Skip to main content

editing

See All Stories

Review: Macphun’s Creative Kit 2016 makes boring photos beautiful, for a modest price

focus21

Great photographers are made, not born, and even the best photographers have plenty of unimpressive shots in their collections. But in the age of digital photography, it’s possible to create a great photograph without being a great photographer. You can even accomplish this days after snapping your photo, so long as you have the right post-processing software and a little time to play around.

Macphun’s Creative Kit 2016 ($150) provides photographers of all skill levels with six different tools that make bland or imperfect photos look great. This year’s Creative Kit includes the Pro versions of Macphun’s Focus, FX Photo Studio, Intensify, Noiseless, Snapheal, and Tonality, each renamed “CK” and expanded with extra features. All six of the apps are designed to be super easy to use, yielding great results even without diving into the manual controls, though there are rewards for tweaking their settings. Better yet, the standalone apps now work as plug-ins for OS X Photos, Aperture, Photoshop, and Lightroom, and can easily be used in combination with one another for even more powerful editing…


Expand
Expanding
Close

Macphun debuts Creative Kit 2016, six Pro photo editing apps with OS X Photos plug-ins

macphunck2016

Macphun, maker of elegantly powerful photo editing tools including Tonality, Noiseless, and FX Photo Studio, has announced the impending release of Creative Kit 2016 — a bundle of 6 of the company’s Pro apps for a discounted price of $150. Creative Kit 2016 includes:

Noiseless CK (reviewed here) and Tonality CK (reviewed here), separately capable of eliminating various types of noise from images, and converting color images into beautiful black and white versions — both highly impressive, as our reviews discuss;

FX Photo Studio CK, a filter, frame, and brush-based photo editing tool that lets you convert simple photos into pieces of art; and

Snapheal CK, Focus CK, and Intensify CK, apps to erase unwanted items from photos, add lens effects such as blurs, or enhance subtle details in your images, respectively…


Expand
Expanding
Close

GoPro app for iPhone & iPad gets smart editing feature to create & share clips

Go-Pro-ios-app

The official GoPro app for iPhone and iPad gets an update today which brings a new smart editing feature to let users create and share clips instantly from within the app. Previously users resorted to third-party apps for similar functionality with GoPro camera hardware.

The new feature will let users instantly create edited versions of their videos that come in at 5, 15, or 30 seconds. You’ll be able to drag the timeline to select what 5, 15, or 30 second portion of your video you want to isolate. Once you’ve selected your clip, you’ll be able to instantly share to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other social sharing options available in the app.

The updated app, version 2.9, also receives an “improved camera software update process” and a number of bug fixes and other improvements.

You can grab the updated app for iPhone and iPad on the App Store now.

Feature: Why I edited a novel on an iPad (and why I Kickstarted it afterwards)

novel-ipad-1

After noting that I planned and wrote a novel on my MacBook Pro 17, it might surprise you to learn that I did much of the editing on my iPad.

I began the editing on my Macs – the Pro when I was at home, the Air when I was elsewhere. At that point, I still wanted to be in Scrivener in case structural edits were needed: scenes that needed to happen earlier or later in the story.

I also used my Macs to incorporate feedback from alpha and beta readers. Alpha readers were subject-matter experts (airline pilot, aircraft engineer, software developers and so on), who could identify any technical errors or omissions. Beta readers were technothriller fans who provided more general feedback on the story itself.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

Adobe updates Photoshop Mix for iOS w/ auto cropping, Instagram sharing, more

Photoshop Mix for iOS

Adobe released version 1.4 of Photoshop Mix for iPhone and iPad today adding a new “auto crop” feature that Adobe says “analyzes images and suggests non-destructive boundaries based on the primary objects in an image.”

The latest version of the photo editing app also includes the addition of Instagram as a sharing option while sharing to Facebook has been improved. The Creative Cloud-connected app can now open files directly from Lightroom, Photoshop Sketch, Illustrator Line, and Illustrator Draw as well while support for six more languages was added in the update.

Auto crop feature from Photoshop Mix

Auto crop feature from Photoshop Mix

Check out the full change log for Photoshop Mix, which first launched in June, below with all the new details.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Instagram revamps Explore tab, adds caption & location editing

Site default logo image

After updating its app for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last month, Instagram is out with a feature update today with some welcome features.

Users will likely appreciate the ability to edit photo captions and locations attached to photos in post now. That means if you make a typo on your caption, you no longer have to choose between correcting yourself in the comments, deleting and re-posting the photo with the correction caption, or just ignoring it altogether.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

Adobe updates Photoshop Express for iOS with blemish removal tool, RAW importing, more

Adobe has actively been rolling out new and powerful tools for the iPhone and iPad in recent months including Lightroom Mobile for iPad followed later by Lightroom Mobile for iPhone and Photoshop Mix as well as Adobe Voice for creating storytelling from iPad.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

Rdio iOS app gets playlist editing, user & critic reviews, more

Rdio-iOS-app

Rdio, the popular subscription music service, is rolling out an update today to its iPhone and iPad app that brings a couple of welcomed new features including playlist editing for iPhone and iPod touch and reviews. As for the new playlist editing features, Rdio explained in its blog post:

Now, you can update your playlists from your iPhone or iPod touch — in addition to creating playlists and adding new tracks, you can now remove and rearrange tracks until you’ve made the best playlist ever (or it’s dethroned by your next playlist, of course). You can also customize the playlist artwork, change its visibility and collaboration settings, and more.

The new Rdio app also includes reviews for albums and playlists from both users and critics. Not only will you now be able to write your own album and playlist reviews from within the app, you’ll also be able to browse reviews from critics in addition to reviews written by other users.

Rdio notes in its blog post that it has “also made tweaks to the app’s design, user interface, and overall performance.”

The updated Rdio app for iPhone and iPad is available on the App Store for free.

Site default logo image

Overview of iWork for iCloud beta [video]

One of Apple’s unsung announcements from its WWDC keynote on Monday was iWork for iCloud, a full, complete solution for editing and syncing documents in the cloud. iWork for iCloud, which will be going head to head with Google Drive, is already extremely polished and well done, even as a developer beta.

While fully updated iOS and Mac apps will be arriving later in the year, the web versions of the apps are available privately today.

In the above video, we walk you through the beta interface of iWork for iCloud, as it appears in Safari.

Graphics editing app Pixelmator receives large ‘Blueberry’ update with new shape tools, effects, and more

Site default logo image

If you’re someone that regularly edits photos, or enjoys graphic design work, then you’ve likely used Pixelmator, which is arguably the best alternative to Photoshop on the Mac. Today, the popular $15 app is getting a huge update, known as 2.2 “Blueberry,” which includes over 100 new features. I’ve been testing out the new options, and they’re pretty great…


Expand
Expanding
Close

Avid releases iPad version of FCPX competitor ‘Avid Studio’

Site default logo image

Avid, the makers of the music industry’s leading DAW called “Pro Tools”, just dropped an iPad version of its pro-sumer Final Cut Pro competitor known as “Avid Studio.” Although the latest Final Cut Pro X update brought multicam editing, broadcast monitoring, and many of the features pro users demanded be re-implemented, the Avid Studio iPad app shows why Apple should and most likely will release FCPX for iPad.

The app is available from the App Store now for $4.99, significantly less than the desktop version that retails for $169.99, but the app will increase to $8 after an initial 30-day introductory period. The Avid Studio app is the company’s first video editing suite for iPad and aims to provide most of the features offered through the desktop version.

Users will get the familiar timeline and storyboard, but new gestures will allow them to pinch and squeeze to scale images and videos, and arrange edits on the timeline for picture-in-picture effects. Users of the desktop software will also appreciate the Precision Trimmer, Razor Blade tool for on the fly cuts, and the ability to export projects easily to Avid Studio on the desktop. Projects can be uploaded to iCloud, and finished projects can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, and by email from within the app. Unlike the desktop version, there is no Flash export option.


Expand
Expanding
Close