A Good, Free Portrait Editor Does Not Exist. Or Does It?

“Your time is way too valuable of a resource. Don’t spend hours retouching your portraits. Let PhotoDiva handle them.”

What’s the biggest misconception about the job of a portrait photographer? Perhaps that it’s easy. No big deal – just set up your camera, shoot – and boom! – the pictures are ready. But are they, though? What would people see if they went behind closed doors? Hours and hours of tedious, painstaking retouching. That is the sad truth about portrait photography. Is there any hope for a better, quicker, more efficient retouching process? Looks like there is one newcomer that claims to be able to grant you that, and for free! Enter PhotoDiva, a self-proclaimed smart portrait editor that promises to make your retouching infinitely easier. Sounds intriguing? Cocky? Both? Well, there is no way we’ll know unless we try this software ourselves.

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Tips for Shooting a Party in Low Light: What Photographers Should Know

Photographers, shooting a party in low light is pretty easy to do as long as you’re having fun. Here’s how we used the Nissin MG80 Pro to do just that!

Some photographers like to be a fly on the wall when it comes to shooting a party, but if you want images that pop, you’re going to need to get deeper in there. Shooting parties isn’t only about having the best gear and knowing how to use it, but more about (get this) being a human being and thinking a bit. You should never feel like you’re under a lot of pressure: therefore, you should prepare a lot beforehand. Getting to the venue early and walking around to explore the lighting situation is the best thing to do. Parties are also social occurrences, and people are more than happy to be social with you. Shooting a party in low light presents a number of challenges. Luckily, we’re telling you about how to not even break a sweat when you start shooting.

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Photographer Zen Sekizawa Relies on ARRI Lighting for “The Dance”

In “The Dance” Sekizawa explores the breaking down of traditional ideals of Japanese refinement through the avant-garde dance form known as Butoh. This project compiles slow motion, still photography, and stop-motion to create one seamless 10-second looping film.

Veteran commercial photographer/director Zen Sekizawa just finished a multimedia project that explores the role of Japanese women through the avant-garde Butoh dance. In “The Dance,” Sekizawa captured film, photography and stop-motion separately and compiled the elements into one seamless 10-second looping film and two photographs. She relied on ARRI SkyPanels for the entire production. “I used light intensity, light movement, and light color to explore the inseparable relationship between motion and time,” she explains. “I really love the amount of intensity and saturation the SkyPanels are capable of!”

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Photography Gifts to Get Your Lover (or yourself) on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day, or the Feast Day of Saint Valentine, is widely celebrated for the occasion of showing love and affection to the ones you care about.

During this time of year, V-Day gifts are eagerly purchased in the hopes that ‘tokens of love’ will offer a sort of compassion, happiness, and even romance for couples. While there are times when a box of chocolates, dozens of roses, and an over-sized plush teddy bear might be a nice treat to receive or even to get yourself, but V-Day gifts have expanded in this day and age and there are more personal ways to gift by targeting their (your) personal interests! For one, let’s talk about the many possibilities of V-Day gifts for photographers, shall we? Below are ten gifts that might catch your eye and get you ordering ‘with love’ today!

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APA Gives Photographers Benefits You’ll Only Get from a Full Time Job

With American Photographic Artists (APA), working photographers and others can get the job benefits they need to run their business.

When you decide to become a full-time photographer, one of your biggest fears is losing job benefits. But, the truth is that you don’t have to worry. With an organization like American Photographic Artists, photographers can receive a whole lot more than they thought possible, and they don’t really have to start from scratch either. For decades, American Photographic Artists has been fighting for the rights of photographers in addition to working alongside agencies, producers, art buyers, etc., to help photographers adapt to the industry. They’ve been working to make the plunge into American Entrepreneurship easier. Like other member-based groups, most of APA’s basic benefits can be accessed for only a $50 yearly membership. However, if you enroll at a higher level, other benefits like a full-page ad in APA’s sourcebook are included in the package.

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Best Video Recovery and Repair Tool for Windows and Mac in 2020

We all have suffered from the loss or corruption of our important videos.

Since I record videos on a daily basis, the situation can be more common for me than others. Nevertheless, I’m always equipped with the right tools to repair my corrupt videos or recover all those accidentally deleted clips. One of the tools I have recently used is Recoverit. What is its new DR85 update, and is it worth your hard-earned money? Find out here!

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Before You Edit Your Photos, You Should Check This Out

From December 16th to the 29th, the Datacolor Spyder is being discounted and can help you get better-looking photos.

If you’re one of those photographers who makes more magic happen in post-production than in-camera, then the Datacolor Spyder is the perfect accessory for you. Before you take what that new YouTube tutorial taught you and put it to work, consider whether everyone is seeing your image the same. Have you warmed up your monitor? What about the light around you? And where are people viewing your images? The Datacolor Spyder can help you get consistent colors in your photos every time. And right now, you can save up to $100 on color management!

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Want to Save Money on WhiteWall’s Famous Print Quality?

In addition to its extensive line of custom sized acrylic prints, photos on HD Metal and aluminum, photos on wood and canvas or more than eighty traditional, handmade frames, WhiteWall.com has added “Round Formats & Shapes” to its lineup of print options.

Photographers looking for unique ways to display their photos can now reproduce them in four distinctive shapes including a circular format and six, eight, and twelve-sided shapes. These can be printed on any number of WhiteWall’s award-winning substrates such as Original Photo Print Under Acrylic Glass, HD Metal Print, Direct Print On Aluminum Dibond, Direct Print On Wood, and Forex Print.

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Portrait Photographers Have Trusted This Software for Over a Decade

Special Black Friday Deal – Save 20% on PortraitPro 19 and all Anthropics Technology Software with coupon code TD1990.

For over a decade, PortraitPro has been popular with photographers looking to retouch their own images in-house. The easy to use interface makes it easy to customize nearly every part of your edit, making it ideal for everything from high-fashion to family portraits. PortraitPro 18 brought AI to the table, making for a significantly faster and more accurate editing experience. The latest offering, PortraitPro 19, was released in mid-October. So what can users expect from this new version?

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Need a Lens Filter? Tiffen Has You Covered This Black Friday!

Shop with The Tiffen Company and all of its brands this Black Friday and Cyber Monday! These deals are running for a limited time only so don’t miss out.

When you purchase a Steadicam AIR 15 or AIR 25 monopod, you will receive a mail-in rebate for a free Steadicam AIR Spreader as well as up to $75 back. The AIR Spreader is a foldable, screw-in, 3-leg base option for the Steadicam AIR 15 or AIR 25.

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Not a Camera: 20 of the Best Holiday Gifts for Photographers in 2019

In this holiday gift guide, you’ll find a handful of items any photographer would love to get this holiday season.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again. Whether you’re looking at gifts for the photographers in your life, or just need an excuse to treat yourself, we’ve put together a list bound to have something any photographer will be happy to receive this holiday season. Since most photographers probably already have a camera body, we’ll be focusing on gifts beyond cameras.
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The Portrait Editor Adobe Doesn’t Want You to Know About

Editing portraits is a unique process with specific challenges.

Uneven skin tones, awkward face shapes, and unfortunate blemishes must be dealt with in each photo. That means editing the photos usually takes longer than planning and executing the shoot! The right portrait photo editing software can shave hours off the post-processing stage, so it’s important to use one that not only has all of the features a professional photographer needs, but also makes the work progress quickly and smoothly as well.

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Photographers Call This Slideshow Software a “Secret Sales Weapon”

Photographers everywhere are boosting sales and revamping their in-person consults with SmartSHOW 3D.

Ask any professional photographer and they probably have a favorite photo editing software. We spend a lot of time in front of computer screens getting everything just so. It’s essential to have the right tools for the job! But before trying SmartSHOW 3D, I had never considered adding a professional slideshow software to my toolkit. After testing the impressive array of features and capabilities, I now wonder how I ever got along without one.

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Low Light Portraiture: How to Make the Most of Ambient Lighting

Low light portraiture is difficult unless you know how to adapt to your environment very well. 

“Shoot wide open.” This is probably a bit of advice that you’ve heard when shooting low light portraiture. The great news is that you don’t need to use a flash to get a portrait that pops and makes people stare. Instead you can use a lot of the lighting that’s around us. Humans create a ton of lighting in various places at night, and with a bit of creative freedom and thinking, we can make lights work for us. Lots of photographers reach for prime lenses at night, but in recent years new lenses like the Canon RF 28-70mm f2 L USM with a very fast aperture throughout the entire zoom range have popped up. By and large, these lenses are changing the way photographers operate at night in low light situations where they can’t use a flash or bring lighting with them. And best of all, this means you can focus on bigger things like working with your model, and adapting to the lighting and the colors in the scene.

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Why Photographers Are Switching to a New Photo Editor for PC

There’s a new kid in town – a brand new photo editor for those who love their PC.

There is a lot of editing software to choose from, but PhotoWorks is a photo editor for PC that stands out from the crowd. Professional capabilities combine with an incredibly easy-to-master interface to make this photo editing software the answer for the mass of photographers looking to switch to a less complicated system without compromising quality.

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Using Wondershare Recoverit 8.0 for SD Card Data Recovery

If you own a digital camera, an Android device, an MP3 player, or any other electronic device with extended memory, then you know how important the integrity of your SD card is.

Ideally, SD cards help us extend the memory of a device and transfer data seamlessly across multiple sources. While this is an important function, it also makes them vulnerable to data loss. Chances are that you might end up losing your important files from SD cards out of the blue. Don’t worry – you can still get them back using a reliable SD card data recovery tool. Although there are numerous data recovery tools in the market, only a handful of them actually work. If you are also new to data recovery, then you should know about Recoverit. It is one of the most trusted and accessible tools that is even used by leading experts. Recently, the application has released a new update that offers a wide range of advanced features. Let’s get to know more about the SD card data recovery feature of the tool.

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Here are Some of the Best Father’s Day Gifts for Photographers

Father’s Day is right around the corner, and there is no better gift than the gift of photography for Dad.

If you’re looking to get Dad the perfect gift for Father’s Day this year, look no further than this Father’s Day gift list. The gift of photography is one of the best you can give for Father’s Day. It doesn’t matter if Dad will be new to the art form or if he is a seasoned shooter. A new camera, lens, or some new accessories will make this Father’s Day even more special for him. We’ve gone through our extensive list of reviews and picked gear that will put a huge smile on Dad’s face this Father’s Day. The good news is that all of these items are available at fantastic prices! Check out the gear recommendations for Father’s Day below. Continue reading…

Our 15 Favorite Pieces of Gear for Travel Photography in Summer 2019

With the summer holidays almost upon us, we’re sure many of you have exciting vacation plans in store and will want to capture it all.

Photographers who plan on taking a vacation this summer will be happy to know there has never been a better time to look at the market. Not only are there tons of innovative and high-quality cameras out there, but there are also lots of great accessories. Best of all, these items won’t take up a lot of space or break your back while being hauled through an airport. So if you’re a photographer looking to vacation in Iceland, the Virgin Islands, Italy, or even somewhere more local, you’ll care about things like better color. When using something like your weather sealed Sony camera in Hawaii, the Datacolor SpyderX series of products could prove instrumental to getting better colors during your editing process. We’ve gone through our reviews index to figure out what items are best; here is some of our current favorite gear that you may want to consider taking with you for Travel Photography.

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Forget Gear: This is the Best Way for a Photographer to Grow

The idea of making an investment back into yourself and getting over GAS is a powerful one.

Let’s be honest, you probably have all the gear that you NEED as a photographer–wanting and needing are two different things. But what every photographer needs (and it’s true today more than ever) is an actual functioning website. Your Instagram isn’t enough–that’s a place for us to see the work that you do in a less curated fashion as you work tirelessly to beat an algorithm. But a website from a company that is ethical to photographers like Format is worth the investment into yourself. Your Instagram can get shut down, shadow banned, etc. But a platform that you control won’t have that problem. And trust us, it’s a set it and forget it type of thing with occasional updates and a far less toxic community than Instagram can be.

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How to Make the Most of a 50mm Lens for Portrait Photography

If you’re the type to often shoot at 35mm or wider, then a 50mm lens could be ideal for portraiture.

Photographers who often reach for 35mm or 28mm lenses can make a great case for using the 50mm lens for portrait photography. At times, an 85mm lens can feel too long, but modern 50mm lenses like a Canon RF 50mm f1.2 L USM can render a look like much of what’s on the market today. As one of its biggest advantages, it lets you frame your scene in tighter locations and also keeps you within a closer physical working distance to the subject. Best of all, due to the f1.2 aperture, the lens lets you seriously isolate your portrait subject in a way that only most 85mm lenses can.

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These Mother’s Day Sales on Cameras, Lenses and More are Still On!

50mm prime lenses canon

This Mothers Day photography gift guide has loads of sales that are still on! And some made even better!

We hope that you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day. And for those of you interested in still snagging some gear on sale, we’ve gone through our Reviews Index and selected a few items at varying price points for the photographer/mom in your life. Best of all–everything we’ve found is being offered at fantastic prices right now.

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