Fstoppers
Photography News and Community for Creative Professionals
As part of its ongoing efforts to make photo editing as quick and easy as possible, Adobe is introducing Prompt to Edit in Lightroom. This feature lets you restore an old photograph by selecting one of Adobe’s example prompts or creating your own prompt. You can sharpen out-of-focus images, colorize black-and-white photographs, and adjust the color of photos with a dramatic color cast.
A wide angle lens pointed at a mountain range can make the peaks look small and far away, which is the opposite of what most people expect when they carry one into big terrain. Getting around that problem by getting close to something in front of you and building the frame back toward the peak is what turns a flat record of a view into an image that pulls the eye through it.
A single speedlight sitting in your camera's hot shoe can produce portrait light that looks like it came from a big window or a softbox, as long as you know where to point it. Most people never get there, because direct flash looks harsh and the usual fix is a pile of domes, diffusers, and brackets that can cost more than the flash itself.
Adobe now meters many of Photoshop's AI tools against a monthly pool of generative credits, so knowing which features draw from that pool directly affects how freely you can edit. Many of the program's most useful time-savers have nothing to do with AI at all, and they sit on panels you already open every day.
Viltrox's AF 16mm f/1.8 is now available for L-mount, bringing a bright ultra-wide with a small info screen on its barrel to Panasonic, Leica, and Sigma bodies at a list price of $580. If you shoot night skies, tight interiors, or dim venues, a fast autofocus 16mm at that price gives you another way to gather light without leaning so hard on ISO.
In 1896, a woman settled into a chair in front of the fireplace in her Washington, D.C. studio, hiked her petticoats above the ankle, crossed her legs like a man, and aimed her own camera at herself. One hand held a lit cigarette. The other cradled a stein of beer. Her name was Frances Benjamin Johnston, and across a career of nearly fifty years she talked her way into the White House, boarded a warship in a foreign harbor, and became the first woman in America to earn a living pointing a camera at the news.