Articles about Photography

Flickr has announced a number of changes to both its free and pro accounts, including ditching the need to have a Yahoo account.

The biggest change for Flickr users with free accounts is a drop to the amount of free storage it offers -- it is now possible to display 1,000 photos and videos of any size, but the free terabyte of storage is now a thing of the past. Anyone paying for a Pro account has much more to get excited about, including ad-free browsing and 5K support.

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A new option is in the process of rolling out to Facebook users around the world: the ability to post 3D photographs. The key attraction here -- apart from the fact that 3D images look kind of cool -- is that no special equipment is needed.

Of course, you have to be realistic with your expectations. The new 3D photos feature does not create interactive, fly-through images or anything fancy like that. Rather it plays with parallax effects to create the illusion of depth that you can enjoy by scrolling, panning and tilting your phone.

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The concept of printing out your photos and putting them in an album is pretty much dead. Yeah, some folks probably still do this, but thanks to smartphones, tablets, and smart televisions, there is no reason to do so. There are much better ways to share and enjoy your precious memories these days. In other words, the digitization of photos has created a superior experience.

But OK, it can be fun to print out photos at a party or family get-together, where the images are essentially disposable -- kind of like a Polaroid. After all, not everything is worthy of framing. Today, Canon launches a new portable printer called "IVY Mini" that can do exactly that.

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One of the first things I do after installing a new Linux distribution is set a different wallpaper. Why? Desktop pictures really inspire me -- my mood can be positively altered by a beautiful image. The default wallpaper is often boring. For the most part, I prefer images of nature with bright colors. After all, if I am stuck indoors working on my computer, a wallpaper of the beach, mountains, or a colorful bird, for instance, can transport me to the outdoors -- in my mind.

Sadly, not every distro has beautiful high-quality images. Fedora, however, often does -- thanks to its "supplemental" wallpapers. What is particularly cool  about that operating system, is that it regularly accepts wallpaper submissions from the community as part of a contest. In other words, anybody can potentially contribute to a new version of the distro by simply uploading a photo, drawing, or other picture. Fedora 28 is the upcoming version of the OS, and the developers are now calling for wallpaper submissions for it. Will you submit an entry to the contest?

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OnePlus announced a few weeks ago that it was developing an update for the its latest flagship killer to improve image quality. Now, it is rolling it out for OnePlus 5T users across the globe.

The improved camera performance is part of OxygenOS 4.7.4, which turns out to be a bigger update than we were lead to believe initially, as it comes with a significant number of improvements in other areas as well.

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The OnePlus 5T is undeniably the best flagship killer yet. It's got a gorgeous display, superb performance, premium build, a lovely dual camera and, to top it all off, it undercuts many of its high-end rivals by hundreds of dollars.

However, if there is one area of the OnePlus 5T that could use some improvement it is the main camera. While overall it is very good, as noted in our review, in low-light the quality could be better. OnePlus is well aware of this, as it just promised that an upcoming update for OxygenOS will address this.

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If taking great photos and videos is important to you, then the iPhone 8 Plus is the best smartphone that you can get right now. That's according to camera testing site DxOMark, which says that Apple's new flagship range tops its charts in nearly every category, featuring "outstanding image quality."

The iPhone 8 Plus comes ahead of every other smartphone in DxOMark's mobile rankings, including the smaller iPhone 8 which takes second place. It basically wipes the floor with every other rival flagship, including the well-received Google Pixel and HTC U11.

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When you need to use an image or video for a website, advertising campaign, or other project, you can't simply grab something from the web and use it. Well, you can, but that isn't a smart idea. Why? Someone else could own the image or video and bring legal action against you. Instead, you should use a reputable service where you can obtain properly licensed media.

We here at BetaNews use a few such services, but Shutterstock is obviously one of our favorites -- we probably use it more than any other. The company even offers a cool plugin for Adobe Photoshop that can make things even easier. Today, Shutterstock enhances that plugin with video support, while also bringing it to other Adobe Creative Cloud programs -- Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and InDesign.

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Any photo editor -- be it on the desktop, or on the web -- can reduce an image’s size. You can shrink images down as little or as much as you like.

However, making an image bigger, well that’s a whole different matter. When you blow up a picture you can introduce all manner of problems, including blurring, general loss of sharpness, and jagged edges. That said, it is possible to increase a picture’s size without introducing these problems, if you know how.

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Smartphone cameras have evolved a great deal over the years, reaching the point where many of us can rely on them to snap important moments in our lives. But if there is one area where major improvements can still be made it's in low light.

One way to improve image quality in low light is to use a wider lens aperture, which is what LG has done with its upcoming V30. In fact, the South Korean maker says that it's the widest lens aperture of any smartphone to date. Why does this matter?

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Smartphones have forever changed the photography market. While a standalone camera, such as a DSLR, may take a better photo, they can be a chore to carry and maintain. Not to mention, they can be very expensive. For many non-professional photographers, their phone is more than good enough. Heck, some people claim an iPhone, for example, can rival dedicated cameras.

Apple seems keen to brag about how good its iPhone is at photography -- there are countless TV commercials produced by the company that highlight that exact thing. Apple is also taking its bragging a bit further by way of social media. After increasing its activity on Twitter lately, the company has now joined Instagram too. Under the @Apple handle, the MacBook-maker is not sharing photos of its products, but instead, photos taken with them.

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Flagships like the Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8 all have such great cameras that it can be really hard to definitively say which one is the best option for mobile photographers. Reviews, comparisons and blind tests all point to different winners, but, more often that not, you will usually find an Android smartphone at the top.

Vic Gundotra, who lead Google's mobile efforts for a couple of years, helped create Google+ and is an avid photographer, has a rather different opinion, claiming that Android is actually "a few years behind" the iPhone for mobile photography, and that, if you really care about photography, you should get an iPhone 7 Plus.

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Before unveiling its latest flagship, OnePlus announced that it had partnered with DxO to improve the camera performance of the OnePlus 5. That was interesting mainly for one reason: DxO, on top of making software that enhances photos, frequently puts popular smartphones to the test to assess their photo and video quality.

So, at some point, we would find just what sort of effect that partnership had on the OnePlus 5, using DxO's own metrics. As it turns out, the new flagship still has some way to go before it can challenge the elite.

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A change to Photobucket's terms of service is having disastrous consequences on numerous sites as users discover they can no longer host images for use on other sites free of charge. Users of sites such as Amazon and eBay -- as well as owners of personal sites, and social media users -- were more than a little disappointed to learn that in order to continue using third-party image hosting, they would have to upgrade to Photobucket's most expensive package.

With the Plus 500 Plan costing $399 per year, upset users have complained that Photobucket is holding them to ransom. While Photobucket issued a notice that terms and conditions were changing, the company failed to highlight the change or give enough notice to satisfy many people.

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As a tool to backup your photos and videos to the cloud, Google Photos should give you a fair degree of control over how and when you want the backups to be performed. However, a new update to the popular app on Android manages to do quite the opposite, removing a very useful feature -- which is sure to frustrate some users.

Google Photos has dropped the backup while charging option from the settings menu, forcing users to either perform backups manually or accept that backups can happen anytime their smartphone or tablet is connected to a cellular or Wi-Fi network.

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