photography

Get lost in a stunning 320-gigapixel image of London

How well do you know the landmarks of London? Get up close and personal with a stunning 320-gigapixel image of the city captured atop the BT Tower.

Snapped by panorama experts 360Cities, the epic photography endeavor required the use of four Canon 7D dSLR cameras outfitted with some heavy-duty equipment.

Each camera used an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, Extender EF 2x III teleconverter, and a Rodeon VR Head ST robotic panorama head. After shooting 48,640 individual pictures over the course of three days (shortly after the 2012 Olympics), 360Cities spent the next several months assembling and stitching together the final gargantuan image.… Read more

iStockphoto founder re-enters the market with Stocksy

Bruce Livingstone, who founded microstock powerhouse iStockphoto more than a decade ago and left it in 2009, is trying again with a new stock-art sales venture called Stocksy.

And he's doing it at a time when iStock is, if not necessarily vulnerable, the target of criticisms that it's out of touch with the army of photographers who contribute the imagery it licenses. To succeed, a microstock needs lots of customers licensing its photos, videos, and other works, and it needs a lot of contributors supplying a steady stream of fresh material.

It's these contributors Livingstone appears to … Read more

Photoshop 1.0 source code now a museum artifact

The Computer History Museum has made the source code for Photoshop 1.0.1 into an exhibit that lets the public, or at least programmers, appreciate the inner workings of the historic software.

The museum published the software yesterday, following up on its earlier release of the source code underlying Apple's original MacPaint.

Source code is what humans write -- in Photoshop 1.0's case the brothers Thomas and John Knoll. The initial Photoshop is written in written 128,000 lines of code, a combination of the high-level Pascal programming language and low-level assembly-language instructions. When converted to … Read more

Light up your life with a giant Nikon lens lamp

If you're looking for a photography-related conversation starter for your home, this accessory could be one to shoot for.

Measuring a little over a foot across and roughly 19.5 inches high when the hood's attached, the lamp is a larger-than-life replica of Nikon's 14-24mm F2.8 ultra-wide-angle full-frame zoom lens. This unique decorative piece is constructed from white cedar wood that's coated with a water-based varnish and then finished with beeswax. … Read more

The photo editor that's already a hit on Android has made its way to iPhone

PicsArt Photo Studio is a popular, feature-rich photo editor that was formerly for Android phones only, but it's now available for iPhone.

There are several apps that let you add effects and edit your photos, but PicsArt Photo Studio does those things and quite a lot more. In fact this app has so many features it can get a little overwhelming -- particularly with the number of interface elements on the screen.

Like most photo effects apps, you can snap a new picture or pull one from your photo library. With an image onscreen, you can use the buttons … Read more

Apple releases raw support for Nikon D5200, Sony RX1

With the release of its raw compatibility update 4.04, Apple software now can handle raw-format photos from two hot new cameras, the Nikon D5200 SLR and the high-end compact Sony RX1.

The D5200 is a relatively inexpensive SLR whose 24-megapixel sensor looks to have promisingly high performance -- the top rating for an APS-C-sized sensor, according to DxO Labs' DxOMark test results. The $2,800 RX1 has an even larger full-frame sensor, also with a 24-megapixel resolution, but its design uses a fixed 35mm lens.

Also supported in the Apple update is support for raw photos from Pentax's … Read more

Add funky text to your iPhone or iPad photos with Over HD

Ready to add a little spice to your Instagramming ways? Over HD is a slick and universal iOS app that lets you add text to your photos before sharing them on Instagram or other social networks. At the time of this writing, it's currently offered for half price at 99 cents.

Launch the app and you'll see thumbnails of your recent photos, which you can tap on to edit. To load an older photo not in view, scroll down or tap the Camera Roll button. You can also take a photo using the app

When you load a … Read more

Shutterstock's new tools revamp photo and video search

It's a challenge for anybody selling a wide range of anything online: how do you get the right products in front of the right customers?

Shutterstock, which sells stock-art photos and videos to customers such as ad agencies and PowerPoint presenters, has the matchmaking problem in spades. With 550,000 active customers and more than 23.7 million images, pairing the right buyer with the right photo isn't easy.

Which is why the New York-based company, which went public last October, is retooling how it presents its products to better compete with iStockphoto and other rivals.

Shutterstock has … Read more

Top 3 photo collage apps for Android

Sometimes it takes more than a single photo to capture a moment. Collage apps on Android have become increasingly popular, because they give users much more freedom to express their photography and enables them to create unique galleries. And with the ongoing trend of increasing screen sizes, check out these apps to Insta-photobomb your friends on that big and shiny phablet display of yours.

KD Collage

KD Collage includes templates for just about as many photos as you'd like, whether it's the standard two-to-four photos, five to nine or even 20 at a time. One unique advantage in … Read more

See when you took that iPhone photo with Handy Album

Maybe I'm getting old. Strike that -- I'm definitely getting old. But maybe I can't remember when I snapped a particular iPhone shot because I'm getting old. Or maybe it's because of the sheer volume of photos I keep on my phone. I like to think it's the latter.

Regardless of the cause, there is a solution: Handy Album. This free iPhone app lets you view the Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) information of your photos, so you can see when, where, and how you snapped each shot.

Handy Album doesn't boast the … Read more