Software Category Archive

Five Free, Open-Source Photo Editors To Try in 2023

When it comes to image editing, most people probably think of commercial applications like Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, or Phase One's Capture One Pro. And indeed, these are by far the most popular. On the other hand, there are some serious open-source photo editing programs that can replace commercial programs for...

Lightroom is Acting Slow? Here Are 11 Ways to Speed It Up

Lightroom is a key program for many photographers, and it has been for many years. Since almost the beginning, however, it’s been haunted by performance issues. If you’re looking to speed up Lightroom, or just want to know how to improve Lightroom performance in general, I’ll dive into a number...

The Best Noise Reduction Tools for Photography (2023)

Aside from blown-out highlights, noise is probably the most frightening thing for many photographers. Not a day goes by that I don't see some post in a forum about removing noise, or some news about AI-powered noise reduction software. In this article, I'll introduce the major noise removal tools today...

DxO DeepPrime XD Tested – An Evolution of Noise Reduction

Artificial intelligence, or rather machine learning, is now a permanent part of many photo editing programs. I recently tested one such machine learning program for noise reduction and sharpness, called DxO PureRaw 2. In the meantime, however, the French company DxO reworked their de-noising module called DeepPRIME (which is part...

How to Install Lightroom Presets

Lightroom presets are powerful tools that can drastically speed up your editing process. Whether you want to quickly set a baseline edit or easily replicate the signature look of your favorite film stock, presets give you a head start on your Lightroom edit. The install process, however, can be tricky,...

Lightroom Classic vs Lightroom

Once upon a time, there was just Lightroom. But ever since Adobe moved to cloud- and subscription-based services, Lightroom has had two currently-maintained incarnations: Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (formerly known as Lightroom CC, where CC stands for 'creative cloud'). Lightroom Classic is the desktop-only Lightroom that most photographers use, whereas...

JPEGmini Server Review

After I had a chance to test and review the JPEGmini Pro software, I realized how powerful this software is not just for exporting images and being part of a Lightroom workflow, but also for many other uses, including optimizing images that are already sitting on our large storage devices....

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery Review

One of the worst feelings as a photographer is to realize that you have accidentally deleted one of your photos, and you have no way to recover it. Most photographers have horror stories about such situations — I once nearly lost all my photos from a trip to San Francisco...