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This guy wrote a piece of software to composite every photo he’s ever taken into a single image

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Sometimes, you come across some photography experiments that are so unique you just have to share them. And this project from Andrew Eckel is one such experiment. He’s a musician, artist and software engineer. Before covid, he would regularly play shows in Boston, but with most of the planet being largely shut down for almost the last two years, he’s had a lot of time to explore other pursuits.

He wanted to have something to sell besides CDs and started working on a book of lyrics. He decided to fill the book with colourful artwork and remembered a programming technique he’d learned in college to average out images to remove outliers. He thought maybe he could create his art using something that does the opposite. So that’s what he did. He pulled on his C++ knowledge to write an application that highlighted the differences between images. The outliers. And it looks pretty amazing.

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If you’re using an old perpetual license version of Lightroom 5, back up your installation file

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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.

Previously, you could download older versions of the software for which you had a valid license and the Reddit user pdaphone says that when they logged in, they could see their serial number, but was unable to download the software through the Adobe interface. Fortunately, it seems like there is a solution. At least for now.

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Capture One demands complete physical access to your computer(s) in its license agreement

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Contracts are a funny thing. The wording they use, the things they have to say in order to allow them to do the things they do, can seem quite overbearing – particularly when it comes to things like Digital Rights Management, otherwise known as DRM. Put simply, DRM is the part of the software that checks to make sure you’re running a legitimate copy of the software with a valid license key. It’s something that Adobe does each month when it checks that you’re still running a valid Creative Cloud subscription.

Capture One, though, seems to demand complete and absolute access to not only your computer through its software checks but “on-site investigations” with physical access to any computers that they suspect are running Capture One. And it’s all in the name of copyright. It sounds a bit (a lot) big brother, but is it something you should really worry about? Well, to quote the great Jar Jar Binks, “Not really, no”.

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Luminar AI review from a hobbyist photographer’s eyes

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Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more integrated into image editing. And the first editing software that comes to mind when you mention AI is Luminar AI (announced here). I was honestly curious to test it out ever since it came to market. So I did, and I thought it would be great to share my impressions.

I would describe myself as an experienced hobbyist. I’m not a pro photographer, but I have some experience and have been doing it for a long time. I’m going to write this review for the average Joe photographer. Mostly because I think Luminar AI is more suitable for “everyday shooters.” That said,  even if you’re a professional, feel free to check out how it performs and decide if it would be something you’d incorporate into your workflow.

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Pentax releases SDKs for Pentax DSLRs to let you make your own apps

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This is something that I really wish more manufacturers would do. Pentax has released Software Development Kits (SDKs) for their range of DSLRs allowing programmers write apps to communicate with them for the desktop, iOS and Android devices. This would allow anybody to be able to make software to talk with Pentax DSLRs, and without any kind of hacks or reverse engineering.

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Adobe: Sorry for releasing Lightroom that “didn’t uphold the level of quality”, releases bug fix update

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A few weeks ago, we got excited about all the new features in Lightroom CC’s “massive update”. The loved the long-overdue upgrades such as more profiles, faster import, and a better user interface. But, and this is a big but (BUT even), it didn’t take long before the community started experiencing problems that left them quite upset. Today, the software company apologized for the quality hiccup, and better yet, released a bug fix update that resolves these issues.

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Signili Review – Invisible Digital Watermark to Protect Your Photos from Copyright Infringement

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If you share your photography online, you know that your images will be re-distributed and re-published without your permission.

If you are a professional photographer, or a photo enthusiast, you probably also realize that rampant online copyright infringement costs creative professionals a significant amount of lost revenue – every image that is published without a valid license is a lost sale for someone.

If you have always wanted to fight back against copyright infringement, or if you just want to see exactly who is using your photography where, one solution is to apply an invisible digital watermark to your photography.

In this article, we will review Signili, a new service that can add invisible watermarks (as hidden copyright information) to your photos, and then help track exactly where those photos are used online…

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British police uses AI to detect porn, but it mistakes photos of desert for nudes

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Artificial intelligence is developing fast and has many possible applications. However, it makes mistakes, and this has proven to be a problem for London’s Metropolitan Police. They use AI to detect incriminating images on seized electronic devices. But, it’s unreliable when it comes to nudity, as it still can’t tell the difference between a nude photo and a photo of a desert.

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This software makes it easier than ever to colorize black and white images

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Colorizing a black and white image in Photoshop requires a huge amount of time, and not to mention that you need exceptional skill to do it. A year ago, Richard Zhang and a team at University of California revealed Algoritmia, an app that does it automatically. It was fun to play with it, but there was still plenty of room for improvement. Now, a year later, they have found a new approach. And this time, the results are way more impressive.

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DaVinci Resolve 12 Beta Is Here – World’s ‘Most Advanced’ Non-Linear Video Editor

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Back in May we had shared that the upcoming release of DaVinci Resolve 12 may just be the most awesome editor for budget filmmakers.  The only problem was, it hadn’t been released yet.

Today, however, we are happy to announce that version 12 has been released in beta (and I’m currently downloading it)!

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