photography

Manage, edit, and share your photos with ease using Picasa.

While there are numerous apps that help you edit, organize, and share your digital images, many of them cost a lot and are geared toward users with experience in image editing. Picasa is an app from Google that offers only the basics and it won't cost you a dime.

The app's gray interface is on the plain side, but all of the options are easily accessible and even less experienced users should be able to jump right in. If you do run into difficulties, you can visit the Help center to view tutorials from the publisher and from … Read more

Process photos with grand effects using FX Photo Studio

If you're looking for a decent photo editor without breaking your wallet, FX Photo Studio for Mac is a solid solution. It comes with plenty of tools and filters for post processing and adding flare to your photos.

Upon launching the program, users are welcomed with a slick, dark interface that directs your attention to the photo itself. The layout makes great use of screen estate and the interface is clean and uncluttered. The overall experience of Photo Studio really focuses on bringing out the elements and emotions that you want out of the photo through its custom filters … Read more

Mastering panoramic photography in iOS 6

Apple certainly didn't invent panoramic photography, but if you recently upgraded to iOS 6, and have an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5, the added feature might have sparked a newfound interest in this photography technique.

The basics Enabling panorama mode is easy. Launch the camera, tap Options, and select Panorama. Keep your iPhone in portrait mode, but before you begin the panorama, do the following:

Decide where to end. Though panorama mode is equipped to capture a 240-degree angle, you can stop at any time. That being said, decide where the photo will start and end. Change directions. … Read more

Create binders full of women with your Android device

The newly released Photo Punch app for Android lets you cut figures out of one photo and add them to another. Here, we show you how to use the app to create funny and whimsical photos for sharing with your friends across the Interwebs.

Step 1: Download and install Photo Punch for Android It's free, and available now on Google Play.

Step 2: Create a Punch Shot A Punch Shot is essentially a cut-out foreground element from a photo, which you paste onto a different photo. In our example, your Punch Shot will be of a woman, while your … Read more

Latest camera-trapping tech helps capture more animals

Since the late 1800s, researchers and the curious have been trying to use photography to capture images of animals in the wild. Over the decades, the technology behind these camera traps has gone from trip-wire film cameras to sophisticated digital rigs. And these days, with the accessibility of digital video, the footage being collected is absolutely arresting. Check out the World Wildlife Fund or the Wildlife Conservation Society to see some of their videos of tigers, gorillas, and rhinos in their natural habitats.

Closer to home, we caught up with a technology specialist who works at Jasper Ridge, Stanford University'… Read more

Revamped DNG format shows new Lightroom possibilities

Adobe Systems isn't making any promises, but an update to company's Digital Negative (DNG) image format paves the way for two important features in Lightroom: panoramas and high-dynamic range photography.

Lightroom is for editing, cataloging, and publishing photos, especially those shot in higher-end cameras' raw formats. Raw photos consist of data captured directly from the image sensor without in-camera processing into a JPEG. Although raw photos offer better quality and flexibility, they're also much less convenient than JPEGs.

One aspect of their inconvenience is that raw photos usually arrive in proprietary formats from camera makers. Adobe has … Read more

Why one shutterbug sides with digital dorks, not Holga hipsters

I'm happy for N.V., the Economist correspondent who revels in the joys of film photography by shooting with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex medium-format camera. But there's no way I'm going back to analog photography.

The digital revolution is here to stay, of course, but film photography isn't extinct. The Economist's reporter, after inheriting and refurbishing a 1937 camera, sings its praises. For example, the reporter "enjoys the challenge and forethought involved in setting up a shot with an analogue camera. The discipline of having only a dozen shots on a roll of 120 … Read more

Lightroom 4.2 supports large swath of new cameras

With the Photokina show in Germany producing so many new high-end cameras, it's evidently been a busy season for Adobe Systems' Lightroom team.

That team just released Lightroom 4.2, which supports 22 new cameras, 43 new lenses, and lets people shoot with 11 new cameras tethered to a computer. It takes work to figure out how to decode each camera's proprietary raw format.

Here's the full list of new cameras supported, but note that the Nikon D600 support is "preliminary and there is a minor risk that the appearance of your images may change when … Read more

Purported catalog pic shows 46-megapixel Canon 3D

Studio photographers dissatisfied with recent events in the world of Canon SLRs might take heart at a fleeting glimpse of a possible 46-megapixel Canon EOS 3D.

That glimpse came from Nine Volt Photo, a maker of equipment to help photographers help take photos with cameras tethered to computers. It said it found a reference at retail powerhouse B&H Photo after an "inadvertent search for a Canon 3D."

The company shared a screenshot of the page list with specifications including a 46.1-megapixel CMOS image sensor, dual Digic 5+ processors, a 3.2-inch LCD, and dual CompactFlash … Read more