Downtown Manhattan

 

When I visited downtown Manhattan last month to photograph the Swan Genarro Festival I stayed long enough to take some photos of the neighborhood and its great street art.  The building shown above was for many years New York City's police headquarters until it was converted into luxury condos.

Topaz Labs Releases Video AI v3.0

 

Topaz Labs has released Video AI v3.0, a major update to what is probably its most successful product, its widely praised video enhancement app which it claims has been "rebuilt from the ground up."  In the blog post announcing the update the company stated that the update's new features could be broken down into two main categories: improvements to usability and new AI models.  The improvements to usability include stacking AI models (i.e., the ability to enable more than one AI model in a single task), running tasks in parallel with filter support, executing scripts using the command line interface, and "important performance and stability improvements."  The two new AI models are the stabilization model and the Apollo slow motion model.

The updated app is available to new customers for $299.  The price for existing customers who do not have an active license (i.e., who have not paid the annual fee entitling them to a year's free updates) is $149.  As I had purchased the previous version of the software last December I was considered to still have an active license and received the update at no cost.

NYC San Gennaro Festival

 

I took my Nikon Zfc downtown last month to photograph the San Gennaro Festival parade.  It's been an annual tradition in New York City's Little Italy since 1926.  The irony, of course, is that Little Italy no longer exists.  Like every other ethnic neighborhood in Manhattan, it's fallen victim to gentrification.  All that remains now are a scattering of tourist restaurants.

GoPro Remote

 

I recently purchased from B&H the GoPro Remote for use with my HERO 9.  Like most GoPro products it's a well made piece of equipment and easy to use, a good value at less than $80.  I paired it with my camera without any problem at all.  The remote has a built-in battery that recharges from a USB C port via the standard cable GoPro includes with almost all its products.  It has an effective range of 196 feet and can handle up to five cameras, though I doubt I'll have much use for these last two features.

I purchased the remote primarily for use in vlogging so that I can begin recording while seated in front of the camera without having to change position.  No doubt I'll come up with other uses as I continue to work with it.

Luminar Neo Migration Tool

Skylum has released a free migration tool that when downloaded will enable Luminar Neo users to convert templates used in Luminar AI to Neo presets and then move them to the appropriate folder in the newer app.  In addition, the tool will also move images from the AI catalog to Neo's own while preserving "all the Edit states that were taken."

The tool is definitely a useful item and worked well when I tried it out.  Everything was done in only a matter of seconds, though the speed might in part have been due to the fact that I don't maintain either an AI or Neo catalog of images.  One might speculate, however, that the introduction of the tool is a sign that Skylum eventually intends to discontinue Luminar AI and end its support for the app.

Microsoft Announces Designer

Microsoft has announced that it will be joining the AI imaging party with an app named Designer developed in partnership with Open AI, the firm behind DALL-E 2.  From the brief online description it seems the new product is intended primarily for practical use, such as generating ideas for logos or for advertising products, though it could obviously also be used for more artistic purposes.

Designer will eventually become part of Office 365, but in the meantime those interested can go to the above link and put their email address on the waiting list to try the free public web app.

In addition to Designer, MS also announced that it will be incorporating DALL-E 2 into its search engine Bing in order to give those searching for images the option of creating their own through the use of AI.

DxO Announces PhotoLab 6 and Viewpoint 4

 

Earlier this week DxO announced new versions of its RAW processor PhotoLab and its perspective adjustment app Viewpoint.  As I already own the previous versions of both apps I did some research to determine if it would be worthwhile to upgrade.  Unfortunately, in both cases there seem to be no major new features, only refinements of existing tools.  The most important of these would appear to be PhotoLab's DeepPRIME XD, an improved version of PhotoLab 5's DeepPRIME demosaicing noise removal tool.

I may eventually upgrade to PhotoLab 6 simply to have the latest version of the software as it continues to be my preferred RAW processor and therefore extremely important to my workflow.  As for Viewpoint, however, I will probably pass on the upgrade.  While it's undeniably useful to have a tool at hand that will expertly correct perspective and distortion, it's quite honestly not an app I use very often; I feel I can make do perfectly well with the earlier version already installed on my computer.

Adobe Releases New Photoshop and Premiere Elements

Adobe has released its annual update to Photoshop and Premiere Elements, its only products so far as I know that don't require a subscription.  I have last year's version of these apps - I use them as a platform to access third-party Photoshop plug-ins - and doubt I'll upgrade.  I don't need Premiere Elements at all since I already have the latest version of Corel Video Studio, a much more sophisticated video editing program, and there's very little new of interest in Photoshop Elements aside from the background remover that, as recently posted, I found is available for free in Adobe Express.  And then too I had no end of hassles last year with customer service when Adobe initially failed to furnish valid serial numbers to activate the software I had purchased directly from the company itself.