Darktable provides a satisfactory, free alternative to Adobe Lightroom Classic

    Years ago, I used to consider Adobe Lightroom (now Adobe Lightroom Classic) as Photoshop with training wheels.

    My thinking was that Photoshop was a much more powerful editor, so why waste time on Lightroom.

     But I decided to give it a try, and found it to be a versatile program, becoming my go-to for editing, as well as an excellent digital asset manager, allowing me to easily organize a catalog of more than 50,000 images.

    While it's a great program, it also comes with a high price, and with Adobe embracing the shakedown subscription plan, you pay for it monthly.

    There are "Jack Sparrow" versions out there, but there is one free, open-source program that is a rather acceptable alternative to Lightroom. In fact, I use it for my work, since we are only allowed so many software licenses and they're already in use and my bosses don't want a visit from the software police.

    I had tried earlier versions of darktable before when I needed a RAW file editor that I could install on a work computer without running afoul of the IT department. While it was a good editor, it lacked the ability to catalog, keyword, geotag and impose order on the chaos of picture files.

    But since version 4 has come out, darktable is giving Lightroom a run for its money. It has become a true DAM, allowing you to actually import photos to a specific location, add keyword tags, geotag them using a GPX tracklog, as well as edit them and export.

    I've been especially impressed with the noise-reduction algorithms, which I find give great results just by activating them. There's also an option to go in and further refine it.

    The control layout is not as intuitive as Lightroom's, but you have the option to search for the tool you are looking for.

    In addition to editing RAW files, darkroom can also handle jpg, tif and even the dreaded WebP file format.

    (That's Google's new image format that web developers are now using just because Google says it's cool, even though it's a departure from the company's motto "Don't Be Evil.")

    It's free, and if you can write code, it's open source so you can modify it if you so choose. It's available on Mac, Windows and Linux, and it can interface with GIMP, the open-source version of Photoshop.

Hack lets you use photo editor to get full-resolution AI colorized photos

     In an earlier post, I talked about Vertexshare's Picture Colorizer, which does a reasonably good job of turning black-and-white photos into color pictures.

    But the site has some limitation, in that you can only submit a photo that has been resized to no more than 3,000 pixels on the long edge. That can be a pain in the butt.

    However, there is a way to get a full-resolution AI-colored photo for no cost, and it will work with any photo editor that uses layers.

    Unmesh Dinda, who does some of the best Photoshop tutorials over at Piximperfect on Youtube, unveiled this hack involving Palette.fm, an AI-based photo colorization site that he said is better than Photoshop's neural filter.

    Palette gives you several options, and you can edit it by changing the word prompt for the AI.

    But it won't let you download the full resolution image that you uploaded, unless you are willing to pay either 65 cents per image or sign up for a subscription plan. The free option gives you essentially a file slightly bigger than a thumbnail.

    Dinda, in his video, demonstrates how to take that tiny picture and use it to make a full-resolution colorized photo. The secret is in layers and blending modes.

    As you'll see in his video, Dinda will add the colorized download as a layer over the original photo, and then use the transform tool to stretch it to the same size as the original, lining it up perfectly. You can turn down the opacity to make sure you're getting it straight.

    At this point, it's going to look terrible with pixelated artifacts all over the place. But, by using the color blend mode, the color patterns will be transferred to the full-resolution image, giving you a high-quality colorized picture.

    I again called the photo of Ulysses S. Grant at Cold Harbor into service to demonstrate this. This is the final result, following Dinda's steps. I did this in Photoshop, but I also tried it in GIMP, a free, open-source photo image editor that is comparable to Photoshop.   

    This is straight out of Photoshop. I would likely go back and touch up Grant's uniform and maybe his chair. But if you need or want to colorize a photo, this gives you a good starting point that can be tweaked.

    Dinda said it can also be used for correcting extreme color casts, as he shows in the video below, where he compares the results with Photoshop and MyHeritage.com.   

Website offers free, reasonable AI colorizing for old photos

     Colorizing black-and-white photos is almost as old as photography itself, with people striving to make pictures look more lifelike.

    In the past, it usually involved meticulous hand painting of photos, a task that got relatively easier with digital photo editing software.

    Now, one of the new features in Photoshop is colorizing photos using artificial intelligence algorithms to do the heavy lifting. The results are fairly impressive, although there are naturally a few goofs that are relatively easier to fix compared to trying to colorize an entire picture.

    But suppose you don't have Photoshop, or the "Jack Sparrow" version you're using disables Adobe's Neural Filters?

    Vertexshare's Picture Colorizer offers a free AI-based colorization service that produces acceptable results. I played around with it for an evening and got some decent results.

    Here is a photo of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant taken from the Civil War. First, the original:

 

   And here's the colorized version (the only thing I did with the photo was just colorize it):

     It wasn't perfect, but things such as Grant's hand, his left boot and that yellow spot on the tent can be easily fixed in editing software.

    The main caveat with the service is that it only works with jpgs and pngs, and they can't be larger than 5 mb and 3,000 x 3,000 pixels. You might have to resize the image you want to colorize, as well as finish off any other edits you want to do, before uploading it. 

Video can help when your motor drive isn't fast enough

    Back in the days when cameras would take only one picture when you pressed the shutter, you wound up missing a lot.

    It took time and good reflexes to capture a particular point in fast-moving action back in the film day. I remember going through more than a few takes trying to get a photo of a dart hitting a balloon for a photo class project on "hard and soft."

    While there were motor drives back then, three shots per second was the usual speed, which meant you'd burn through a 36-shot roll in 12 seconds.

    Today, even so-called "entry level" cameras can fire off six frames per second when in drive mode, and with memory cards that hold far more data than the computers that guided the Apollo Moon missions, you can shoot for a while.

    But sometimes that's even not fast enough, as Sony has now got some of its cameras operating with drive speeds of almost 50 frames per second — if you're willing to invest a couple thousands dollars just for the body alone.

    But if you want to get to that speed, there's a way to do it, even with a cell phone. Shoot a video instead.

    A couple caveats first: You're likely not going to get the full pixel count your sensor normally gives you since video is cropped to either a 720 or 1080 format. You might get closer if you're using a 4k video resolution.

    You'll also have an image that's in a 16:9 aspect ratio, but that's not a deal breaker. And you'll most likely be working with a jpg image, which hobbles some post-processing options you would have if you were shooting raw instead.

    But this is a cheap, effective way to get even higher motor-drive speeds than your camera can produce. Some cameras will let you shoot video at 60 frames per second (that's the speed that makes professional and college sports coverage on TV look crystal clear).

    I actually discovered this trick while shooting video of training a National Guard brigade was doing at the Yakima Training Center, a sprawling military installation in Central Washington*. One of the things I shot was a crew firing a howitzer.

    I wanted to send a picture to one of my sons, so I scrubbed through the video to find a picture of the smoke coming out of the gun's muzzle block. I found my frame and did a capture with the editing software I was using, and then processed the photo.

    It was at that point that I discovered I had something incredible. In the photo below, you can see the artillery shell coming out of the cloud of smoke at the end of the barrel.

    I doubt I would have got that if I were shooting stills with the drive running (for that camera) at its full speed of 6 fps.

    It's not something I would do every day, but if you have a situation where you need that extra bit of speed in the number of frames you're shooting to catch some fast-paced action, your camera's video function is a great tool to have in your box.

    (*The Yakima Training Center is where they also filmed the combat scenes in Audie Murphy's "To Hell and Back.")

Free copy of ON1 Effects. (LIMITED TIME OFFER)

                              

    The people at ON1 are giving away some software.

    The company, which makes the ON1 suite of photo editing software, is discontinuing support for ON1 Effects 10.5. So, the company is allow people to download it for free.

    There won't be any new updates, but at least you can use it to apply various effects to pictures, such as making it look like a tintype photo or giving it an HDR look without having to pay $60 for a software license.

    The software works as a stand-alone app, or as a plugin with Lightroom and Photoshop.

    To get your copy, go here.

Free DxO photo editing software (LIMITED TIME OFFER)

    Looking to get beyond iPhoto, Apple's Photos or the basic editing software that came with your camera, but can't afford Adobe's Lightroom or Photoshop?

    DxO Labs is offering a free license for its DxO OpticsPro 9, a $130 value. All you need to do is enter your email address here, and they will send you a download link and a serial number to unlock the software and use it indefinitely.

    There are a few catches. The offer is only good until Feb. 28, 2017, and the software cannot be updated. But, if you are looking at getting beyond the basic editing software, this is a free alternative to more expensive software or "rent" the right to use software.