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The RAW Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)
Video Tutorials

The RAW Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)

I have a rule about my editing workflow: if it adds more than one extra step, it probably isn’t sticking around. I learned Lightroom under pressure, back when my band couldn’t afford a photographer and someone had to edit our press shots, so lean and fast became a survival instinct that never really left. That instinct has served me well. It has also made me dismiss a lot of genuinely useful tools because I assumed the setup cost wasn’t worth it.

Luminar Neo's Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know
News

Luminar Neo's Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know

Luminar Neo’s Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know The editing software landscape just got a little more interesting. Skylum dropped version 1.27.1 of Luminar Neo this week, and they’ve included a feature that’s been on many photographers’ wishlists: the ability to import your entire Lightroom library directly into their platform. I’ll be honest—when I first heard about this, my immediate reaction was “finally.” For years, switching from Adobe’s ecosystem has felt like abandoning your digital photo babies.

The Art of Editing Magazine Cover Photography: Lessons From a Mexico Shoot
News

The Art of Editing Magazine Cover Photography: Lessons From a Mexico Shoot

The Weight of the Cover Shot There’s something almost magical about magazine covers in our digital age. While Instagram stories vanish in 24 hours and TikToks blur together in endless feeds, a cover sits on a newsstand. It demands attention. It gets printed. It matters. Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph a major editorial cover featuring an athlete most people recognize. Shooting in Mexico, far from the magazine’s home base, I realized something fundamental about editorial work: the editing process isn’t just technical refinement—it’s storytelling at its finest.

Apple's Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18's Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing
News

Apple's Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18's Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing

Apple’s Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18’s Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing I’ve been watching Apple’s approach to computational photography for years, and I have to say—their latest move is genuinely impressive. While everyone’s obsessing over AI features and new cameras, Apple just quietly dropped one of the most important technical upgrades for mobile photographers: a complete overhaul of their RAW file processing engine. The Update Nobody’s Talking About Core Image RAW 9 doesn’t sound sexy.

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like Your Lightroom Edits (And How to Fix It)
Tutorials

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like Your Lightroom Edits (And How to Fix It)

I had a client email me once asking why the headshots I delivered looked “washed out and kind of gray” compared to the previews I’d sent over iMessage. I’d spent two hours on those edits. Warm shadows, lifted blacks, a custom preset I’d built around a Gillian Welch record. They looked perfect on my screen. On hers, they looked like they’d been run through a photocopy machine. The edit wasn’t broken.

How AI Color Grading is Reshaping Creative Workflows in 2024
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How AI Color Grading is Reshaping Creative Workflows in 2024

The AI Revolution Hits Your Edit Suite I’ve been watching the intersection of artificial intelligence and creative tools pretty closely lately, and honestly? We’re at an inflection point. What used to require years of Lightroom mastery is becoming accessible to anyone willing to experiment with emerging technologies. The creative tools landscape just got more interesting. Advanced AI models are rolling out to mainstream users in ways that feel genuinely transformative—not just hype.

Stop Editing One Photo at a Time: A Real Workflow for Batch Editing in Lightroom
Workflow & Efficiency

Stop Editing One Photo at a Time: A Real Workflow for Batch Editing in Lightroom

Last Tuesday I had 847 photos from a single session sitting in Lightroom. Wedding, golden hour, outdoor ceremony, great light. The kind of shoot where everything goes right and you pay for it later in the culling process. My needle was playing through a Fleetwood Mac record and I had exactly four hours before delivery. I didn’t panic, because I’ve been here before. I batch edited the whole set in about ninety minutes and spent the remaining time on targeted fine-tuning.

Why Your Digital Photos Look Wrong (And How Film Emulation Actually Fixes It)
Color Grading

Why Your Digital Photos Look Wrong (And How Film Emulation Actually Fixes It)

There’s a photo on my hard drive from about eight years ago. My band needed press shots and nobody in our circle could afford a photographer, so I picked up a camera, read enough to be dangerous, and shot them myself. The images were technically fine. Sharp, well-exposed, clean. And they looked completely lifeless. I spent three days trying to figure out why a photo of four people standing in actual sunlight looked like a screenshot from a corporate training video.

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments

Color grading has always felt like one of those tools that’s 90% of the way there. The ability to push your highlights toward gold, nudge your shadows into teal, or breathe some cinematic warmth into your midtones is genuinely powerful. I use it on almost every landscape and portrait edit I touch. But for years, there’s been this maddening ceiling on what it can do: color grading applies globally, across the entire image, based on tonal values alone.

AI Just Walked the Red Carpet: What Dreams of Violets Means for Creative Professionals
News

AI Just Walked the Red Carpet: What Dreams of Violets Means for Creative Professionals

The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For (Or Dreading) This June, something genuinely historic happens at the Tribeca Festival. A feature-length film called “Dreams of Violets” will premiere—and here’s the kicker: every single frame, every actor, every shadow and highlight was created entirely by artificial intelligence. No cameras. No location scouts. No 2 a.m. color grading sessions with cold coffee. I have to admit, when I first heard about this, my gut reaction was complicated.

Split Toning in Lightroom: How Two Colors Can Make or Break the Whole Mood of a Photo
Color Grading

Split Toning in Lightroom: How Two Colors Can Make or Break the Whole Mood of a Photo

I have a preset I built about three years ago called “Rumours.” Warm golden shadows, slightly cool highlights, the kind of look that makes a portrait feel like it was shot in a California living room in 1977. I named it after the Fleetwood Mac album because that’s the mood I was chasing when I built it. I’ve used it on maybe two dozen client galleries since then, and people consistently ask me how I got “that color.

Lightroom's Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production
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Lightroom's Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production

Lightroom’s Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production I’ve spent enough time in Lightroom to know which tools actually deliver and which ones are just taking up panel real estate. When Adobe introduced the Lens Blur feature to Lightroom Classic, I’ll admit I was skeptical. Can software really fake what a fast lens and proper aperture do in-camera? Turns out, the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.