website, starting at $ 19.99, and for dPS readers they’ve given us 20% off so use this link to get that special price.
In summary, I give this software product 5 stars. I can actually see myself using this in the future, and I think it will be a welcome addition to my limited number of tools that I use for editing photos. It’s fun, super easy, and I can use it to edit a lot of my future travel photos. Like these:
You can also add in some coloring for sepia tints or different metallic effects
The post Product Review: Macphun Tonality Black and White Photo Editor by Phillip VanNostrand appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Daylight hours may be getting shorter as we enter September but the days are just packed. Photokina is a little over a week away and as expected, the announcements are beginning to ramp up. Last week, Sony’s new QX cameras drummed up a lot of attention, IFA in Berlin produced a number of promising smartphone announcements, Canon’s lenses got cheaper (sort of) and the bird was the word when the 2014 British Wildlife Photography Awards were announced. See what you may have missed in our look back at the last seven days
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
There has been a lot of talk about major camera companies possibly taking steps into the medium format digital marketplace. Till now these have just been rumors. But this is a market segment that is not going away, regardless of what some people say. One of the relative newcomers to this market is Pentax. Over the last few years the Pentax line has evolved, and recently Pentax introduced the Pentax 645Z as a major upgrade to their previous 645D. Did they get it right:? The Pentax 645Z – In Depth Review by Michael will try and answer these questions for you.
Have you wanted to travel to the bottom of the world and experience one of the most incredible photographic environments there is? Well you can this January and February with the Fly Over The Drake – Antarctica Workshop. Don’t hesitate register today.
The Ultimate Iceland Workshop. See the Iceland others don’t.
Michael’s Phlog was updated on September 3rd
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The Luminous Landscape – What’s New
It’s been a busy week and as we head into a long weekend here in the US, it seemed like a good time to take a look back at everything that’s happened in the past seven(ish) days. With new products from Fujifilm, Olympus and Ricoh, Photokina fever is definitely taking hold. And the week wasn’t without an oddball moment or two, including the emergence of Sony’s Asia-only ‘perfume bottle selfie camera.’ Relive the highs, the lows, the weird and the wonderful with us, in this slideshow.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
At first glance the Olympus PEN E-PL7 looks like yet another compact, selfie-friendly mirrorless camera — but looks can be deceiving. The innards of the camera come largely from the excellent OM-D E-M10, and Olympus touts the E-PL7’s autofocus system as its best yet. For all the details on the latest PEN, check out our First Impressions Review.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Our comparative review of the Panasonic GH4 and Sony Alpha 7S started with a look at their designs, handling and video spec. They’ve set new benchmarks for the sophistication of their video capabilities, but they’re both potentially very capable stills cameras as well. That brings us to part two of our review, which adds six pages including analysis of image quality and dynamic range. We’ve also expanded our look at the video modes on each camera. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Fujifilm’s new X30 premium compact is an intriguing piece of kit, with a larger-than-average sensor and reasonably fast lens. While not a revolutionary upgrade to the X20, it still provides some nice improvements. After some play time, we’ve put together a First Impressions Review that spells out what’s new and what’s not.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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