The size of a pack of cigarettes but a lot heavier; that was the first thought that came up my mind when I first got the Amaran AL-MX in my hands. Aputure’s smallest on-camera LED light throws 2400 lux at a distance of 30cm, 880 lux at 50cm and 200 lux at 1m, according to the specs. It does all this with a CRI/TLCI of well over 95 and colour temperatures of between 2800K and 6500K.
Tag: colour management
RGB and CMYK are two colour modes that differ considerably in their approach towards colour reproduction. I explain how they differ and when you best use one or the other in this downloadable PDF.
Serif, the developers of Affinity Photo and Designer, last week released their much-anticipated publishing app, Affinity Publisher. The new layout design app comes with a good deal of unique and very clever features, including “StudioLink”, an integration system – that re-defines the adjective “seamless” – between Publisher and their Designer and Photo apps.
A high CRI of >95 and a TLCI of >95, and the capability to produce up to 6000lux with 10 levels in-between. Reasons enough to take a closer look at the Aputure Amaran AL-MW.
Denver Riddle is a colour grading expert who first developed Color Finale for Final Cut Pro X. His company now comes forward with a next-generation colour grading app and plug-in for Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro, and Da Vinci Resolve via the OFX plug-in, Cinema Grade. The new plug-in is a radical step away from traditional colour grading where the artist either needs to control the adjustments via on-screen wheels and sliders or through an expensive control surface. With Cinema Grade, on the other hand, you just mouse-drag colour adjustments in the frame, although you can still control everything by numbers if you want to.
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DxO Photolab 2, vastly improved
In the final week of October, DxO Labs released its newest version of Photolab. The app has been improved overall but the main features worth a closer look are ClearView Plus, advanced colour management, spot weighted corrections, U-Point functionality and PhotoLibrary.
Europe is home to some pretty innovative developers. In Slovenia, Lumulabs is a small operation that developed the Lumu Power light meter, a Kickstarter success that started well over a year ago and which successfully ended in June with the first shipment of the finished devices. The Lumu Power light meter is a hardware sensor combined with an iOS app. It has both a fast-response silicon photo diode and true colour sensor in a package the size of a big marble.
Another year, another release of Corel Painter. The new version is packed with new features that guarantee jaw dropping awesomeness. There just seems no limit to Corel’s ambition to develop an application that is meant to create digital art that looks like the real thing. Combined with the newest Wacom Intuos Pro and its amazing natural feel, Painter 2018 is for digital artists to drool over.
Most users in the creative industry know they should regularly calibrate and profile their monitor for colour-critical work, but there’s more to colour accuracy than keeping your monitor in shape colour-wise. If you’re going to be printing or projecting your photos, art or videos, you’d better calibrate the output equipment as well. In fact, if you want to be absolutely certain colours will be accurately rendered from input to output, you will need to calibrate — or at least profile — cameras, scanners, monitors, printers and projectors. There’s only one affordable option that is accurate enough: the Red Dot Award winning X-Rite i1Pro 2 and I had the chance to test the Photo version.
