Photography has exploded with the relative affordability of the digital SLR, and as such there are now a whole onslaught of aspiring photographers on the market, which I think is totally awesome. I love that I have a career that inspires people to go and seek out their own creative vision, and in doing so creates a community of learning, communication, and competition. Today’s post concentrates not on the technical aspects of photography, but on ways to enhance the way you display or edit your images, as well as a little bit on workflow. I get numerous emails from budding photographers asking all kinds of questions, and I’ll answer anything I can, so if you have any questions feel free to drop me a line. These emails have inspired me to start doing little product reviews if you will of the different things I use for my own business and have found to work, or not work for that matter. Today I will take on 3 software related products.
1. PROPHOTO BLOGS
For a lot of professional photographers (myself incuded), a prophoto blog has already become a large part of their online presence. The beauty of the prophoto blog system is that its incredibly clean, extremely customizable so you can really make it your own, and the layout I believe is becoming familiar for the general public so they have an easy time navigating your blog menu’s and finding what they are looking for quickly, which is very important.
Prophoto recently released v3 of their blog software, and I was fortunate enough to be given an early version of the software prior to its release to help create the functionality that today’s photographers are looking for without having to know anything about coding, and I was incredibly impressed. I’m serious when I say you don’t need any kind of coding knowledge to start customizing this blog, as Jared did a thorough job of making the customization as simple as possible with menu selections and dragging/dropping boxes. If you’re looking for way to spice up your online presence, Prophoto is worth a peak. Its risk free as Jared offers a 110% refund if you decide its not for you, which in itself shows you the confidence he has in the product, but then again the amount of professionals using the product speaks for it enough. CLICK HERE TO GO TO PROPHOTO BLOGS.
If you do decide to purchase the Prophoto blog, you can use this coupon code to save yourself $10: NATELS648
2. TOTALLY RAD LIGHTROOM PRESETS
By now most photographers have heard about the infamous Totally Rad Actions sets which are designed to help create different effects for your photography to enhance your final product, but a couple of days ago Totally Rad released a new set of Lightroom Presets which I think will really help increase the speed of the workflow for a lot of portrait & wedding photographers. Doug Boutwell, the creator of the Totally Rad Actions, has a habit of looking at what everyone else has done or tried to do, and then works his ass off to release something that blows it all out of the water. His lightroom presets are no different. I’ve tried many other lightroom presets in the hopes of finding something that would not only match my style of photography, but help in the ability to batch process images that have the same lighting, and and up until now none of them have met my needs. Below is an edit done with two clicks of the mouse using the new Totally Rad Lightroom Presets.
Now these presets are no substitute for proper lighting, as you’ll get the best results with a properly lit photo, but they can go a long way in helping to achieve the final look of your finished product. If you’re a Lightroom user and looking for something to help speed up your workflow, Totally Rad Action Presets are worth looking into. CLICK HERE TO VISIT TOTALLY RAD ACTIONS.
3. FUNDY SOS ALBUM BUILDER
The crew over at Fundy SOS have a bunch of different products designed to help streamline your workflow, but the Album Builder is the product I want to talk about today. It’s exactly what it sounds like, software that helps you to create awesome albums. It runs within photoshop (cs3 & cs4) in an action based form that REALLY helps to speed up the process. Now I know there are a million different programs and ways to build albums, but this software for me has been an amazing tool, and one that I would recommend to anyone that does a lot of high-end flush mount album design. I could go into a whole listing of all the different features, but Fundy has been smart enough to let you use the fully functioning software free for 14 days, and then you can decide if its going to help you or not. I’m willing to bet it is. CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT FUNDY SOS ALBUM BUILDER.
And that’s all I have for you photographer folk today in regards to great software. I should note just for the sake of relinquishing any doubt, that I’m not getting paid to say nice things about any of these products, nor have any of the makers of these products asked me to write a single word about any products they have made. I just believe in good products and sharing of knowledge within photographic community. I hope you find something of use amongst this post, and there will be more reviews and recommendations of different products and software coming soon.
contact me | check out my portfolio | become a fan
show hide 2 comments