I lost a full day’s worth of photos to a corrupted card in a camera that had a second slot I never used. Most of the time, a single card is an acceptable risk – but not always.
Earlier this week, we published a news article about a new Sony lens, along with a sample gallery we shot with it. That gallery came with the following editor’s note:
“Due to a memory card failure, this sample gallery contains fewer images than usual; most of the photos captured for it were lost before they could be transferred.”
Reader Horshack pointed out that the camera I used to shoot that gallery, the Sony a7 V, has two card slots, and proceeded to cut through my editor-speak in five words.
He meant it in good humor. He was also completely right. In every conceivable way, this was an unforced, preventable error.
It’s worth explaining why a reader spotted this so quickly. Camera enthusiasts love to talk about dual card slots. So much so that it’s become a bit of a running joke. When we write about an inexpensive novelty camera, we can reliably expect at least one reader to jokingly ask, “Does it have two card slots?” That meme even extends beyond digital; I can recall articles about film cameras where someone posted, “But does it have two film slots?”
I shot the sample gallery using the Sony a7 V, a camera with two card slots.Mitchell Clark
The joke works because the fixation seems excessive. I spent a night with data recovery software reconsidering that.
I had become complacent, which is usually when disaster strikes.
At DPReview, we’ve been shooting digital cameras for over two decades, and we’ve rarely had a memory card fail on us. I could count the number of failures I’ve personally experienced on one hand and have several fingers left over. I’ve used cards from every major manufacturer, and they’ve been consistently reliable. Intellectually, I know card failures can happen, but in my experience, they’ve happened so rarely that it was easy to ignore the risk.
In a nutshell, my choice to use a single card was proportionate to the perceived risk.
I blocked out a full day to shoot with the lens before it had to go back to Sony and had even traveled to find subjects that would be interesting to photograph with a fisheye: a ghost town in the Rocky Mountains and a new airport terminal with interesting architecture.
The Sony FE 8-14mm F3.5 G Fisheye is a fun lens, but our sample gallery for it is small due to data loss on a memory card.Dale Baskin
The total time between capturing the final image and inserting the card into my computer was only about three hours, during which the card never left the camera. But I got a sinking feeling the moment a “card not readable” error popped up on my screen. When I put it back into the camera, the a7 V told me the card needed to be formatted. Not good.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, with multiple data recovery tools in the rearview mirror, I gave up.
In a nutshell, my choice to use a single card was proportionate to the perceived risk.
Fortunately, I have a habit of offloading photos and backing them up at the end of each day of shooting, so I had a few photos taken with the lens from the previous week. That’s what ran in the gallery.
Do I use two cards when working for a client or shooting a wedding? Every. Single. Time. After all, the job and your professional reputation are on the line. But it’s easy to think of shooting sample galleries for DPReview as part of daily life. We’re constantly toting around cameras and lenses, shooting whenever the opportunity arises. It’s often continuous rather than scheduled, and it’s easy to stop treating it as a job.
Pictured: a bounty of riches in 2026.Richard Butler
At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to shoot with two cards. Are we flirting with disaster when we use one card? In most cases, I don’t think so. It’s still rare that one fails, and unless you’re doing something mission-critical, it’s probably safer to say that you’re flirting with disappointment, frustration, and possibly sorrow. For most of us, most of the time, a single card is an acceptable risk.
The question worth asking when evaluating risk isn’t whether you’re shooting professionally. It’s whether the day is one you could shoot again. A walk around the neighborhood can be repeated. A day you blocked out, traveled for, and can’t redo because the lens has to go back tomorrow is not.
Dual card slots exist for a reason, and my recent experience is a good reminder of that. During a discussion with the team, Richard Butler pointed out that this isn’t a free option. Extra cards aren’t cheap, and managing two per body for a small amount of extra insurance isn’t a trivial cost. That’s a fair objection. But this experience has tested my personal risk tolerance, and going forward, my best practice will be to have two cards in the camera when shooting a sample gallery, if that option is available.
Have you lost photos from a memory card? If so, tell me about it in the comments.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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We tested every corner of Fujifilm’s XApp with an X-T5 – from image transfers to camera backups, it’s a solid companion app, with a few rough edges.
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For many years, camera companies built excellent hardware while shipping smartphone apps that felt like an afterthought. That trend has changed. Today, apps for cameras do much more than transfer photos to your phone: they can serve as the camera’s dashboard, providing a variety of useful tools and features, and in most cases, they do so much more reliably than in the past.
Fujifilm’s XApp is no exception. It replaced Camera Remote – Fujifilm’s previous app that was dogged by reliability issues and low app store ratings – and the difference is substantial. In addition to manual and automated image transfer, it can control cameras remotely, provide geolocation data, backup multiple sets of camera settings, manage firmware updates and provide a record of your camera’s activity.
We tested XApp on an iPhone 17 Pro Max and a Google Pixel 11 Pro XL with the Fujifilm X-T5. While this provides a solid baseline, keep in mind that features and performance may vary slightly depending on the specific camera model and phone you use.
Fujifilm launched XApp in 2023, but not every Fujifilm body works with XApp, and some older models still require the old Camera Remote app.
XApp supports camera models dating back to 2018. We tested it on an X-T5.
The company maintains a list of compatible cameras and mobile operating systems on its website, including camera models dating back as far as 2018, with the GFX 50R being the oldest camera we spotted on the list.
Wireless setup and image transfer
Pairing your camera with XApp is relatively straightforward, and the app provides instructions to guide you through the process. Initial pairing is done via Bluetooth but hands off to Wi-Fi for data-intensive tasks like image transfers and remote camera operation. Once paired, the connection generally remains stable, though the app can occasionally lose its connection and fail to recover. In almost all cases, forcing the app to quit and restarting it reestablished the connection. It’s more an annoyance than a limitation.
XApp pairs initially via Bluetooth, then hands off to Wi-Fi for data-intensive tasks like image transfers and remote control.Dale Baskin
Image transfer options and speed
Transferring photos from your camera to your phone is straightforward, and the gallery-like interface works well for selecting images, individually or in batches. If you have a camera with two memory cards, it’s easy to select which card to browse.
Dale Baskin
One feature we really appreciated was the image filtering options, which let you filter by star rating (if you’ve set ratings in-camera), file type, folder name, subject type, including person, animal, bird, automobile, bike or motorcycle, train, and airplane (or whatever subset of subject your camera model is trained to detect). You can set a range for capture date – helpful if there are a lot of images on a card and you want to narrow the selection down to a time window. We found the star-rating filter particularly useful; if you rate images in the field as you shoot, you can quickly find your favorites and transfer them.
On the X-T5, which captures 40MP images, it took just under three minutes to transfer five full-resolution Raw/JPEG image pairs (10 files total), or about 45 seconds for just the JPEG images. Transfer times for other cameras may differ: one would expect a Fujifilm model with a 26MP sensor to transfer images a bit more quickly, whereas a medium format model with a 100MP sensor will take longer.
XApp lets you filter images by star rating, file type, folder name and subject type before transferring.Dale Baskin
Images can be transferred at full resolution, but there’s also an option to downsize images. The app doesn’t indicate what resolution images will be downsized to, but according to Fujifilm’s documentation, it’s 3MP, which could be useful for social media posts.
Automatic image transfer
XApp can manage automatic image transfers from your camera, but you set this up on the camera, not in the app. To do so, navigate to the camera’s Bluetooth/Smartphone settings and turn Auto Image Transfer (or Auto Image Transfer Order) to ‘On’.
It’s worth noting that automatic image transfer doesn’t transfer images to your phone in real-time as you shoot; it’s effectively a send/queue mechanism. As you shoot, images are tagged for transfer, and once you switch to playback mode or turn the camera off, the transfer process begins. Your phone will receive a notification that images are queued for transfer, and you can choose to start the transfer right then or wait until later.
You receive a message on your phone when the camera is ready to transfer a batch of images.Dale Baskin
Remote control and live view
Live view and remote shooting work as expected. Triggering the shutter over a wireless connection isn’t as instantaneous as clicking the physical shutter button, but the lag is minimal, and you would probably only notice it if you were shooting something moving quickly enough that split-second accuracy was critical.
Remote camera operation is one of XApp’s core features, turning a paired smartphone into a wireless camera controller.Dale Baskin
When using remote shooting, you can adjust the shutter speed, F-stop, ISO, film simulation, WB and flash from the app. Tap-to-focus on the image lets you set your AF point. The lag between tapping to set the AF point and the camera activating it is just enough to be slightly annoying, but it’s not a showstopper. For situations like tripod self-portraits, remote triggering for group photos, or landscape setups, it’s a useful feature; it does what it needs to do, and it does it well. If you want to adjust any of the camera’s other settings, you’ll need to do it directly from the camera.
GPS location sync
When GPS location sync is turned on in the app (labeled “smartphone location sync”), XApp pulls location data from the phone’s GPS and syncs it to the camera over Bluetooth, embedding it in the image’s metadata.
In principle, this should function seamlessly in the background, and it generally does. However, when syncing with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we discovered that if we hadn’t used the camera or the app for a few days, photos stopped getting geotagged. Opening XApp on the phone generally restored geotagging activity. Reports online, as well as in app store reviews, suggest others have run into the same issue, so if geotagging is important to you, it’s a good idea to launch the app if it’s been dormant for a few days before heading out on your next shoot.
The geotagging feature lets you select the synchronization interval so you can balance accuracy with battery usage.Dale Baskin
One other setting to be aware of is the “Location synchronization interval,” which is set in XApp’s app-wide settings rather than on a per-camera basis. You can set this interval to as short as 10 seconds to prioritize accuracy, or as long as 480 seconds to prioritize battery usage. On the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we left it set on 10 seconds and didn’t notice a big impact on battery life, but this will obviously vary based on what phone you’re using, how big its battery is, and even the age of the battery, so it’s worth testing various settings to get a sense of what works with your own setup.
Backing up camera settings
The ability to back up and restore camera settings from XApp is a useful and, thankfully, easy-to-use feature. Tapping the Backup/Restore button under your camera model will save the camera’s current settings to the app and add them to a list. You can save multiple sets of settings and even name them. Tapping any item on the list restores those settings to the camera.
XApp can back up multiple sets of camera settings, making it easy to save and restore configurations.Dale Baskin
Not only does this let you restore your camera’s settings if they get changed or deleted, but it also lets you save specific profile settings for different subjects or shooting situations, allowing you to quickly reconfigure your camera as needed. It also allows you to apply the same settings to multiple cameras as long as they’re the same model – useful for someone like a wedding photographer who rapidly switches between two bodies.
There are a couple of caveats to be aware of. First, network settings and custom white balance settings don’t get backed up. Second, some users have reported that mismatched firmware versions can cause restore failures, so it’s a good idea to ensure all cameras are running the same firmware version if possible.
Timeline and Activity
Timeline and Activity are features that display information based on how you use any connected Fujifilm equipment.
Activity provides a visual summary of what you’ve done in the form of infographics: how many images or how much video you’ve shot, how those captures break down across the various cameras and lenses that have connected to the app, how many photos you’ve taken with each film simulation and what types of subjects you’ve captured.
The Activity feature shows infographics that show how you have used your camera, like the number of photos on a card shot with each film simulation.Dale Baskin
One potentially useful feature is that tapping on the infographics (except for subject type) opens a gallery displaying the corresponding photos. For example, you can tap a film simulation and see all the photos captured using that film simulation. However, as of the time of writing, this particular feature was very unstable for us – more often than not, tapping an item caused the app to crash and close (at least on iOS).
Timeline shows your photographic activities chronologically, like a diary. If you take several photos together, it identifies it as a shoot. Tapping the link takes you to the photos from that shoot and displays shoot-specific Activity infographics. When you link a new camera to the app or attach a new lens to a linked camera, that shows up in the timeline, too.
The timeline feature lets you see your history, including groups of images shot together.Dale Baskin
Unhelpfully, Fujifilm also inserts ads for Fujifilm events and products into the timeline, though fortunately, not very often.
It’s easy to see Timeline and Activity as eye candy, but they can be quite useful. If you’re looking for a set of photos from a specific shoot or all the photos you’ve captured with a particular camera, lens or film simulation, it’s an easy way to find them.
There’s a caveat here, too, though. Using Timeline and Activity requires you to sign in with an Apple or Google account, and the features aren’t available in all countries or regions.
Firmware updates
Finally, XApp facilitates firmware updates to your camera when they become available. If the app detects a firmware update for your camera, it downloads the update. The next time the app connects to your camera via Wi-Fi, it transfers the update to the camera’s memory card.
What XApp doesn’t do is automatically install the firmware, which is up to you. When you next power on the camera, it displays a screen letting you know an update is ready, and you can choose to update right then, be reminded later, or schedule a date and time for the camera to update. XApp doesn’t manage firmware updates for lenses.
The verdict
Fujifilm’s XApp is a well-rounded companion app for your camera, and it’s a huge improvement over the company’s old Camera Remote app. It may have taken Fujifilm a few years to ship an app that runs reliably, but for the most part, XApp delivers on its feature set.
However, there’s one thing we still wish XApp could do: manage custom film recipes on your camera. Film Recipes have been popular in the Fujifilm user community for years, and Fujifilm has expanded support for them on recent models. Additionally, custom looks have already found their way into other companies’ apps. Fortunately, several third-party developers have stepped in to fill that gap; if you’re interested, check out this article covering some of our favorites.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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It was sold beside postcards, and by 1952, you could buy the camera and make your own reels. I just didn’t know any of that when I was a kid.
Dale Baskin
Despite what many people believe today, the View-Master wasn’t a toy. It was a photographic instrument, sold for decades alongside disks of stereoscopic photo pairs that took you a world away. And that’s where my story with the View-Master – and even my interest in photography – begins.
But my part of the story comes later. The View-Master’s story starts at the mouth of a cave in southern Oregon in 1938.
According to the Oregon Historical Society, Harold Graves, the president of Sawyer’s, a photo-finishing company in Portland, was vacationing there when he met a photographer named William Gruber, who was carrying a homemade stereo photography rig.
Sawyer’s had become the nation’s largest producer of scenic postcards. Gruber had figured out how to mount tiny chips of the then-new Kodachrome film into a paper reel that could be viewed through a small handheld stereoscope. Graves, Gruber and Sawyer’s co-owner Edwin Mayer, sensing an opportunity, struck up a partnership and developed the View-Master, which made its debut at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
It’s worth thinking about what Sawyer’s thought it was selling. The View-Master was pitched as an alternative to the scenic postcard, targeting the same channels postcards did: gift shops at scenic locations, stationery stores and even photography shops. Notably, not toy stores.
Originally, View-Master’s reels mirrored postcard content: National Parks, famous landmarks and scenic destinations around the world.Dale Baskin
Even the US military took notice; it ordered 100,000 of the viewers to use for training during World War II.
The View-Master wasn’t the first device for viewing stereo images, a technology that predated practical photography; Charles Wheatstone, a member of the Royal Society, described his stereoscope, which used drawings, in 1838, a year before the daguerreotype was announced to the world. But photography made stereo viewing far more compelling than drawings ever could, and “stereographs” became a popular form of visual entertainment in the latter half of the 19th and earlier 20th centuries.
What the View-Master managed to do was productize stereo photo viewing in a dummy-proof device… in beautiful Kodachrome color.
What the View-Master managed to do was productize stereo photo viewing in a dummy-proof device that was easy to use, in beautiful Kodachrome color. The earliest reels featured the same things as postcards, including National Parks, famous landmarks, and scenic travel destinations.
The View-Master-as-toy came later. In 1951, Sawyer’s bought Tru-Vue, its main competitor, which had a license with Walt Disney Studios, and Disney reels and other entertainment brands like Looney Tunes and The Muppets followed. So, the View-Master was eventually sold as a toy. It just didn’t start as one.
Gruber’s key innovation was fitting Kodachrome film chips into a paper reel – giving the View-Master its signature full-color stereo look.Dale Baskin
As a child, I loved the View-Master. Whenever we got a new set of picture disks, it gave me a new world to explore. During our family’s summer road trips, I could spend hours in the back of our banana-yellow station wagon, looking at photos through my View-Master.
That’s pretty remarkable when you think about the fact that each disk contained just seven pairs of images. In an age where the phones in our pockets put limitless media at our disposal, that seems like a staggeringly small set of photos, but somehow I just kept looking at them. Over and over again. I probably looked at some of those photos thousands of times, and I never got tired of it.
Back then, View-Master disks could be found at tourist locations. Every National Park gift shop had them. Sure, you could buy a postcard, but the View-Master disk of the park was way better. (Unless, of course, you actually wanted to send someone a postcard.) You could relive the experience of that National Park for hours during the drive to the next National Park, where you could acquire a new set of View-Master reels. In contrast, you had to wait until you got home to see the photos your parents took.
In 1952, in a further nod to photographers, Sawyer’s launched the View-Master Personal Stereo Camera
In 1952, in a further nod to photographers, Sawyer’s launched the View-Master Personal Stereo Camera, which allowed you to capture 69 pairs of photos on a 36-exposure roll of film. The company offered a mail-order mounting service, or users could mount their own photos on View-Master reels. You still had to wait until you got home to process your images, but you could have View-Master reels of your trip. It’s amazing to think you could buy an entire camera system built around this.
The View-Master Personal Stereo Camera was designed to let photographers create their own View-Master reels. It allowed photographers to capture 69 pairs of photos on a standard 36-exposure roll of 35mm film.John Alan Elson
While visiting my parents recently, I found a box with my childhood View-Master inside. Nostalgia is a strong thing, so I immediately took it off the shelf, inserted one of the reels and found myself staring at Yosemite National Park, displayed in rich colors and deep shadows. It had the unmistakable look of Kodachrome and reminded me of the slides my father shot on family vacations.
My father was always taking pictures. No vacation was complete without a camera coming along. Back home, we’d gather in the living room for slideshow nights, kind of like movie nights today, where he would load one box of 36 slides at a time into the stack loader on our Kodak projector, allowing us to relive whatever slice of our lives had passed during that roll of film. Those slides were usually Kodachrome, too.
The images on those old View-Master disks had that same look, but with a couple of important differences. First, they were stereo pairs, and the depth made them less like pictures and more like places.
The second one mattered more. Most were of incredible landscapes I had never seen, or people from different cultures and faraway lands. It was like browsing through the photos in a National Geographic magazine (something else I did a lot as a kid; I wasn’t as good about reading the articles back then), except better. My father’s slides showed me where we had been. The View-Master showed me where I hadn’t been yet, and I wanted to go to those places and take pictures of them.
For years after its 1939 launch, the View-Master was sold as a photographic and travel product, not a toy — it didn’t reach toy stores until after Sawyer’s bought Tru-Vue in 1951.Dale Baskin
In retrospect, I think the View-Master was a proxy for the camera I didn’t own yet. Today, I realize that it wasn’t just looking at the pictures that I enjoyed, but the act of holding the device up to my eyes, of looking through the viewfinder up close, and having the all-immersive experience of seeing that and nothing else.
We live in a time when taking photos often involves holding a screen in front of our faces. I still don’t get the same satisfaction from that experience as bringing the viewfinder to my eye, focusing on the image and letting the rest of the world fade away. And I suspect that’s one thing that draws a lot of new photographers to a dedicated camera. Once you know that feeling, it’s addictive.
As a kid, I wanted to take photos like my Dad. I wanted to take photos like the ones in National Geographic. And I wanted to take photos like the ones I saw in the View-Master.
And when I finally bought my first roll of film with my own money, it was Kodachrome.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Jacqueline Burke’s Roseate Spoonbill won the Grand Prize in this year’s Audubon Photography Awards, part of a full slate of category winners from across the Americas.
Gail Bisson
The National Audubon Society has announced the winners of the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards, with Jacqueline Burke of the US winning the US and Canada Grand Prize for a photo of a Roseate Spoonbill and Francisco Castro Escobar of Chile winning the Chile and Colombia Grand Prize for a photo of a Lesser Horned Owl.
The specific geographic designations reflect the Audubon Society’s hemispheric conservation model. Birds aren’t bound by international borders, and hundreds of species migrate thousands of kilometers each year along flyways that stretch between North, Central and South America. Colombia hosts nearly 20 percent of the world’s avian species, and Chile’s 6,435km (3,999mi) of coastline and wetlands are vital stopovers and wintering grounds for many shorebirds coming from as far away as the Arctic.
The National Audubon Society, founded in 1905, sponsors the contest each year to celebrate bird and bird habitat photography and to further its conservation mission. This is the second year the competition has included prizes to Chile and Colombia residents. Winners and honorable mentions will be published online in Audubon magazine, and winners will be featured in the Fall 2026 print issue. The top 100 photos will be announced on September 23. If you’re interested in entering next year’s competition, which opens for entries on January 13, 2027, you can find the full contest rules and category details on the Audubon website.
If you really enjoy bird photography, you can also check out our coverage of Audubon’s previous award winners from 2025, 2023 and 2022.
U.S. and Canada winners
Jacqueline Burke
Photographer: Jacqueline Burke (USA) Award: Grand Prize Species: Roseate Spoonbill Photo location: St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park, St. Augustine, Florida, USA
Liron Gertsman
Photographer: Liron Gertsman (Canada) Award: Birds in Landscapes – Winner Species: White-tailed Tropicbird Photo location: Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, Volcano, Hawai’i, USA
Nick Parayko
Photographer: Nick Parayko (Canada) Award: Birds Without Borders – Winner Species: Tennessee Warbler Photo location: St. Albert, Alberta, Canada (in his backyard)
Josh Galicki
Photographer: Josh Galicki (USA) Award: Conservation – winner Species: Northern Gannets Photo location: Isle of Noss, Shetland Islands, United Kingdom
Mike Henry
Photographer: Mike Henry (USA) Award: Plants for Birds – winner Species: Gila Woodpecker and saguaro cactus Photo location: Tucson, Arizona, USA
Ian Shultz
Photographer: Ian Shultz (USA) Award: Youth – Winner Species: Rock Pigeon Photo location: Golden Gardens Park, Seattle, Washington, USA
Gail Bisson
Photographer: Gail Bisson (Canada) Award: Female Bird – Winner Species: Common Merganser Photo location: East Bay Sandbar, Nova Scotia, Canada
Photographer: Piper VanOrd (USA) Award: Video – Winner Species: Great Blue Heron Photo location: Allegheny Islands Wilderness, National Wild & Scenic Allegheny River, Warren, Pennsylvania
Chile and Colombia winners
Francisco Castro Escobar
Photographer: Francisco Castro Escobar (Chile) Award: Grand Species: Lesser Horned Owl Photo location: Antofagasta, Chile
Photographer: Nicolás Muñoz García (Chile) Award: Video – Winner Species: Black-browed Albatross Photo location: Isla Chañaral Marine Reserve, Huasco Province, Chile. The nearest town is Caleta Chañaral de Aceituno
Santiago Giraldo
Photographer: Santiago Giraldo (Colombia) Award: Plants for Birds Colombia – Winner Species: Yellow-eared Parrot and Quindio wax palm Photo location: Anaime, Cajamarca, Tolima
Juan David Camacho Márquez
Photographer: Juan David Camacho Márquez (Colombia) Award: Youth – Winner Species: Canada Warbler Photo location: Doña Dora Birding, El Queremal, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
Santiago Pérez Rincón
Photographer: Santiago Pérez Rincón (Colombia) Award: Conservation – Winner Species: Yellow-eared Parrot Photo location: Anaime River Canyon, Rural District of the Municipality of Cajamarca, Department of Tolima, Colombia.
Faber Mosquera Alvarez
Photographer: Faber Mosquera Alvarez (Colombia) Award: Birds in Landscapes, Colombia – Winner Species: Oilbird Photo location: Pijao, Quindío, Colombia. In the Cañón de los Guácharos
Gonzalo Bertolotto Quintana
Photographer: Gonzalo Bertolotto Quintana (Chile) Award: Coastal Birds of Chile – Winner Species: Gentoo Penguin Photo location: Fildes Bay, Antarctica, in the vicinity of the Chilean bases
Timothy Dhalleine
Photographer: Timothy Dhalleine (Chile) Award: Birds in Landscapes, Chile – Winner Species: Crested Caracara Photo location: Torres del Paine National Park, Magallanes and Chilean Antarctic region, Chile
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Diffusion, bloom and halation arrive in the Effects panel, applied globally or through masks – but not in Lightroom.
Adobe
Adobe recently released the newest version of its Raw processing software, Adobe Camera Raw 18.6. Its headline feature is a native Glow effect tool that gives users three analog-inspired looks – diffusion, bloom and halation – directly within ACR. Other features include a new Metadata Info Panel that shows image data directly in the editing workspace, and photographers and designers who work with composites gain a new Trim tool that makes everything outside a crop transparent, rather than leaving it as hidden pixels. The update also adds support for additional camera and lens profiles.
What Glow does
The new Glow tool lives in Camera Raw’s Effects panel alongside the existing Vignette and Grain sliders. Adobe’s documentation describes three selectable styles. Diffusion applies a hazy, film-like softening effect that spreads across the frame, similar to what a Black Mist or Pro Mist filter attached to your lens would achieve. Bloom produces a softer, more even glow confined to the highlights, which could be useful for misty scenes and waterfalls. Halation adds a colored halo effect around bright edges and light sources, similar to the warm, or red-orange fringing that appears on film when light reflects off the film base back through the emulsion.
Glow works inside Camera Raw’s masking system, so the effect can be dialed up or down on a subject, a luminance range or a selected area, though the Style, Range, Spread and Warmth sub-settings are shared globally – masks control how much something glows, not the kind of glow.
Greg Benz, a digital photo educator (and a member of the DPReview community), posted a helpful video on his YouTube channel illustrating the capabilities of ACR’s new Glow tool, including examples of using masks to achieve localized results. If you’re interested in learning more about it, we highly recommend giving it a watch.
One thing worth calling out: Glow is currently an ACR-only feature and isn’t available in Lightroom. Though given the close relationship between the two applications, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up in Lightroom at some point.
Other new features
ACR’s new Metadata Info Panel provides an easy way to see read-only metadata for any photo you’re viewing in Camera Raw. Clicking the small “i” on the right-hand pane of ACR will display the camera model, lens, image dimensions, file size, capture date, copyright information, file name and caption (if present). It will also display any content credentials information embedded in the photo.
The new Metadata Info Panel displays the camera model, lens, image dimensions, file size, capture date, copyright information, file name and caption.Mitchell Clark
The new Trim tool is located in the Crop & Expand panel. It can be used to trim an image to the exact area you’ve selected, making everything outside the crop transparent rather than retaining it as hidden pixels. This is different than a normal crop in ACR, which is non-destructive, keeping the pixels outside the cropped area but not displaying them. This removes a step for photographers or designers creating composites or those who need transparent backgrounds.
Trim can also be used in conjunction with Generative Expand: trim to the area you want, then expand the canvas using generative content from Adobe Firefly.
According to Adobe, ACR 18.6 also supports additional cameras and lenses, including the Tamron 12-20mm F2.8 and Reeflex anamorphic and fisheye lenses for iPhone. As of this writing, Adobe hasn’t updated its list of supported camera models since earlier in August; you can check the company’s camera support page for the latest information.
ACR 18.6 is available now through the Creative Cloud desktop app. You can find the full release notes on Adobe’s website with additional details in a post to the Adobe Community site.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Plug in any cable and see its real speed, wattage, and certification status in seconds – including whether it’s been mislabeled.
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We live in the USB era. Almost everything that connects to our computer these days goes through an interface so ubiquitous that the word “universal” appears in its name – the Universal Serial Bus. USB has been a godsend in many ways, replacing all manner of connectors encountered in earlier technologies.
Simple, right? Well, not so much.
The problem with USB-C
Standards are great. Except when they’re not. USB-C, introduced in 2014, is the closest thing we have to “one plug to rule them all.” The problem is that despite supporting a wide range of standards, all USB-C cables look pretty much the same. A cable that supports the latest and greatest technology can look identical to a dumb charging cable.
And, as if things weren’t complicated enough, ThunderBolt has used the same-shaped connector since ThunderBolt 3, despite being vastly more capable than standard USB.
Which is why I recently found myself staring into the abyss – in this case, a drawer in my office – trying to figure out which of the dozen or so USB-C cables in front of me was the right one to use with an SSD. I doubt I’m alone in this, and I suspect most photographers or content creators have a similar drawer or box full of cables. That’s the exact problem a Mac app called WhatCable is built to solve.
Most USB-C cables don’t include any visible information about what specs they support, so it’s worth giving credit where it’s due: This Sandisk SSD arrived in our office with a cable that clearly labels its specs (40Gpbs, 240W).Mitchell Clark
Hoping for the best, I grabbed a cable that looked new, plugged it in, and got on with finding the photos I needed. It seemed to work, so I didn’t stop to check whether I was actually getting the fastest speed the SSD could support.
Sound familiar?
WhatCable to the rescue
I tried WhatCable on my MacBook Pro and was immediately hooked. While it’s not specifically designed for photographers or content creators, it solves a very real problem for anyone who manages lots of SSDs and card readers: ensuring the cables you use deliver maximum performance. Because if they don’t, you’re going to spend a lot more time waiting around while files transfer.
I tried WhatCable on my MacBook Pro and was immediately hooked.
When you plug a USB device into your Mac, WhatCable will tell you everything you need to know about the cable: the generation of USB the cable supports, the speed the connected device is running at, its power delivery capabilities, and, if available, details like the manufacturer and whether it has an e-marker chip (more on that in a bit).
To my surprise, the cable I’d grabbed for my SSD not only supported its native USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) speed, but was actually a USB4 cable capable of up to 40 Gbps. I’d ordered some of these faster cables, thinking they’d be future-proof for a while, but since there’s no visual way to tell them apart from my older ones, I’d had no idea which was which.
WhatCable reports a cable’s USB generation, connection speed, power delivery capability and manufacturer details when you plug it in.
Analyzing the cable connecting my MacBook Pro to my Dell display is even more revealing, and gives a sense of how much detail WhatCable can report, including specifics about the built-in USB hub. You can see the details in the screenshot below.
The report for the cable that connects my MacBook Pro to my monitor is particularly detailed, including info about its built-in USB hub.
Elsewhere, the results ran the other way. When I plugged in a Samsung T7 SSD with yet another USB-C cable – short, and similar to the ones that ship in the box with many portable drives – WhatCable informed me that it could only manage USB 2.0 speeds. My guess is that it’s actually a charging cable that came with some other device.
WhatCable revealed that a cable I attached to an SSD was only rated as USB 2.0, despite looking just like the short cables that ship with many SSDs. It was probably a charging cable that came with another device.
WhatCable also includes widgets for the macOS desktop, letting you see at a glance what speed all your connected devices are running at; clicking one takes you straight to that device’s report in the app. You can also park WhatCable in the menu bar for one-click access to all your USB info.
The app includes a variety of MacOS desktop widgets that allow you to monitor USB info in real-time.
Suspicious cables
USB cables include an e-marker, a microchip embedded in the connector that acts as a kind of ID card and safety controller. It reports information such as how much power the cable can deliver, its data transfer rates, and its video capabilities, which helps your computer negotiate speed and power at levels that are safe for the connected device.
WhatCable checks whether a cable’s e-marker claims are consistent with USB-IF certification data and flags cables whose reported specs look implausible. The company’s product page describes this trust-checking feature in detail, noting that it can help surface mislabeled or counterfeit cables – a real concern when buying inexpensive cables online.
Has one of your cables gone rogue? WhatCable flags cables whose reported specs look implausible, which can help surface mislabeled or counterfeit cables.
System requirements and download
WhatCable requires a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) and running MacOS Sonoma or later. The free version is open source under the MIT license, promises no ads or tracking, and doesn’t report any analytics or telemetry back to the developer. It’s also available in 19 languages, making it broadly accessible. It can be downloaded directly from the developer.
For real nerds, there’s WhatCable Pro, which adds features like the ability to name individual cables and track their performance history, live power metering, display diagnostics, Thunderbolt link analysis, and more. It’s a one-time purchase of £9.99 (about $14) and covers up to two Macs.
So next time you find yourself staring into that abyss, not knowing which cable to grab, you know what to do. One warning: WhatCable is addictive. I found myself testing every USB-C cable in the house, and most of the DPReview staff succumbed to the same temptation after I shared it in our Slack channel. You’ve been warned.
WhatCable Pro — USB-C cable diagnostic app by Bitmoor
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Positioned as a major leap forward from the T-series, the blazing-fast P9 and P7 offer photographers and creators higher transfer rates, drop protection, and massive 8TB capacities.
Samsung
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Samsung has announced the P9 and P7 portable SSDs at Gamescom 2026. While the company made gamers the focus of the announcement, both SSDs feature specs that will undoubtedly interest photographers and video creators, particularly since Samsung is a familiar brand among content creators. Both models are available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB configurations.
The P9 is the higher-performance model and is aimed at workflows where sustained throughput is a priority, such as recording video directly from cameras or rapidly offloading data from multiple memory cards. Samsung claims it can hit 4,000MB/s read and 3,800MB/s write over USB4, which is roughly twice the throughput of the the T9 model, and says it’s the world’s first 8TB USB4 portable SSD
The P7 also runs over USB4, but Samsung says it’s designed to prioritize broad compatibility, with plug-and-play support for computers, gaming consoles, smartphones and cameras. It also claims the P7 has a drop resistance of 2m (6.6′), making it a rugged option for those who need it.
Both drives promise to deliver significantly higher throughput than previous-generation USB 3.x SSDs, and Samsung positions the P-series as a generational step up from the T9, which used USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, and maxed out at a theoretical 2,000MB/s; USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives top out at around 1,000MB/s.
With a claimed 4,000MB/s read and 3,800MB/s write, the P9 targets workflows that demand sustained high throughput.Samsung
Do photographers and videographers need USB4 speeds?
Based on our own testing, whether you’ll actually benefit from the increased speed depends on your workflow, the volume of data, and whether you have a card reader – and a computer – that supports USB4.
In an earlier article, we directly compared the performance of a different USB4 SSD to Samsung’s popular T7 Shield, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD that theoretically maxes out at around 1,000MB/s, and the headline finding was that while the speed gap is real, it’s context-dependent. In that prior comparison, the USB 3.2 drive wasn’t meaningfully slower when copying hundreds of Raw/JPEG pairs from a CFexpress or SD card, and it scrolled through 3,600 photos in Lightroom Classic without a hiccup, but it did take longer to import and build previews for that Lightroom library.
On the video side, that earlier testing found the T7 Shield could occasionally struggle when editing footage directly off the drive, and that very complex sequences could slow to a crawl – tests the USB4 drive breezed through. But the application also mattered; Final Cut fared better than Adobe Premiere.
Price and availability
The P9 and P7 will be available beginning on August 31. The P9 will retail for $340 for 1TB, $650 for 2TB, $1,350 for 4TB and $2,700 for 8TB. The P7 will retail for $290 for 1TB, $550 for 2TB, $1,150 for 4TB and $2,290 for 8TB. Additional information and full product specs can be found on Samsung’s P9 and P7 product pages.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.
From ISO invariance to computational photography, Rishi’s insistence on understanding a camera from the inside out influenced how DPReview – and much of the industry – thought about image quality.
Carey Rose
It is with great sadness that we have to announce that DPReview’s former Science Editor, Rishi Sanyal, has passed away. Rishi, whose full name was Saurarshi Sanyal, died on June 26, 2026, at his home in California. He was 46.
During his years with DPReview, Rishi was a driving force behind the site’s scientific approach to camera testing, setting the standard for how we investigated cameras and lenses and, just as importantly, how we interpreted the results.
Rishi Sanyal processes images at his desk in the DPReview office.
Rishi’s enthusiasm and intellect were evident from his very first interview with DPReview, and came to define his time with the site. Rishi wasn’t interested in data for data’s sake. He wanted to know what was happening inside a camera, why it was happening, and how a photographer could use that information to improve their work. A test result became interesting when it explained something a photographer might see in an image or, ideally, use to their creative advantage. Rishi might have been a journalist for a consumer website, but he was also a highly accomplished photographer and filmmaker, and as a scientist he was more than capable of meeting engineers on equal terms.
With his rare combination of deep technical understanding and an artist’s eye for color, light and composition, Rishi made a genuine and lasting impact on our industry. He changed the way many of us think about image-making, and exemplified DPReview at its best, as a site that could not only inform but also inspire. Among his many contributions, he was instrumental in our collective understanding of what is now known as “ISO invariance” (a term he helped coin), and his early fascination with the potential of computational photography led him to take on a camera performance engineering role at Apple.
Rishi sorts camera gear as former DPReview Studio Manager Sam Spencer observes from the neighboring cubicle.
Rishi’s scientific range had always been unusually broad. At Princeton, where he studied molecular biology, his thesis work included the design of a DNA nanomachine; he later earned a Ph.D. in biophysics. The subjects changed, but the instinct was recognizably the same: understand the system deeply enough to see what others might miss.
As far back as ten years ago, long before the distinction between “camera” and “software” became as blurred as it is today, Rishi was digging into how advanced processing algorithms could overcome traditional hardware limitations and change what photographers could expect from small sensors. Work that attracted the attention of some of the foremost imaging scientists working today, including Marc Levoy.
Levoy, then at Google and now Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford and Vice President and Fellow at Adobe, recalls interacting with Rishi many times during his tenure at Google. One example came around the Pixel 4, when Rishi independently estimated the improvement in signal-to-noise ratio achieved by capturing, aligning and merging bursts of Raw frames.
“That is not a calculation one expects a journalist to do,” Levoy wrote, “and speaks to Rishi’s deep understanding of photographic technology.”
Of course, like many perfectionists, Rishi could be exasperating. Not only to his coworkers and managers (his genuine bafflement in the face of deadlines was legendary) but also to the camera and lens manufacturers with whom he corresponded, both publicly in articles on DPReview and privately in lengthy, densely argued emails. To his editors, often the biggest challenge was persuading him that merely excellent was good enough, that it was time to hit publish, and perfect might have to wait.
Rishi and former editor Barney Britton review camera footage during a video shoot in the DPReview studio.
His editors were not the first people who had tried to convince Rishi that a problem had been solved well enough to move on. His father, Gautam, remembers giving him essentially the same advice from childhood: there comes a point when the work is already excellent and you have to let it go. Rishi was rarely inclined to believe that point had arrived if he thought there was still something left to understand.
That drive was visible early. In seventh grade, Rishi built a working magnetic-levitation demonstration for a regional science fair, earning a gold medal and an invitation to attend the International Science and Engineering Fair as an observer.
At age 15, Rishi earned a US Department of Energy prize at an international science fair for analyzing the best materials for designing magnetic-levitation trains.
The same instinct could also be remarkably generous. Scott Everett, who worked closely with Rishi and later managed him at DPReview, remembers showing him a photograph he had taken at White Sands National Park that he wanted to print. Rishi liked the image, and almost immediately became invested in making sure the finished print lived up to what he knew was there in the file. What followed was characteristically thorough: Rishi took over the processing and sent long text threads about monitors, color, printing technology and how to prepare the file properly. It was far more information than Scott needed, but that was partly the point. Rishi knew what was possible, and because the photograph mattered to his friend, he wanted the finished print to live up to the memory behind it.
More than anything else, the same instinct ran through all of it. Rishi wanted to understand things deeply and make them better, whether that meant a science project, a photograph, studio analysis or hardware design.
Above: Rishi excelled at science projects and science fairs.
Those of us who worked closely with Rishi remember the good times we shared with our friend. Long days in the studio, figuring out some esoteric aspect of a camera’s behavior. Press events. Tradeshows. Video shoots in locations all over the US (he may have been the world’s worst camper, but he played a mean campfire guitar). And jet-lagged interviews with executives in Japan, whose obvious respect for his abilities spoke for itself. More than anything, we remember Rishi’s beaming warmth, and the ease with which he could strike up a conversation with almost anyone. The same curiosity he brought to imaging science extended to everyone he met. We’ll miss him.
Not long ago, former editor Barney Britton was looking through a book of photographs of the Grand Canyon, taken by a renowned National Geographic photographer. The daytime images were strong, but the nighttime landscapes and starscapes were technically disappointing. Before Barney was even conscious of making the comparison, one thought occurred to him:
“They should have given Rishi the job.”
Rishi celebrates with other members of the DPReview team at PIX2015, a photography expo organized by DPReview in Seattle in 2015.
Long before DPReview, Rishi was already bringing the same instincts to science and photography. As a teenager, he became fascinated by sonoluminescence, a phenomenon in which sound waves moving through liquid can produce tiny flashes of light. He spent night after night in his family’s basement building an apparatus to reproduce it. Eventually, he succeeded and, naturally, photographed the result.
His parents still have the glass vessel Rishi used for that experiment, the same one in which he finally managed to turn sound into visible light.
Tributes from colleagues and readers
To honor Rishi’s legacy, we invited current and former DPReview colleagues to share memories of Rishi that have stayed with them. Their recollections are below, in their own words.
We know that many members of the DPReview community will have their own memories of Rishi. We hope you’ll add them in the comments below and in the forums.
At some point around 2014, I mentioned to Rishi that my iMac was struggling. He was almost offended that I was doing photo and video work on a machine without maxing out its RAM and SSD. On that generation of iMac, upgrading meant pulling the display off and disassembling a good portion of the machine to get inside, which Rishi treated as a minor implementation detail. Before long, Rishi, our colleague Eugene, and I were crowded around the desk with the machine in pieces, while Rishi talked us through everything in great detail.
Eugene took this photo that afternoon. I wouldn’t have thought much of it at the time. I’m grateful to have it now.Eugene Hsu
Buried deep in my phone’s text history is a sort of archive of Rishi’s mind as I often experienced it: long threads about display calibration, HDR tone mapping, and the exact way an image should render on a screen. A simple question routinely became an exhaustive technical breakdown, because he simply wasn’t capable of leaving an interesting problem halfway explored.
And those conversations weren’t only about technology. Rishi and I often bonded over film and music. He especially admired Christopher Nolan films and Hans Zimmer scores, and cared deeply about experiencing them as well as the equipment would allow. All that calibration ultimately had a purpose.
One of these nights I’ll dig up those threads, calibrate my setup exactly as he would have insisted, put on Interstellar, turn the volume up, and watch it the way Rishi believed it deserved to be seen
Working with Rishi was like having access to a personal masterclass. He didn’t just want you to understand how cameras worked; he wanted that understanding to change the way you took pictures. I’m a better photographer today because of the things Rishi taught me.
Rishi loved whiteboards. I recall many an afternoon in the DPReview office, standing at one with him as he walked me through an important concept or technology. By the time we were done, the board would be covered with graphs, equations and illustrations. He was passionate about sharing his knowledge, not just with other DPReview staff but with everybody.
I saw him explain new camera technology to famous photographers with multiple National Geographic covers to their credit. When the two of us interviewed Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Rishi went off on a tangent and started geeking out about the dynamic range of the Nikon D810. I’m pretty sure Lubezki came away from that conversation having learned something from Rishi, and not the other way around.
The first time I met him was when he interviewed me for a job at DPReview. He asked tough, technical questions that required me to synthesize a lot of information. When I told him I wasn’t sure about something, he stood up and walked to – what else? – the whiteboard, and talked me through the answer. He might be the only person I’ve ever seen turn a job interview into a teaching opportunity.
If there’s one thing I can be certain of, it’s that he’s already cornered an angel or two in front of a whiteboard, explaining dynamic range.
Rishi possessed a remarkable intellect, a patient teaching demeanor, an almost painful obsession with perfection, and a talent for photography. He understood that abstract lab measurements were meaningless unless they could be translated into tangible benefits when capturing real-world images. By combining his unique blend of scientific expertise and artistic vision, Rishi revolutionized the way we evaluate camera technology. He brought scientific rigor to our testing processes and earned the respect of the entire industry.
Rishi was also, for the last 10 years or so, someone I was lucky to call a friend – albeit a friend that would regularly drag me into drawn-out conversations about the latest developments in sensor technology or the failings of smart home technology. Not that I ever complained; Rishi’s infectious enthusiasm for his work was contagious, and I always gained something valuable from our interactions. Above all though, Rishi was the sweetest, kindest, and most genuinely humble person I’ve ever known, and his passing is a profound loss for everyone whose lives he touched.
I didn’t expect to ever have to write this, and I don’t know quite how to begin. So I’ll start with a gripe, which I know my friend Rishi would relate to. Among the most common lines of criticism of any technical analysis of a piece of photographic equipment is: “fine, but what relevance does this have to ordinary photographers?” I’ve always found this irritating. The idea that scientific testing is somehow “un-creative” is understandable: how many photographers (ordinary or otherwise) spend their time shooting test charts? But the best reviewers don’t test cameras and lenses because they enjoy plotting charts. They do it because they want to know how to use those data to take better photos, and to share that knowledge with others.
Rishi exemplified this goal. His ability to communicate the creative potential of technology that even camera manufacturers sometimes seemed not to fully understand was rare, if not unique. He knew what data mattered to photographers and, equally as important, he knew what didn’t. He was a scientist, yes, and a highly accomplished one, but he was also an artist, in the truest sense. A highly, highly unusual combination, even among imaging professionals.
My main memory of Rishi is just how immensely likable he was. I first met him more than ten years ago when he approached us about a position at DPReview. We interviewed him over lunch, and I recall Rishi actually struggling to eat in his excitement, almost choking at one point, so enthusiastic about what we did and what he might do with us, overflowing with ideas that seemed to come tumbling after one another, faster than he could verbalize them. He brought the same endearing enthusiasm to everything he did at DPReview. Outside of work hours, he was an avid cinophile, a borderline-obsessive audiophile, an accomplished musician and a loyal friend.
Even now, years after we last worked at DPReview, Rishi’s name still comes up in conversations I have with photo industry figures. Not just because of his intelligence and professional accomplishments (although they earned deserved respect) but because of his character. His warmth, his genuine interest in people, his unflagging creative passion and his total lack of cynicism (again—rare) impressed everyone he came into contact with. He was an extraordinary person, and he will be greatly missed.
When I had my first conversation with Rishi, I was still a photographer at the local power company. I had just applied to a rare opening at a website I visited almost every day, DPReview. I knew that Rishi was the Science Editor there, and I knew he was very smart, and I also knew that this conversation I was about to have was going to be a bit of a test.
When I picked up the phone around the end of the workday, I worked out my nervous energy by pacing endlessly around a corporate courtyard, phone pressed hard enough to my ear and face to leave a mark afterward. Introductions were made, and we promptly dove in.
Though I don’t remember exactly how we ended up on it, Rishi and I soon found ourselves animatedly extolling the virtues of Nikon’s 3D-Tracking autofocus to each other, and lamenting that so many photographers we knew never used it. (I later discovered that many a conversation with Rishi, if gone on long enough, would land on Autofocus eventually.)
Fast forward to my in-person interview, and Rishi comes in with a Sony a7R II. Now, I had never even seen a mirrorless camera in person before, much less used one, and perhaps sensing my naïveté, Rishi proceeded to absolutely blow my mind with the camera’s Eye Autofocus feature. Not only was this system fundamentally more accurate than what I had experienced with my DSLR’s, but it could track someone’s eye almost to the very edge of the frame.
For someone used to a middling clump of central AF points in an optical viewfinder, it was a revelation for me. And that really sums up what I remember and admire most about Rishi. When you got him on a topic he was into, and there were a wide variety of those, his enthusiasm would fill the room. He found so much joy in all of the details, and he couldn’t help but share that joy (and all those details) with everyone around him.
I’m so grateful to have gotten to know and work alongside Rishi for six years at DPReview. We spent a lot of time in the studio together, a lot of time shooting videos together, and a lot of time on press trips together. We had the privilege of working two of the best jobs on this earth, and I will treasure those memories for the rest of my life. Farewell, Rishi. I’ll miss you.
Rishi’s influence expanded the way I approach photography, both from a technical and a compositional standpoint, almost certainly more than any other colleague I’ve worked with over the past 20 years. His brilliance and creativity behind a camera, and unmatched knowledge of imaging science, were a rare and potent combination that made Rishi an infectious person to be around and especially to talk shop with. But it wasn’t just Rishi’s technical chops that made him a delight; it was also his big open heart.
Rishi wasn’t afraid to open up about deep, personal topics. He was also a fantastic and reliable listener, and someone I felt safe sharing my own inner musings, both good and bad, with. Our working relationship started rocky – what do you expect when you put two guys from Jersey in the same room? – but blossomed into something really special. Rishi, I miss you profoundly, but am so glad our paths intertwined as they did. A true friend and celebrated colleague, I’ll think of you every time I expose to the right in-camera and pull my shadows in post.
I’ve never worked with anyone else quite like Rishi. We butted heads often, usually around deadlines and such, but we could always laugh about something in the middle of it. I’ll remember those moments with him most of all. Making Rishi laugh always felt really good, and he laughed easily, even when we were annoyed with each other about something. He was truly one of a kind.
Rishi was a dear friend who changed the course of my professional career a decade ago.
We had become friendly while attending press trips, with him representing DPReview and Chris Niccolls and I still working for The Camera Store’s YouTube channel. While I felt I had adequate technical skill to review cameras, Rishi’s astounding depth of knowledge was somewhat intimidating, but more importantly inspiring. I began messaging him directly for clarification or information on sensors and autofocus systems whenever I got a wall.
Eventually, Chris, Rishi and I were on an extended press trip in Thailand, having one of our regular conversations that careened from the incredibly nerdy to surprisingly personal when he said “You guys should come work for DPreview with me.” The opportunity to work side-by-side with Rishi and learn just a fraction of his incredible scientific knowledge was too good to pass up.
While I wasn’t able to see Rishi in person as I may have hoped, our near-daily text exchanges were a source of inspiration, levity and occasional temple rubbing frustration as I attempting to understand topics that seemed obvious to my co-worker. My time at DPReview was an incredible education, and Rishi was a massive reason for that.
We both went our separate ways in a few years, with Rishi leaving to work with Apple, and Chris and I taking our YouTube show to PetaPixel. While those text exchanges were no longer daily, I’d still regularly hear from Rishi, especially when an exciting new camera or lens was announced. Thankfully though, reviewing the latest iPhone every year gave me the opportunity to grab a bite and catch up with Rishi when I was in Cupertino. While it only happened annually, we always picked up like no time at all had passed.
There is a lot to love about my job making videos, from using the latest technology to traveling to beautiful places, but the best part is the opportunity to get to know many amazing people I’d otherwise never have the chance to interact with. Rishi Sanyal was one of those.
Years from now, you won’t care about your version of the shot everyone else has. You’ll care about the one only you could take.
Dale Baskin
Every photographer knows the drill. You return from a trip, start copying photos from your memory cards, pour a coffee, and begin culling your images. Or some variation of that. And somewhere in that process, something strange begins to happen.
The photos you actually traveled to take – the ones that required you to arrive early to get a spot for your tripod – get a quick look, maybe even an edit, and then a shrug before you move on.
Meanwhile, a spontaneous shot of your friends pretending to do a fashion shoot in France gets exported and shared.
I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the pattern, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
Dubrovnik is full of recognizable architecture and alleys, thanks to Game of Thrones, but this photo is one of my favorites because it captures the essence of the place.Dale Baskin
The pull of iconic places
There’s a gravitational force to photograph famous places. You’re standing above Machu Picchu at sunrise, or below the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, and it feels almost negligent not to take a great photo of it. That’s the draw. It’s why you’re there. And it’s why there are often several hundred other people with cameras right next to you, trying to do the same thing.
I’m not suggesting you skip these photos, but before you spend half a day of your valuable travel time on one of them, it’s worth asking a simple question: Why am I doing this?
Years ago, I captured this (rather mediocre) photo of Machu Picchu in Peru. It’s not terribly different than thousands of other shots taken that same day, from the same spot, probably with the same llama in them.Dale BaskinWhile it’s not exactly fine art, this is the photo of Machu Picchu I’m really glad I have, because it reminds me of an adventure with people who became friends.Dale Baskin
Sometimes, the answer is genuinely good. Maybe you’ve been thinking about how to photograph the place for years and have a real vision for it – a unique angle or treatment that’s different from what everyone else has done. There are always new ways to photograph something that’s already been photographed a million times, and if you’re the person with that vision, that’s a gift. Go for it.
There’s a gravitational force to photograph famous places.
More often than not, however, the answer is that it’s an exercise. Photography is a craft and a skill, and one that requires repetition. Some of the most useful photos I’ve ever taken were mediocre pictures of famous things, because the mistakes I made taking them taught me something I later used.
And occasionally, you really do just get lucky. You’re standing somewhere right when the weather or the light does something extraordinary, and if you’re ready, you capture something rare. Luck, as the saying goes, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Taking a lot of unremarkable photos of iconic places is the kind of preparation that leaves you ready to act when that chance alignment of magic factors finally happens.
I got some pretty amazing photos of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but the one that I always go back to is my travel buddy spontaneously jumping into the frame.Dale Baskin
But sometimes, the honest answer is just that “you’re there,” and you feel like you should photograph whatever the thing is. That’s the one worth examining, because if the result is going to be identical to several million photos already on the internet, you’ve spent something valuable – your time on a trip you might never repeat – to produce a duplicate.
Then, there’s a middle path, and one I find myself embracing more often: if you’re going to shoot the icon, do something to personalize it and make it yours. Put someone you’re traveling with in the frame, or find something in the foreground that creates a humorous juxtaposition. It won’t be fine art, and it probably won’t win any awards. But then again, was your technically perfect shot going to win any in the first place?
The photos that matter
There’s a truism about travel stories: Nobody ever goes to a dinner party and tells stories about what went right on a trip.
I have lots of photos of iconic landmarks and places in France, but one of my favorite photos is of a couple friends doing a photo shoot on a small side street.Dale Baskin
The stories that land, and the ones people actually listen to rather than finding an excuse to return to the buffet for another piece of shrimp cocktail, are the ones where things went sideways. The trip where you went to one country, but your luggage went to another. The “hotel with a view” whose view turned out to be an alley full of dumpsters. Or the food poisoning that arrived courtesy of a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Nobody ever goes to a dinner party and tells stories about what went right on a trip.
Photography works the same way. The frames that survive for years and decades are almost never the postcard-perfect shots. They’re the small vignettes, like a spontaneous photo with friends in a French village or the street vendor in Buenos Aires where you had the best food of your entire adventure.
The neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is famous for its colorful buildings, but my favorite memories are of its colorful characters.Dale Baskin
When I was younger, I came home from a lot of trips with a lot of photos of famous things. Some were pretty good. A lot more were pretty mediocre. But what I learned pretty quickly was that, regardless of how good they were, other people were rarely that interested in looking at those photos.
What they did respond to were the candid, unstructured, and often just plain weird photos that captured the essence of the trip. Years later, those were the ones I cared about too.
So, shoot the icon if you want to shoot the icon. Just don’t let it take over your trip. Keep your camera ready during the in-between moments, the ones that don’t feel important when they’re happening. Odds are good that one of them is the photograph you’ll still be looking at in twenty years.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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See how Google’s AI-driven Magic Capture performs, plus every Camera Look shot with Raw so you can check the processing against the source.
Dale Baskin
Our Pixel 11 Pro XL sample gallery is now live and covers the newest camera modes on Google’s flagship smartphone, including Magic Capture and Camera Looks. We shot photos using all three rear cameras on the Pixel 11 Pro at their maximum 50MP resolution.
If you’re considering a Pixel 11 Pro or Pro XL for its camera upgrades, this gallery offers real-world output files you can evaluate before you buy.
We’ve been shooting a Pixel 11 Pro XL production unit since launch day and have done our best to capture photos that reflect real-world scenarios across a range of lighting conditions and scenes. Since the Pixel 11 Pro XL and the smaller Pixel 11 Pro share the same triple-camera system, the results here are representative of what you would get from either model.
Magic Capture, a new feature in Google’s Pixel 11 series, lets you capture a video stream, then uses AI to identify the best frames and convert them into 12MP photos.Dale Baskin
In addition to JPEG files, we have included downloadable Raw files for every mode that supports them. That means you can pull the files into Lightroom, Capture One or any other Raw-capable editor and draw your own conclusions rather than relying solely on the out-of-camera samples. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that on any modern smartphone, the manufacturer’s computational and AI technology is an important part of the image processing pipeline.
The gallery includes several examples captured using Google’s new Magic Capture mode and Camera Looks. Magic Capture lets you capture video while AI analyzes the footage to select what it considers the best frames, converting them into 12MP stills. Since Magic Capture works from video frames, it doesn’t produce Raw files, so those samples appear in the gallery as JPEGs only.
Camera Looks lets you dial in a visual style before you shoot rather than applying a filter after the fact. We photographed two distinct scenes, one rural and one urban, using every available Camera Look, so you can see how each style performs across different types of subject matter. For more information on how both features work, see our hands-on look at Magic Capture and Camera Looks.
Sample gallery
Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing; we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it.
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About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Google’s Pixel 11 phones offer two very different angles on computational photography: let AI find the moment, or define your look before you shoot. Here’s how each performed in real-world testing.
Google’s new Pixel 11 smartphones include two headline camera features that represent different approaches to computational photography. Magic Capture aims to take the stress out of capturing the perfect moment by letting AI identify the decisive moment for you, while Camera Looks gives you greater control over your creative output by letting you define a visual style before you ever press the shutter button.
We’ve been testing both features on a Pixel 11 Pro XL to see how they work in practice, and whether the results hold up. The short answer is yes, but not without trade-offs.
What Magic Capture actually does and what the sample photos reveal
Magic Capture replaces the act of pressing a shutter button at the right moment. You roll video instead of shooting stills, and Google’s AI analyzes the footage to identify what it believes are the most compelling frames, then turns them into photos. The feature goes beyond simply extracting a frame from video and saving it as a still image: according to Google, the system analyzes roughly 400 frames in real time, combining on-device processing with Gemini AI technology.
Magic Capture appears as a button to the left of the camera button in the Pixel’s camera app.
After stopping a recording, you can see the phone’s initial frame selections quickly, but they look flat and unfinished. Once the Gemini AI processing completes, which took around a minute or so in our testing for a 15-second clip, the selected frames become noticeably improved, popping with more detail, and with HDR scenes in particular looking significantly better. The final output is a 12MP still image.
The sample images below come from a 14-second Magic Capture clip of a surfer riding a standing wave in a river. Google’s AI did a pretty good job of selecting frames that captured the highlights.
Photo created by Magic Capture.Photo created by Magic Capture.Photo created by Magic Capture.
Image quality exceeds what you would typically expect from simply extracting a frame from a 4K video shot on a smartphone; it’s crisper, with better colors, and displays in HDR (when viewed on an HDR display). It’s not quite up to the quality I’m used to seeing from a standard still photo shot on a modern 12MP smartphone, but it gets the job done, particularly if it’s mostly going to be viewed on other mobile devices.
For the best results, Google recommends enabling Video Boost before using Magic Capture, which ensures the underlying footage is captured in 10-bit 4K. That setting is worth locating before you go out to shoot, not after. Processing time is manageable for a single clip, but if you shoot several Magic Capture sequences back-to-back, the phone queues them for analysis, which can take a few minutes to complete.
For the best results, Google recommends enabling Video Boost before using Magic Capture, which ensures the underlying footage is captured in 10-bit 4K.
One thing we haven’t fully assessed: how consistently Google’s AI selects the frame a photographer would have chosen. The feature’s premise, that the AI identifies the peak moment better than you can, is a pretty strong claim. Whether it matches a photographer’s instincts for capturing the decisive moment would require more testing to answer.
How Camera Looks works and what the photos look like
Camera Looks gives the Pixel 11 camera a selection of color and tone styles you can apply before you shoot. Google says the goal is to produce images that feel less processed and more like a deliberate photographic choice. The system is built around two layers that work together: base styles and creative presets.
In addition to Original (Google’s standard photo processing pipeline), there are three alternative base styles: Natural, Shadows and Vanilla, which sit at the top of the processing pipeline. They aren’t filters. They change how the camera collects and processes light before an image is generated, affecting how aggressively HDR merges multiple frames, how dark shadows are allowed to stay and how edge sharpening is handled. Think of them as choosing the core processing pipeline the camera runs on.
The Pixel 11 series includes four base looks: Original, Natural, Shadows and Vanilla. They can be combined with creative styles to create a variety of looks.
On top of those base styles, you can apply one of six creative presets: Editorial, Velvet, Classic, Digi, Black Tie and Minimal. These apply LUTs meant to emulate film chemistry, specific eras of digital photography or stylized monochrome profiles. The combination you pick matters: applying Velvet on top of the Original base produces a different output than Velvet layered over Vanilla.
The three alternative base styles can be set as your default shooting mode and can be customized. The six creative presets live in a separate carousel, and the interface can take a moment to get used to. The distinction between the two layers isn’t obvious at first glance, and understanding which choices you can adjust versus those you can simply apply requires some exploration. Once you’re oriented, the workflow makes sense, though.
Original base style.Shadows base style.Vanilla base style.Original base style with Editorial preset.Original base style with Velvet preset.Original base style with Classic preset.Original base style with Digi preset.Original base style with Black Tie preset.
Camera Looks fits a trend that’s already well established among both dedicated cameras and smartphones, where manufacturers offer in-camera film simulations, LUTs or custom picture profiles that let photographers customize their own looks. Google is applying the same logic to the Pixel 11 series, which means photographers who already think in terms of a preferred style will find the concept familiar.
Who are these features for?
Magic Capture and Camera Looks take different philosophical approaches to computational photography. Magic Capture removes a decision – when to fire the shutter – and replaces it with an AI judgment call. Camera Looks adds a decision, letting you define a visual style before you shoot rather than correcting for it afterward. One reduces your control while the other expands it.
Magic Capture removes a decision… Camera Looks adds a decision.
Magic Capture makes the most sense for scenarios where keeping up with fast, unpredictable action is genuinely hard: kids, sports, pets, or anything where the peak moment is difficult to catch manually. Or, as Google pitches, it lets you “live in the moment” by just rolling video and not stressing about capturing the decisive moment. If you really care about which exact frame gets selected, though, you’re trading that choice for convenience. Google’s AI selections in our sample photos were solid, but the feature works best when you’re willing to accept its judgment.
Camera Looks, by contrast, gives photographers something to bite into and exert creative control. Setting a default look before you shoot is a reasonable workflow for anyone who knows the aesthetic they want and doesn’t want to recreate it in editing every time.
Both features reflect where Google is taking the Pixel camera: toward a model where AI handles more of the technical and even creative work. Whether that’s a net gain depends on how much of that work you wanted to do yourself.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.
Tower Optical’s coin-operated binocular viewers have stood at American overlooks since the 1930s, built by a company almost nobody can name. For the first time, it’s selling some of them off.
Tower Optical
If you’ve ever stood on an observation platform at Niagara Falls, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, chances are pretty good you’ve seen a Tower Optical binocular viewer, and maybe even dropped a quarter into one, even if you’ve never heard of the company that made it.
These heavy, chrome-plated viewers are bolted to observation decks and overlooks across the US and Canada. But somewhere along the way, the viewers themselves became icons. And, for the first time in its history, the company is selling a small number of them to private buyers.
Tower Optical began in a Norwalk, Connecticut, machine shop in 1933, and remained in the same family until 2025. Between the 1930s and 1980s, it manufactured roughly 2,000 of the machines, with every component hand-assembled in the company’s factory in Norwalk, where the original machinery from the 1930s and 40s still stands. Today, the company has about 1,800 machines spread across roughly 400 locations in North America.
Tower Optics binocular viewfinders have been deployed to all corners of North America, in all types of environments.Tower Optical
In many places, these viewers have become part of the landscape as much as a means of viewing it. As someone with an interest in optics, what’s always fascinated me are the conditions these devices endure: freezing winters, blistering summers, rain, snow, ice, sand and every other environmental hazard you can throw at them. Yet the 10×42 binoculars inside keep delivering a sharp image, decade after decade.
Adam Rice, one of the company’s current owners, says the location and history of every viewer has been meticulously tracked by hand, decade after decade, as they moved around the continent.
For decades, Tower Optical used a pair of push-pin maps at its headquarters — color-coded by site — to monitor where each viewer was deployed.Tower Optical / Adam Rice
“There are two push-pin maps at headquarters that are pretty outdated now, but they were used to track all the different sites, color-coded by location. Beyond that, we have a physical card for every single machine detailing its maintenance and whereabouts. I scanned thousands of these cards with a high-speed scanner to digitize the company’s historical records.”
Looking at one of these cards can be like a walk through history, Rice tells us. “If someone’s interested in the history of a machine, we’ll look at the maintenance cards… For example, machine #507 was manufactured in the 1950s. Our records show it went to the Staten Island Ferry in 1961, Battery Park in New York City in the ’80s, the North Carolina Zoo in the ’90s, and, most recently, Coit Tower in San Francisco.”
The company maintained physical index cards for every machine, detailing its maintenance history and locations over the decades. This viewer appears to have spent a portion of the ’90s at the Empire State Building in New York.Tower Optical
One thing the company isn’t doing today is building new units, and the original manufacturing process may be lost to time.
“I’ve tried to understand the original manufacturing process, but no one is really left who knows how they were originally made. In our warehouse, there’s about 5,000 square feet of space filled with lathes and grinders from the ’30s and ’40s with overhead shafts to operate the pulleys. Our machinist estimated that if you had to make one of these domestically today, it would probably cost $15,000 to $20,000. The viewer heads are cast bronze and chrome-plated, and the rest of the components are iron.”
The glass inside has a pedigree of its own. “Interestingly, the metal plates on the viewers used to say ‘Bausch & Lomb Optical Viewer,'” he continues, “because the internal binoculars were manufactured by Bausch & Lomb. Many units still have the original Bausch & Lomb optics inside. At one point, they had a partnership where if binoculars needed to be serviced or replaced, we would send them directly to Bausch & Lomb, and they would fix them.”
Not much has changed over the years. The price crept up from a nickel, and the coin mechanisms were revised and hardened against people who tried sawing or drilling their way to the quarters inside.
Tower Optical assembled every machine by hand at its Norwalk factory, which still houses the original manufacturing equipment from the 1930s and ’40s.Tower Optical
The biggest challenge the company faces today is one the founders probably never saw coming: “No one carries quarters anymore, but people still love using these machines, so our goal from day one was to retrofit them with tap-to-pay,” says Rice.
“Another challenge was that every machine was built by hand, so the dimensions aren’t exact CAD measurements. The engineering firm we worked with did an outstanding job engineering retrofit brackets that fit regardless of slight variations in screw hole placement between a machine built in the ’30s versus one built in the ’50s.”
What the company was unwilling to change was the viewers’ nostalgic appearance.
“Our mandate to the engineering firm from day one was that we did not want the look of the machines to change beyond the payment terminal itself. The terminal is very minimal, just a small black box, and we’re even considering putting a chrome foil on it to blend in further. The only other physical modification was drilling a small hole in the top shell for a cellular antenna,” Rice explains.
While many have encountered Tower viewers in their travels, it’s never been possible to own one. Tower Optical’s viewers are placed through revenue-share arrangements with host venues, but for the first time, the company has decided to sell a small number of the historic units.
Tower Optical currently has about 1,800 machines operating across roughly 400 locations in North America.Tower Optical
“It allows us to finance the engineering work and expand our network, since retrofitting and deploying machines isn’t cheap. We receive a ton of inbound interest from people who want to own one. It makes sense to pull the lever on sales for units we can’t retrofit,” says Rice.
“In an ideal world, we probably don’t want to sell more than 50 to 100 of them.”
Owning a piece of history won’t be cheap. According to the company’s website, they start at around $9500. “That includes full refurbishment, the original historical maintenance card, and a new pair of optics,” Rice tells us. “We work with OM Digital to supply those binoculars. Prices may carry a premium for units originating from iconic locations like the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, or the Statue of Liberty.”
So next time you’re at a scenic overlook in the US or Canada, look out for a Tower viewer. Rice envisions a future in which they might even get more upgrades than its founders could have imagined.
“Moving forward, we’re exploring ways to layer in digital experiences, like augmented reality at high-traffic sites like Rockefeller Center, while keeping the core viewing experience intact.”
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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We’re testing the new Pixel 11 Pro XL. Watch the unboxing, then tell us what questions you have.
DPReview Staff
We recently got our hands on the new Google Pixel 11 Pro XL smartphone, and it’s time to do some testing.
In addition to shooting a sample gallery to test the new cameras, we’re also planning to test two new features Google rolled out alongside the Pixel 11 series: Camera Looks, which let you customize how your photos look at the moment of capture, including presets Google claims will look “less processed,” and Magic Capture, a mode that captures photo and video simultaneously and uses AI to automatically select the best shots and a highlight clip once you’re done.
But before we dive in too far, we wanted to know what questions you have about Google’s newest Pixel Pro smartphones. Let us know in the comments, and if there’s something you’d like to see us test, let us know that too.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
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Luminar’s latest update brings performance gains and a redesigned UI, but Skylum’s “creative vision first” pitch sits awkwardly next to a toolset built on AI sky replacement and Body AI.
Skylum
Skylum has announced an update to Luminar – its photo editing suite that became synonymous with AI sky replacement – which arrives under the pitch of protecting human talent and creative vision.
According to Skylum, the update is arriving in two phases. Phase 1 shipped on August 5 as version 1.28.0, and includes user interface and performance improvements. The Catalog and Edit modes have been merged into a single workspace, with Presets, Tools and Edits gathered into one reorganized panel on the right. Skylum claims exports are now up to 27% faster, preset previews up to 3.8 times faster, and masking uses up to 33% less memory.
The release also adds camera support for the Leica SL3-P and M11-P, the Panasonic Lumix DC-L10 and the Sony a7R VI, plus compressed Raw support for the a7 V. Additionally, the company says it has rebuilt its generative model to produce results that blend more naturally into the original photograph.
Skylum released Luminar version 1.28.0 on August 5, bringing UI and performance improvements as the first of two update phases.Skylum
We also noticed a quiet change: “Neo” appears to be going away. Skylum’s August release notes are headed “Luminar 1.28.0” whereas June’s were headed “Luminar Neo 1.27.1,” and the press materials don’t mention the word. Skylum’s own website hasn’t caught up, and still refers to the app both ways.
Phase 2 is slated to arrive this fall and will focus more on feature improvements. The company says a revised Crop tool will evaluate an image and propose several finished compositions, weighing subject, balance, leading lines and visual weight, and the Atmosphere Fog tool is being rebuilt to respond to a scene’s light, color and depth rather than laying a flat layer over the top. An improved Enhance tool is designed to reduce the risk of overprocessing, and the AI Assistant is being updated to take a description of the look you’re after and apply a combination of Luminar tools to deliver the result you want.
Finally, Skylum says it’s introducing a new web editor to support cross-platform editing.
Phase 1 of Luminar’s new release is focused on user interface and performance enhancements.Skylum
Skylum’s earlier marketing leaned heavily into AI as a selling point, through Luminar AI’s launch and Luminar Neo’s debut. This announcement reads a bit differently: Skylum says the update arrives as the industry grapples with fears that AI might “overshadow human talent” and bring an end to what it calls a nearly 200-year-old craft, with CEO Ivan Kutanin adding, “Creative vision comes first; technology is here only to let it shine.”
That’s an interesting position from the company that popularized one-click sky replacement, but Skylum seems to be drawing a distinction between craft and documentary photography; effects that prove convincing in a scene versus ones that look pasted in. (The fact that the software also lets you reshape a subject’s body in a portrait makes that a tougher sell.)
Price and availability
Luminar is available as a one-time purchase in three versions. A desktop-only version for Mac and Windows sells for $129. The All Platforms version adds support for iOS, Android and ChromeOS apps, cross-device editing and access to Luminar on the web when it arrives this fall; it retails for $259, but is on sale for $159 through August 31. The Max version adds a year of the company’s Luminar Prime service and retails for $399, but is on sale for $199 through August 31.
About the Author: Dale Baskin is a professional photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the Managing Editor of DPReview.com.
Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.
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