Articles about Photography

Like Pokémon Go, Prisma has taken the app world by storm in recent weeks. Previously only available for iOS users, the photo app that creates works of art from your snaps has finally made its way to Android.

Just a few days ago there was talk of a beta program that keen users could take part in, but now we've jumped straight to the full release. If you're (somehow) unfamiliar with the app, it uses machine learning to transform your photos into the style of any one of a number of famous artists and styles.

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Some apps become overnight sensations -- something ably demonstrated by the Pokémon Go phenomenon. But it's not just games that experience an explosion in popularity. You can't help but have seen stylized pictures posted to Facebook: photos that have been transformed into striking works of art.

This trickery is the handiwork of the Prisma app. The app has only been available for iOS users, but that's about to change. It would have been madness not to have released Prisma for Android, and the company behind the app -- Prisma labs inc -- knows this. A beta version of Prisma is about to launch, and you can be the first to learn of its release.

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Saving the location in photos you take with your smartphone, tablet or camera is a good idea if you want to keep track of where you've captured those moments. Some services, like Google Photos, will do that for you automatically, showing a history of places you've been based on their coordinates. However, when it comes time to share your photos online, you may want to remove the location data.

The location data, alongside other types of identifiable information, will also be shared alongside them, potentially exposing you and your loved ones to all sorts of complications as a result. Fortunately, you can remove the location data from your photos. Here is how you can do that.

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If you like taking Live Photos with your iPhone then you probably want to share those moments with other folks. One of the best ways that you can do that is by converting your Live Photos to GIFs, so that everyone can enjoy them even if they do not have an iOS device or Mac.

By now there are loads of apps that let you do that, but Google believes that there is room for one more. So, its Research arm has introduced Motion Stills, which has a neat little trick up its sleeve.

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Mobile memory experts Leef quizzed the UK population to see just how important smartphones are for them, and how often they back such devices up. It turns out, not so frequently. As a matter of fact, some people don’t even know what backing up actually means.

So here’s the thing. The quiz polled 1,000 smartphone users across the country, and more than half would be terrified of losing their smartphone, mostly because of "their selfies and other irreplaceable photos from their smartphone", the Leef report says.

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Google is making its collection of image-editing plugins -- the Nik Collection -- available free of charge. Previously sold for $149, the Nik Collection came into Google's hands when it acquired Nik Software three years ago. If you recently shelled out on the plugins, you needn't feel like you're getting a bad deal; Google says that anyone who purchased the collection this year is eligible for a full refund.

Comprising seven plugins -- Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine -- Google says that the Nik Collection brings "powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people".

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Flickr has made a big comeback after giving users a whopping 1 TB of free storage, but now it is ruining everything by making a very important feature of the service available only to paying customers.

Flickr has announced that Auto-Uploadr, the software that enables users to upload photos from a desktop device, will only be offered to Pro and Pro+ subscribers, leaving users on the free tier out in the cold.

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Here we are, days before Christmas, and you're thinking about last-minute stocking stuffers. I've got an eclectic selection of things I would want to get or give for December 25th. Some of them will demand rushing online to take advantage of last-minute shipping offers. Others require no shipping at all, like music subscription services. Confession: Some items will require a larger stocking but no wrapping.

I present the list alphabetically, and in no order of preference.

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PNGmicro, GIFmicro and JPEGmicro are freeware Windows tools which optimize images to reduce their size.

Each program offers lossless compression by rewriting files more efficiently and stripping out surplus data, and you also get options to cut file size even further by reducing image quality.

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My iPhone 6s Plus is a wonderful smartphone -- long battery life, great performance, and strong security. One of the biggest benefits, however, is the class-leading camera, which takes amazing photos. While I use the iPhone for day-to-day shots, I also own a fairly nice camera (Nikon 1 S2) that I use for more serious work. The problem, you see, is that the camera does not have built-in Wi-Fi, so uploading and sharing the photos means carrying my laptop.

Today, this changes, as Apple releases the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader for iPhone and iPad. I can now connect the storage card from my camera to my iPhone for easy backup and sharing. I totally need this, and I bet many of you do too.

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Modern smartphones come with great cameras which generally deliver good results, but of course they can’t change the photographic basics: if there’s not enough light then your pictures are going to ruined by noise.

Photo Noise Reducer Pro is a free-for-personal-use Android app which provides various ways to denoise, smooth and generally clean up your images.

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No matter which flagship smartphone you get, you are very likely to be happy with its camera quality. According to DxOMark, this year's crop of premium handsets from Apple, Google, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony is extremely close in terms of photo and video quality.

But, while other makers have shown major improvements in this area over their previous efforts, Apple seems to have stagnated with its new iPhone 6s, which is no more better than last year's iPhone 6 despite having a new rear-facing camera. (DxOMark has not yet tested the iPhone 6s Plus phablet, but it is unlikely to be significantly better than its predecessor either.)

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Sony may not have the most popular devices around, but it is not for a lack of quality. Its latest flagship, Xperia Z5, has the best smartphone camera according to DxOMark, outclassing rivals like Samsung's Galaxy S6 edge and LG G4.

Even the lesser Xperia Z3+ is well positioned in DxOMark's mobile chart, coming ahead of the hugely popular iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Xperia Z5 has also outclassed the newly-announced Google Nexus 6P, which has to settle for third place. Not too shabby for a Nexus device.

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Photo sharing app Instagram has reached another milestone earlier this week, 400 million active monthly users.

That is 100 million more since the last update a few months ago, when Instagram surpassed Twitter. In the same time, Twitter has managed to add 25 million new users. The photo sharing app is growing at a faster rate than Facebook, but slower than Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

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You probably already know that PNG is a great lossless compression format, but have you ever wondered just how efficient it can be?

Developer David Fifield decided to find out, and the results are impressive: a 420-byte bzip2 file, which decompresses to a 5.8MB PNG, and holds a 225,000 x 225,000 pixel image.

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