Articles about Photography

The eyes may be a gateway to the soul, but the feeds of social media accounts can be even more revealing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and their ilk all give people the opportunity to not only share their lives with the world, but present a particular image of themselves. Of course, there are the occasional posts which, well, let the side down.

With this in mind, Instagram is rolling out a new archive feature that makes it possible to remove images from your feed without having to delete them. If you have any embarrassing pictures you'd rather didn’t taint your image, you can hide them without having to lose them completely.

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We still don't even know when the OnePlus 5 will be released, but the company is already in full-on marketing mode for the next version of its flagship killer. We've only just seen a sample photo from the OnePlus 5, and now keen photographers are being offered the opportunity to get their hands on the smartphone early.

This is not an early buying option for snap-happy Android fans, but a competition which will ultimately see ten people getting their hands on a OnePlus 5 for free.

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Biometric authentication may be more convenient than a PIN or password, but it is not as secure as you might be lead to believe. The iris scanner on the Galaxy S8 can be defeated with a photo and contact lens, despite Samsung's claims that it offers "airtight security" and provides "one of the safest ways to keep your phone locked and the contents private."

If this has you worried, Samsung says that it is "difficult for the whole scenario to happen in reality," even though the hack "appears simple." The company believes that having the right tools in the first place can prove to be problematic for anyone attempting to defeat the iris scanner.

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If it's one thing that consumers expect in a flagship smartphone, it's a great camera. Getting quality photos and videos is one of the main reasons why so many folks spend their hard earned cash on devices like the HTC U11, Samsung Galaxy S8, Apple iPhone 7 or Google Pixel -- and why those devices cost as much as they do.

OnePlus is well aware of this, so it has teamed up with DxO to "enhance [the] photography experience" with the upcoming OnePlus 5. This is one of the few things that the company has revealed about the next flagship killer, aside from the name and the "summer" release date.

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During the camera film era, Fujifilm battled kingpin Kodak with brighter, more vibrant colors that either photographers loved or hated—perhaps both. That was last century. In the 21st, Kodak is a shadow cast against aged Kodachrome, while its rival has successfully transitioned from print to digital—and with amazing bravado. Fuji's transformation started six years ago with the cleverly-engineered, retro-designed X100, which I reviewed in May 2011.

The compact digital camera's success led Fuji to develop a series of additional bodies and lenses; all are designed with professional shooters in mind. The X series family features compact, mirrorless designs that incorporate digital SLR-size sensors and manual controls—meaning dials and buttons to directly manipulate settings rather than rely on software menus. The X100 line—from the original to the S, T, and now F—remains the most distinctive for how well features and benefits balance set against truly innovative design concepts.

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Smartphone cameras are wonderful nowadays, making dedicated cameras an unnecessary purchase for many. With that said, some folks still buy them when they want even better quality photos thanks to things like larger sensors and high-quality lenses. Not to mention, for the most part, smartphones do not offer optical zoom. If you need to capture photos and videos in the distance, a dedicated camera is a must.

Today, Canon announces an all-new fairly compact camera with a monstrous 40x zoom. The PowerShot SX730 HS, as it is called, features 20.3 Megapixels and a 180-degree tilting rear LED screen -- perfect for vloggers and selfie-addicts. It even has integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for connecting to both PC and mobile devices. Best of all, it is rather affordable.

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FileFriend is a tiny portable toolkit which can split, join, encrypt or hide your target files in a JPG.

The program organizes its simple interface into four tabs: Split, Join, Encrypt and "JPK" (pack a file or folder inside a JPEG).

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As visual content continues to take over social media, photos and video are becoming the language of the next generation. With 74 percent of marketers using visual assets in their social media marketing, photography now plays a vital role in any marketing strategy. From this, a new generation of hybrid creative marketers has emerged, a group of already time-strapped professionals who are being asked to find and edit compelling imagery across all platforms every day.

This constant need for engaging visual content has generated a demand for new and simple design tools to meet marketers creative needs. For example, a realtor who wants to create a compelling newsletter for their distribution lists, or a local shop owner who wants to promote a holiday sale on Facebook and Instagram. However, a surprising amount of them don’t know which tools are best suited for their needs.

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Auto FX Free is a free collection of 10 free Photoshop plugins which can also be used stand-alone.

The effects include Focal Zoom, Light Brush, Lighten and Sharpen, Mood Lighting, Soften Details, Vitality, Dreamy Photo, Mosaic, Abstract Edges and Photo Border.

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Despite the name, smartphones are generally used for anything but traditional phone related activities -- and one of the most popular usages of the devices is snapping photographs. But while an entire generation of photographers has grown up with digital photography, there are plenty of physical photos out there waiting to be digitized.

Google thinks it has the answer in the form of PhotoScan. The app is available for iOS and Android, and it transforms your smartphone into a scanner so you can preserve old photos. Unsurprisingly, it is packed with smarts to simplify the whole process, and it all ties in neatly with Google Photos.

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I am frequently tasked with providing an expert opinion on whether photographs have been digitally manipulated or not. A simple examination can often reveal some limited information, but to get more accurate results, we need to look beyond a simple visual examination.

Looking at a photograph, there are things to look out for when determining if it’s been digitally manipulated. If the photograph is one of a series taken in burst mode, there may be inconsistencies between the set, such as light/tone variations, or pixel aspect ratio. In saying this, though, this isn’t conclusive, and a more in-depth analysis is needed.

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Google Photos has received a fairly significant update that sees the arrival of four key new features. Three of them are focused on sharing and viewing your photos, but the fourth is an AI-powered auto-rotate function that ensures you'll no longer have to look at photos on their sides.

As Pixel and Pixel XL owners (as well as other Android users who don't mind a drop in quality) have unlimited Google Photo storage at their disposal, Google is introducing a Facebook-style restrospective feature. Google says it will "make it easier to look back at your fondest memories", but there is more to discover.

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Snapchat today makes two big announcements, the first of which is that it is no longer called Snapchat. The company is starting to branch out into products and services beyond the Snapchat app and therefore decided it is time to drop 'chat' from the name. Snap Inc is the new company name.

The second announcement is a new product called Spectacles. These are sunglasses with an integrated video camera offering a 115-degree field of view. There's no word on exactly when it will be released, but the marketing machine is already in motion, building up momentum and drumming up interest.

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Now that smartphones have high-quality cameras, people seem to be snapping more photos than ever. Thanks to the cloud, it is super easy to back up those images, and then consume them on a device at a later date. There is no need to print photos anymore, right? Not so fast. Actually, if you head to your local CVS or Walgreens drug stores, you will see many people still having photographs printed for frames and albums. Are these people just creatures of habit or Luddites? Perhaps. Regardless, there is a demand for photo printing.

HP has a new portable photo printer that is downright cute. Called 'Sprocket', it is compatible with both iOS and Android, letting the user print photos on the go. Millennials should go wild for this thing, as you can customize the photos with filters and virtual 'stickers' using a special app before sending them to print over Bluetooth. Not to mention, you can peel off the back to expose an adhesive -- yes, you can stick them on things! Best of all? It doesn't use any toner or ink! No, it is not magic -- it uses a really cool 'ZINK' technology.

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My first computer in the 1990's came with a 4GB hard disk drive -- very spacious at the time. When my friends saw the capacity, I was instantly the envy of the neighborhood. Nowadays, 4GB is rather pitiful. Modern memory cards, some smaller than a postage stamp, can dwarf my first computer's capacity. That's technology, folks -- everything gets better, and your current tech loses its luster.

Today, SanDisk (a Western Digital company) announces a product that is a major milestone in the technology market -- the world's first 1TB SDXC card. In other words, that is a monstrous 1,000 gigabytes. To put that in perspective, Apple only just stopped putting 16GB storage capacities in the iPhone. This card, which is only a prototype for now, will be a dream for photographers, allowing them to save more photos than ever before. Of course, if the card fails, that is a lot of data to lose...

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