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Here is how to create a cinematic video piece under extreme time pressure

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When Benjamin Von Wong approached me to make a video for him I thought to myself that it would be like any other project. It was not. This one had an added twist; We have to deliver and showcase a full product before we left the location. This meant that we’d have six days of filming, and on the seventh day, we need to present the video of our work at the Nexus Global International Youth Summit.

A project like this sounds impossible on paper. Even more so when I realized that some of the days would be 40-hours long filming days. (That’s right, 40 hours, on your feet, filming). However, with a little a lot of planning and organization, you can succeed in delivering such a challenging product on time, and to the best of your abilities. Here are my top tips for succeeding in delivering a finished two-minutes video after a six-day construction project, with less than 24 hours for editing:

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You can now use your Loupedeck+ with Adobe Photoshop CC 2019

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Well, folks. You wanted it. You got it. Loupedeck has today announced the first integration with the Loupdeck+ and Adobe Photoshop CC 2019. Today’s announcement extends the Loupedeck+’s compatibility with Adobe suite adding to Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

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VSCO Film Presets for Desktop are being discontinued in March 2019

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VSCO has announced that the much loved VSCO Film Presets for Desktop are coming to an end. The company says they’re moving completely away from the desktop to focus solely on their mobile app.

The Presets for Desktop have been rather popular over the years, although that’ll all come to an end on March 1st, 2019. VSCO hasn’t really said why they’re killing them off, except to say that they are “always moving forward” and focusing on mobile.

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Retouching Toolkit 3.0 initial review – it kicks butt

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When Conny told me about the brand new Retouching Toolkit 3.0, it almost felt too good to be true. Can you imagine having a more modular version of Photoshop? I wish it was like this out of the box. Since it isn’t, Conny had to go and make it and thank goodness he did.

It’s a software that allows you to make your own modular panels so that they can be used in Photoshop! It allows you to modify and combine your favorite actions, scripts, PS tools, shortcuts, and menu options in any way that is best for your own workflow. It’s future proof as it will begin to include future modules, updates, and it already has the ability to save and share setups from other users. So now you can combine different tools for different jobs in the most concise way possible. That is the premise of the new Retouching Toolkit.

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5 reasons to consider a photographic specialty

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I am in many networks and circles comprised of professional and aspiring professional photographers. There are a lot of questions that get asked on a regular basis, but one of the ones I hear the most is “Should I specialize?” Should they focus on one genre or a couple of related genres, rather than being the Jack/Jill-of-all-trades?

When we first start out in photography, most of us will take pictures of pretty much anyone. We have no idea what our artistic voice and vision will be. We explore and experiment in nearly any field we can, finding our styles and preferences. Eventually, we figure out what we like and don’t like to photograph.

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Speed up your editing on the cheap with these low budget SSDs

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The single biggest performance boost that most computers can receive is switching out those slow mechanical hard drives for fast solid state drives. But SSDs are still relatively expensive, for the most part. So when we do upgrade the drives in our computers, it’s often just the one with the operating system and software.

With larger capacity and faster SSDs now starting to become more common, though, lower spec SSD prices are dropping. And there appears to be a super budget line of Adata SSDs on Amazon that’s getting some pretty favourable reviews.

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Learn pancake editing in three simple stages

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Pancake editing is a term I’ve heard a few times lately, but not something I’ve really started to look into until recently. It’s essentially an editing workflow designed to help speed up your editing process while keeping things more organised.

In this video, video editor Piotr Toczyński walks us through his pancake editing process. And, no, it has nothing to do with maple syrup.

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Lightroom Publish Services: The hidden gem that everyone needs

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Question for you: who uses the Lightroom Publish services? If you do, you’re probably already enjoying the time it’s saving you. Sleeping in later, enjoying extended holidays, spending more time with the kids etc. Ah, choices, choices.

OK, I might be exaggerating. A little. But really, the humble Publish function in LR has to be one of the best tools a busy photographer can have – and it’s been hiding in plain sight if the folks I talk to about it are anything to go by. Trust me. It just saves so much time!

Why? How? Well let’s start by taking a quick look at the nature and functionality of Lightroom. As well as being an excellent RAW convertor, it’s a brilliant organiser of images – I have over 250,000 in my main catalogue and I can rapidly locate anything using a variety of search criteria. I can even find all the images I took at a certain ISO with a selection of camera bodies. And I only store locally the original RAW or PSD files – OK I have some JPGs in the catalogue as well but these are my original full sized-images when I shoot JPG in camera. I don’t store a selection of different-sized files for different purposes with a variety of watermarks – for Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, website use etc. So what do I do instead? I Publish!

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5 things you need to do before sharing your photos

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If you can look beyond the painfully obvious click bait nature of the title for a moment, I promise you that the following 5 things need to become a mandatory part of your pre-upload checklist.

Remember you only get one chance to impress with your shots and I know we all get very excited to share an image as soon as we’ve taken it, but just take a few moments to check these 5 things are done before you do so and I promise you’ll thank yourself later.

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Liked the GNARBOX? V2 adds better video editing, Dropbox, Premiere & FCP support and one Terabyte of storage

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The GNARBOX (pronounced narbox) solved a major issue for many: How to work in the field with no laptop. A decent laptop that supports backing up, exporting short bits for social media, handle RAW files and similar tasks, cannot be a weak small laptop. But many times, you don’t actually need a laptop, you just want to backup some files, or post a short shot to social media, and a laptop is too much to carry for that. Not to mention the weight and extra care a laptop demands.

Now, the GNARBOX 2.0 SSD takes that concept and turns it into an eco-system. The new GNARBOX 2.0 SSD has more storage, is definitely sexier, and supports four apps or workflows to enable working in the field. The only caveat I have with the box is that it is launching on Kickstarter.

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