Julie Powell is a photographer, writer and educator, offers unique photographic opportunities and inspirational ideas to help YOU become the photographer you wish to be.
All in Reviews
When it comes to portraits, what’s the best focal length to use? That’s a great question, some swear by a 50mm, some by an 85mm. So I decided to have a little bit of a length comparison.
I recently was given access to a Beta copy of the soon to be released LuminarAI to review, I was just a little bit excited to see what changes they had made and just how well the Portrait Tools section would work.
I was recently asked to review the soon to be released Tamron A047 for my Sony A7Riii, being a fan of the Tamron range I jumped at the chance. The A047 is the smallest, most compact and lightweight telephoto zoom lens, currently on the market.
When I first switched over to my Sony system, I had a basic kit lens which I bought with it. It was great, but had a variable f/3.5-5.6 aperture. I wanted something that would do f/2.8 without breaking the bank.
It’s been a little while, but I have just released a new range of Lightroom Presets…Sweet Hydrangea Collection.
I recently did a brief overview of my first time playing with Boris FX Optics, and I must say it was rather difficult to fit everything into a short 15 minute video. So I thought I might come back with a bit more of a breakdown. This time I want to show you the parameter settings available for the presets.
I was recently asked to review Boris FX Optics software. I had never heard of Boris FX before — they’re mainly in the video space, making visual effects and video software, which looks pretty cool. They have been in the film industry for over 20 years.
I have been playing a bit with the new standalone version of Excire Foto, a great search tool to easily sort through your images. This version is great if you don’t use additional software like Lightroom Classic for cataloging and editing your photos.
To be honest, I don’t really use bracketing on my shots that often. I’m not really a big landscape or even astrophotographer. But have no fear — you can edit single images in Aurora HDR, too, which I was provided for review.
Not so long ago I wrote a post about Excire Search, a plugin for Lightroom Classic, which allows you to quickly search for faces, people, landmarks and more within your entire Lightroom catalog. But what if you don’t use Lightroom? Well, the people over at Excire have been working on a stand-alone version — Excire Foto. This program allows you to search your entire hard drive for images using similar search criteria.
I recently wrote a post about the fun you can have playing with Plotaverse software, but there is a serious side as well. In addition to the fun, you can create some really cool, but effective commercial product shoots.
Do you have Plotaverse on your PC? Do you know there is also a Plotaverse mobile app available, too?
I was recently asked to review Plotagraph Pro, and I was super excited to play with this one. I have seen it before and thought it would be great fun to play with. In a word, it animates your photos. Think Harry Potter-style magic photos, although the people don’t get up and leave! Plotaverse calls it “motion art, a photo animation revolution.”
What are extension tubes you ask? They sit between your lens and your camera body, reducing the minimum focus distance of your lens and magnify your images. Long story short, they help create macro images without a macro lens.
Skylum just released its 4.2 update to Luminar, claiming even more powerful AI tools. Offering refinements to various AI features — including AI Sky Replacement — the company claims to have fixed many of the bugs that caused unexpected errors and crashes. In addition to AI Sky Replacement, there are improvements to portrait editing as well as a new eraser tool.
From quickly locating landmarks, animals and food, I believe the better I make my search, the better results I have. So in this post, let’s have a look at finding different types of faces, and see how quickly and just how well it works.
Using Excire Search to locate landmarks is quick and easy to do. I tend to travel a lot and I really like lighthouses, but I frequently forget which lighthouse is in which folder within Lightroom Classic. Excire Search promised to get me organized, and it did.
After recently been given a copy of Excire Search 2 Pro to review, I wrote my first post on downloading and installing it. This process took roughly 36-40 hours, as it completed initialization while I was asleep. I awoke to find a dialog box on the computer telling me the current status.
I really like to keep my portraits simple, no over-processing or spending hours on the PC. I try to capture everything in-camera as much as I can. Shooting RAW, I find most images out of the camera are a little flat and they need some processing. But again my aim is always to try and keep it simple. So when I was recently asked to review a copy of DxO PhotoLab 3, I was keen to put it through its paces.
I was recently given a copy of Excire Search 2 Pro to review. Let me start by saying I’m NOT a tech-head, but I’m all for something that can make life easier.
