Відео

I'm a retiree and a hobbyist photographer. For a while I had the Adobe "Photographer Plan". But with the price rises of this and pretty much everything else I've abandoned it. LrC is a great product and I found it useful that I could go away on holidays, use the iPad to upload photos, do some edits and finish/continue when I got home on the Mac. Now I have Photomator. I have it pointed to my iCloud Drive which I can access anywhere there is an internet service. $50AUD a year for Photomator plus around $16 for iCloud storage and it becomes an affordable way of doing things. I miss the pre-sets that I've downloaded for free but Photomator has some of its own. I also miss doing panoramic merges that I'd often do with LrC when doing landscape shoots. Camera on the tripod and oriented vertically (or in "portrait") then rotate the camera taking shots. As it's an R6 it's only 20mp, so cropping often reduces quality when I want to print a larger print. But this photo merge having 4x20mp images for an 80mp, cropped and I have a great image to print.

Hello from Brazil. Great review. I have a Mac and a PC, so I'm testing Photomator and Luminr Neo. I've given up on Adobe and its policy of abusive price increases. Photomator is very clean and modern, I like its simplicity. And the price includes the excellent iPad version, which is good for on-site editing. Luminar Neo runs on Mac and PC, is also elegant, but its iPad version is purchased separately and is terrible (and requires an internet connection to work). Honestly, I should use both, Luminar as a photo library and AI adjustments (it's very good at AI), and Photomator for basic photo adjustments. Even paying for both annually, the price is lower than Adobe. And if you want, you can make a one-time purchase. Cheers, Alex.

Excellent video and edit! I have learned so much from your channel about Photolab.

One of the few things I dislike about PhotoLab is DxO's lack of support for cell phone raw and DNG files. If Photomator/Pixelmator have good cell phone support, they might be worth a look.

I think the big difference in control points/lines and radial/linear gradients is that the DxO versions are edge-aware. By adjusting the chroma/luma sliders of a control point and the eyedropper of a control line, you can make them MUCH more selective than their Adobe counterparts. Control points are simply brilliant for selecting animal eyes. Drop the point on the eye, use the chroma/luma sliders to get a nice, hard edge on the selection. Use negative control points, if needed. I switched fully to PhotoLab 7. Between the far superior noise reduction, the microcontrast slider, the lens correction modules, and the edge-awareness of control points and lines, I find it FAR easier to get good results with PhotoLab. The noise reduction, especially, has actually affected my shooting style. I use faster shutter speeds in low light, now, because noise simply isn't an issue below ISO 16,000. And sharpening is much improved, at least when there's a correction module for your lens.

This is a very helpful video! I think Affinity photo is a fantastic tool. It is the only cross platform application (that I'm aware of) which gives you their full set of tools whether you're working on a Mac, a PC or an iPad. (and the same file can be used/edited anywhere) - Subscription free!

And your whole series regarding DXO Photolab has been wonderful, and I have enjoyed watching each video 📹 😀 😊

How is the library handled? Are the sidecar files like LR or a catalog like LR CLassic?

I'm new to photography and was advised to try photo/Pixelmator. I went through hours of terrible demos of this software, until I finally found this video. This was a great demo! Subscribed so I stop wasting time :) Thank you for the great review of how this program works. Looking forward to the Pixelmator review by you!

Thanks for this honest video in which you admit that there is always more to learn for everybody!

Thanks Chris. It would be helpful when you are editing, if you get rid of the filmstrip to give a bigger view of the image you are working on. This would make things a little clearer when watching.

Thanks for a great video Chris. I tried Photomator, really liked it but experienced a lot of glitching. Shooting RAW, and new MacBook. Have you experienced any crashes in photomator?

On colour grading in LR I'm pretty sure the colour balance RGB tool in Darktable does much the same thing. I've just started experimenting with DT and not got round yet to investigating this function properly. DT is course both open source and free.

Not including the catalogue there are two capabilities demonstrated here that the competition simply don’t have. Next week we’ll look at the USP’s for DxO PhotoLab

i don't understand affinity. their suite is useless for professionals - borderline laughable, too clunky and jibbery for prosumers and far too complicated for amateurs. Unfortunately, I bought the whole suite and no longer use a single programm. in my opinion, affinity needs to decide which target group they want to address and align their software accordingly. it won't work as it is now

Saul Leiter pronounced “lighter”.

Thanks, would enjoy more demos on Photomator.👍🏼

I am new to photography and editing. Any recommendations on which editing software to start with (not going to break the bank). I have a Canon R10. Do I need to use more than 1 editing software or is that only for Pro photograhers‼️❓

Hi Chris. Somewhere I thought you had evaluated several LR alternatives - yet I can't find it. I guess my question was whether you had a good look at Exposure (now in X7) aka Alien Skin?

I know it's far from almighty, but for me, a (hobby) wildlife photographer, the ReTouch tool of PhotoLab 7 (now 8) is plenty Especially as retouching is, rightfully so in my humble opinion, not exactly very popular in the genre of wildlife photography. I love listening to your calm voice by the way, reminds me of Bob Ross.

Both photos were very nice!

To me, the nature of art is that there is always more to learn and explore, regardless of medium. Nice images!

You alway offer great insight. And my hair looks like that often till i look in a mirror. 😂

A friend of mine, who is a philosopher, said to me, "Show me something that I've never seen before ." This can apply to any genre of photography but it is especially true of street photography. One of the first things that I learned when I tried to do street photography was that there is much more to it than taking a camera out on the street a snapping pictures. I don't have any formula for this but you will know when you've captured something good. You have to tell a story not just document what you see. Technical perfection is not required. Your photographs must say something. You must take the viewer into the scene.

Hi Chris, Thank you for the honesty, integrity and straightforward un sanitised opinions you express in your videos - refreshing in this day and age. I have never before wanted to comment on any of the videos I have watched on you tube but you offerings make it essential for me to congratulate and encourage you to continue. As well as being an amateur photographer for, well, even slightly longer than yourself I have also played guitar for the same duration. What is especially interesting about your observations is that the same learning process is equally applicable to music. You would find that even the finest of musicians will describe that the learning process is inexhaustible and it is that in itself which brings the pleasure in the endeavor to the artist. For me at least, it is that continuous learning the brings the pleasure rather than the appreciation of others - I guess that is the advantage of being an amateur rather than a pro! I came across your channel while searching for a viable alternative to the adobe pathway so please keep the informative - and honest - reviews coming Thanks

I'm one of those rank amateurs you mentioned. I started doing some street photography a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. Less walking than the landscape stuff, lol. I have an Olympus EM10 mk3 that I generally use for doing streets, which is very compact and dead easy to get decent images with. I just do photography for fun and find streets to be quite enjoyable, and as you can imagine there are lots of vibrant and interesting scenes in the country I live in these days.

Dxo is good but needs better selective tone adjustments, I'm disappointed this has remained unfixed from at least as early as PL4. Also the lens sharpness is very aggressive and Oversharpens fine detail in landscapes.

My experience of Affinity Photo is that it is buggy as hell and completely urealiable due to this. I use a top end machine and it just doesn't work the way it should.

The selections are perfect, the BIG PROBLEM is that they can't be applied while the image is in RAW format, so a simple highlight adjustment becomes impossible because the image lost all dynamic range. Is there a solution to this? or am I missing something? Unfortunately Affinity's masking options in RAW format are very limited. Thank you very much for your videos, they are really excellent!

where is this lumenzia setting located? it was already open for you when you switched to photoshop

It is definitely not an alternative for professional use and the main problem lies in the RAW development section which is absolutely limited, it is unacceptable that a paid program has such an elementary RAW development.

I do think there is far too much hype and mystique surrounding AI. Easy to forget that the core design for an AI system is a computer, large complex database of examples, and fancy algorithms which apply the database contents in a sophisticated way. There is no innovative ghost in the machine: AI at present "learns" primarily through a feedback loop and therefore tends to provide a solution based on complex "averaging" of the database contents. ChatGPT is great at "hard" problems, such as assisting with a coding project, but far less impressive with "soft" problems such as writing poems or, dare I say, editing photos artistically. That's why PL8 and DXOs insistence on using AI for solving relatively "hard" problems such as demosaicing and lens corrections, and not for the artistic side of photo editing, is so refreshing as compared to nearly everyone else...

Excellent overview, thanks Chris. I purchased Photomator in May 2024 on a cheap £30 one year licence. Glad I didn't purchase the perpetual licence, since its future now seems quite uncertain. While I was initially impressed by the slick integration with Apple Photos, overall I thought it was too immature and uneven. It should have been developed further, with existing Pixelmator features relating to photograph editing properly integrated before initial release. The masking was particularly frustrating, in that the older sister product Pixelmator has object edge detection and yet Photomator relied on AI detection which was not that reliable. Some features worked really well and were clearly high quality, but now the initial AI correction "magic wand" function is actually better in Apple Photos itself than Photomator. I thought that Pixelmator was the better buy to work alongside Apple Photos, rather than Photomator, especially given the bargain price of Pixelmator. There was just insufficient "clear water" between Photomator and Apple Photos, apart from the not very well implemented local masking. I'd be interested to see your own take on this in due course. I've been using PL8 since October, and have not tried Photomator since then. I'll go back and have another look at it. I really liked the UI, which makes PL8 look very dated in comparison. I also purchased PureRaw 4 several months before buying the Photomator licence. I found that for quick "global change" edits it was possible to get high quality finished images by developing the image in PR4, then sending the DNG file to Apple Photos and activating Photomator for the edit.

Mister Chris, which programs do you use? I bet PS and LR. Al those influencers are bragging about other programs.. I tried them out. They are no good. It begins with the Raw engine which is not good in those programs. Immediately you have a false start.

Hi Chris. At 7:35 you mention DXO Photolab doe snot support rotate and flip. It actually does. In the Photo Library view, if you right click an image, in the menu under Orientation, the options are there. In the Customize view, it is available in the Image Menu under Orientation also.

Hi Chris i totally agree with just a few additions this could be a great application. FYI in the Edit Basic panel holding down the option key extends the values of certain sliders i.e. Exposure + and - 400%, others just + and - 200%.

What has been driving me nuts with Photomator, which I have used a lot, is the lack of lens correction. Photomator does not have its own RAW processor, so it depends on Apple RAW engine. I shoot with Canon. The Apple RAW engine does support the CR3 format, but lacks any lens correction for the Canon RF lenses. This has been a show stopper for me. Modern lenses, especially wide angle lenses, by design depend on distortion and vignetting correction to work. It is not a nice to have, it is essential. I have been standardizing on DXO Photolab for RAW processing, and Affinity Photo for specialty needs (stacking, layer editing, etc). I always export edited images to my Apple Photos library for collecting and viewing images.

So I learned a valuable lesson with this software - and in a good way! I'd be interested to hear of any other software people are using that would bear comparison with Lightroom - I've used RAW Therapee in the past and of course DxO, Adobe and lately Affinity are where I do 90% of my photo editing. Also add ons like Lumenzia and StarryLandscapeStacker, or specialist apps like PTGui and Pano2VR, 3DVista. What apps work for you?

Well done and interesting lesson. I use Lightroom mobile and Photomator. I find that Photomator is better in removing things (even though Lightroom mobile claims AI) and is also much better in noise reduction. The machine learning in Photomator is not as good as the auto correct in Lightroom and the Lightroom mobile presets are better than Photomator. I find the masks to be about the same in both. The levels tool in Photomator is terrific and not in Lightroom mobile. Photomator does not have dehaze while Lightroom does. If forced to make a choice, at $50 per year, I woukd choose Lightroom but not by much. Keep up your good work!

Interestng. I have the Acratech head, but I've found I prefer geared heads. You're in good company though T. Heaton uses it last I noticed. I never thought about taking my lenses off the bodies for travel. I can't believe I've been that lucky all these years. I use a PRVKE Lite bag. I like the roll-top for extra space. Fits great in overheads.

In my opinion, if you’re a professional photographer in need of processing thousands of images, Lightroom is the be all end all. If you’re not in that camp, then Capture One or DxO should do just fine. As far as subscription, make no mistake, we are all paying a subscription. Some think they aren’t, but if you’ve upgraded software over the last two years, you are. LR is $10/month. DxO has been every other year for me, so that’s $5/month. Capture One, you just like throwing money away.

I'm an advanced amateur, and briefly, one time professional photographer. I'm a capable photo editor, and like you, Chris, I don't feel I need AI to edit photos. BTW I got my DxO PhotoLab introductory training from your excellent series of videos. But, I got my basic understanding of camera and darkroom work in film, much of which gave a me a huge jump start understanding digital techniques. So as an amateur, I can't comment on professional photographers being replaced by AI. But I can say that I haven't seen any purely AI images that even come close to what a skilled human can accomplish. As for AI enhanced editing, I guess I have no objection to speeding up the process, as long as the result looks real in the end and doesn't add or remove large objects. Regarding social media,, amateurs like me use it to socialize, obviously, to learn, and to get some affirmation from their peers. I use Facebook, and what has been increasing at a geometric rate are posts of purely AI images and AI generated often lengthy "articles" about historic photographers. The latter are filled with inaccuracies and bad English, while the former tend to be cheesy looking photos of impossible women. These posts are overwhelming real content, and I find myself spending a lot of time blocking people and/or leaving groups. I pity moderators.

i appreciate your lessons...very helpful as a PL7/PL8 user. I really like the step by step procedure

I'm moving from Windows 10 to the Mac Mini M4, since I don't think Microsoft and I are headed in the same direction. As a Windows user, I was quite happy as an ACDSee Ultimate user. Which doesn't exist for the Mac world and what ACDSee Mac products that are available haven't been the equal of their Win counterparts. I shoot m43, mostly landscape and environmental work. For me, it isn't a political statement, its just that my OMD cameras & lenses work for me, and they are paid for! I'm torn between buying the All-in-one DXO PhotoLab product, Or Serif's Affinity Photo which doesn't have any sort of front end for photo management. so I'll likely use OM Workspace as the front end, and possibly for Raw development (its pretty good). Money is not important for photographic software, though I don't want to spend more than I must. I have Windows experience with both Serif and DXO and was satisfied with both. ACDSee, Serif Affinity, and DXO, are all capable of high quality work for me. I notice you have 2 recent reviews of both Serif, and DXO do you have any idea of which would be best for the minimal mac Mini m4 combined with an advanced amateur photographer, and a photo editor who edits reasonably well? I doubt the 4/3s image size will tax the 16GB of RAM available on the Mac Mini; at least my old 8GB Dell LInux 'beater' PC isn't taxed, using RawTherapee My suspicion is that a 1 time DXO licence might be cheaper in the long run than using Serif Affinity since I might be tempted to purchase some PS Add-ons with Affinity or a separate front end program, not everything in Affinity is state of the art, where more stuff in DXO is state of the art. Any insight relating to the Mac or the Software I've mentioned, that you (or other users) might be willing to share would be appreciated.

I've been watching videos for AF1/$ for years. Have always struggled mightily with the concepts you have made so nicely clear. Thank you for the pace of your examples and explanations. Looking forward to the masks.

My favourite bags are Lowepro Pro Trekker 550, Lowepro Powder and Mindshift Rotation 22 l. They are comfortable to wear and can withstand tough conditions. When the weather gets really crazy I use Lowepro Whistler.

Two years is a long time for me to own a camera bag, I've ditched so many, largely because of discomfort, poor materials, aesthetics occasionally and capacity. Going back a few decades, I've used Kata (remember them), LowePro, ThinkTank (still have a retrospective 15 that fits Ryan Air's luggage measurements) in the main, and others I can't even recall the brand. This bag is now my longest serving day bag in often dreadful conditions and it shows no sign of wear at all. I do favour backpacks over shoulder bags - my back can't cope with shoulder bags at all. What's your favourite bag and why?

Very helpful video for a new user of Pure Raw.

Affinity photo is a photoshop alternative not a Lightroom substitute.

I don't use social media, I never liked the idea of them using my images. Of course, I never tried to make a living as a photographer either. I just do it for fun. I do use what they call AI in my day job as a programmer, but it is certainly not any type of intelligence. Things a human would recognize in 10 sec. the "AI" hasn't figured out even though it sees it dozens of times a day. It is brute-force mimicry which goes to your point it still takes a human for creativity and innovation, at least for what I've seen so far. The AI tools in software editing are great for taking the drudgery out of things, at least that is how I see it. Nice end-of-year images, thank you for sharing!