New Apps (For Me)

For years, I have been editing my digital photos with software that I have acquired through DW, who works for a company that makes this very software. Because she works for this company, she receives the latest and greatest versions of this software for free.

I knew I married her for a reason.

Because of my good fortune, this is the only software I have used to turn my basic photos into half-decent images. As I became more familiar with the software, I moved from shooting in JPEG format to shooting in RAW, and the quality of my output improved greatly.

Of course, I've also used photo-editing apps, such as Snapseed and Prisma, among others over the years, but I've only used these when editing photos from my smartphone or tablet, and rarely did I keep these edited photos after posting them on social media apps.

Last fall, DW began investigating some apps, as she usually does when she was comparing her company's product to the competition, and she decided to show a couple of them to me, out of curiosity. She wanted me to watch some of their demo videos and to give my impression.

I'm not one who likes to putter around and spend lots of time on computers. It's a great irony for me, working in a high-tech industry and using computers, when I really don't like to mess with them. Sure, I'm fine using a computer to write or use social media, but I don't like digging around with a computer to figure out how something works. I like programs to be easy to use and to be reliable.

It took me a few years to become comfortable using our existing photo-editing software, and when our latest version came out with a new look and feel, I was in panic mode until DW showed me a way of brining the app back to its classic appearance.

So when DW wanted me to look at different software, I was a bit reluctant. But she made me watch their demonstration videos before forming any opinions.

Of course, the videos showed amazing photos look even more amazing. Some even transformed a photo to look nothing like what you would have seen with the naked eye. Effects were added to change an image into a vision of fantasy.

After watching the videos, I told DW that I liked one feature from product A, another feature from product B. I said that product C seemed complicated but the results were stunning.

"I'm considering buying one of these apps," DW said. Last March, on my birthday, I used a gift card that was given to me to put towards a camera that DW had been eyeing. At the time, we made it clear that the camera would be hers but that I would be allowed to use it to make my Brown Knowser YouTube videos. And since she's had that camera, DW has renewed her long-dormant interest in photography.

A few weeks later, DW purchased two of the apps that we had looked at: Affinity Photo and On1 Photo RAW 2021. She liked the features of Affinity that were similar to or better than her company's product and the photo-organizing abilities of On1, and couldn't decide which she preferred, so she bought both.

Not being interested in learning new software, happy to be using the free version of PaintShop Pro 2021 (PSP), I let DW play with the new apps.

For Christmas, DW told me that she bought me a license for a newly released product, Luminar AI. We had seen the videos for this photo-editing app and I had commented that I liked some of the special-effects features more than the other apps, so she saved this program to give to me over the holidays.

We also have had versions of Corel After Shot Pro, which I used when it first came out but haven't used in years. So we now own five photo-editing programs and I think I'm overwhelmed.

The first program that I tried with a batch of new photos that were still on both my Nikon D7200 and D750 cameras was Luminar AI. After all, it was the program that DW gave to me for Christmas and was truly the only one that was mine.

One of the things that turns me off from a photo-editing program is how difficult it can be to open a file and start editing it. With PSP, you can click File, Open, and navigate to your photo or you can click the Manage tab, navigate to the folder that contains the photos that you want to edit, and pull them all in.

After Shot is much more convoluted and I would often have to call DW to the computer to show me how to start.

Luminar AI isn't as straightforward but it was easy enough to start working on a photo. A simple plus sign (+) at the top lets you edit a single image or open a folder and work on several at a time. You can manage a catalog of photos, use a variety of preset templates, much like filters in Instagram and Snapseed. Editing the photo is as simple as what I'm used to with PSP, though there are some features that I need to learn (but once I understand what they do, they're pretty straightforward).

Luminar AI also has some wild special effects in its Creative mode, and I played around with photos that were shot with overcast skies, changing the sky to show the Milky Way or add lightning to the clouds. There are so many creative effects and I'll start playing with them more over time.

But I have found that Luminar AI doesn't have the capability to create high-dynamic-range (HDR) photos from multiple files, though it does allow you to apply an HDR-like effect from a single photo (PSP does both).

I also find Luminar AI to be a bit slow, due to the AI requiring lots of memory to do its magic. And the preset macros tend to give a lot of punch to an image, which I then have to tone down if I want a more natural appearance.

I found On1 to be a bit more complicated in finding a starting point but as I became more familiar, it wasn't as difficult. Because I use my own method of organizing my photos, though, I did find saving my photos more involved, and I wasn't crazy about the overall results with my photos after editing them.

I'm sure that most of my problems were through user error, but it will ultimately come down to which program lets me edit the most quickly and gives me the image that I want.

I really liked the ease of the HDR rendering with Affinity, which gave me a better result than with PSP. But I did find that I had to work harder on a single file to make the image pop. Some photos came out looking rather flat, compared with other apps.

The following images were taken from a single RAW file. While editing, I did not look to the other images for comparison: I simply worked within each app until I got the photo to look as good as I could without overdoing it, though sometimes that didn't happen. Keep in mind that in the RAW photo file, the sky is totally blown out and the clouds do not appear in the sky nor in the reflection. Editing brought out the clouds.

See which one you like the best.

Affinity Photo

Luminar AI

On1 Photo RAW 2021

PaintShop Pro 2021

Which image do you like the best? When I first created these new photos, I shared them on Twitter, asking my peeps which photo they liked the best. Overall, most of the respondents chose the photo that was edited through Luminar AI.

I also went back to my photos of Horseshoe Bend, in Page, Arizona, which I had originally processed with the PSP app that we had in the spring of 2016. I layered five files, each shot at -2.0 EV, -1.0 EV, 0 EV, +1.0 EV, and +2.0 EV. Both Affinity and On1 could handle the five layers but Luminar AI could not, so I worked with the file that was shot at 0 EV and used some of the AI and preset effects to get an acceptable image. Have a look:

Affinity Photo, HDR (five files)

Luminar AI, single file (no HDR)

On1 Photo RAW 2021, HDR (five files)

PaintShop Pro (2016), HDR (five photos)

Overall, I like the HDR capabilities with Affinity. The images seem clearer than with PSP or On1. But I like the way that Luminar AI can make a photo pop, and the templates can do some amazing things with little effort.

But I still really like the ease of use with PSP and I don't plan to stop using it any time soon. Perhaps, as I become more proficient with the newer apps—it took me years to feel confident with PSP and I still have lots to learn—I'll settle on a single program. Or, I might use one app to get to one look, and then use another app to apply different effects.

I just hope that my photos in 2021 will shine.

Happy Monday!

Photo Friday: Horseshoe Bend Reboot

For a place where I spent almost an hour and literally took hundreds of shots, it seemed a shame to display only one photograph.

True, for the most part, I had set my camera on a tripod and had only changed the shot by zooming in and out, between 10mm and 20mm. There's not a lot of room for creativity there.

But for each composition that I made, as the sun headed for the horizon, I captured five shots, bracketed, with EVs at +2, +1, 0, –1, and –2. With those five shots, I produced a single image.

In post production, I didn't merge all five photos with all of the images that I produced. Sometimes, I used only three or four shots; other times, I used only one. I have them saved to a repository, but I doubt that they will ever see the light of day again. After all, Horseshoe Bend is only one subject, where the only changes come with the waxing and waning light.

I posted a couple of the photos, last month, for another Photo Friday. A friend of mine, Cesar, liked the photos and generously printed an 8x10 and a 13x19 sheet for me. One proudly hangs over my desk, at work; the other is waiting for me to find a suitable frame so that I can hang it in a prominent spot at home.

The other image that I showed for that blog post, while it captured the setting sunlight reflecting nicely off the gathering clouds, seemed too dark for my liking. Here's that shot:

Ever since I posted that image, I couldn't help but think that I can do a better job at processing the shot, and so I went back to the RAW files and re-edited them.

For the "original" photo, I used four of the five frames, leaving off the darkest of the shots out. I figured that with it, the overall result would be way too dark to be usable. It was a shame to exclude it from the final image, as it had the most colour in the sky.

For the reboot, I decided to use that dark frame, and this time I only merged it with the photo that was shot at a +1 EV. Here's the resulting image:

What do you think? Which one do you prefer?

A little exaggerated, I admit, but the Horseshoe Bend was mind-blowingly larger than life, and this is closer to how I remember seeing it.

Happy Friday!

Photo Friday: Horseshoe Bend

Never, in all the years that I have been involved in photography, have I been more terrified in taking a shot. Never before, have I feared for my life.

My hands trembled as I placed my camera on the tripod, which I balanced such that, should it start to wobble, it would try to fall backwards, toward me. I was lying prostrate, my supporting arm against the back leg, to ensure nothing would move easily.

As I focused, my subject was directly before me, spread wide my my 10mm lens. I could also see what was below me, a thousand feet, straight down.

No barrier: just me, the edge, and certain death between us and the other side of the chasm.

I'm afraid of heights. Terribly. I don't mind being up, above the ground. But I need solid ground under me, with either an enclosure or a solid railing to prevent me from taking a tumble. At Horseshoe Bend, there is no such comfort. You either get close to the edge to get your shot or you stand well back and enjoy the narrow precipice, across from the Colorado River, but you don't see the river.

And so I got on my hands and knees to get into position and I lay down while I watched the sun set.

And my heart raced for the whole experience, especially when my wife and kids came close behind me.

Looking at the results of that sunset shoot, my heart still races. But at least I now feel safe.

Happy Friday!