Power to the people!

Starting March 24, 2016, the latest Nik Collection will be freely available to download: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll automatically issue back to you in the coming days.

We’re excited to bring the powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people now.

[Via]

Hi from Nepal, everyone!

I’m enjoying some very rare downtime & connectivity before getting some shut-eye in advance of our 48-hour hackathon. I have so much to share, but uploading through a cocktail straw is nobody’s idea of fun, so most will have to wait. In very brief: Yesterday we celebrated Holi at an orphanage; today we helped villagers rebuild (such a minor contribution, really, but it felt good to help such welcoming folks); and tomorrow we get busy trying to create technologies & services that might be of use here & beyond. It’s such a privilege to come here and learn. I’ll share more as soon as time & tech permit.

[Photo courtesy of Alex Osterloh, with whom I treated myself to a dawn fly-by of Everest, below]

A video posted by John Nack (@jnack) on Mar 21, 2016 at 9:05pm PDT

In the land where beautification app Meitu “has acquired a user base of over 900 million,”

[T]he obsession has spilled over into the virtual world with a selfie camera that automatically perfects your face in every photo you take. The camera, made by Casio, is nicknamed zipai shenqi (which means the magical weapon for ultimate selfies) in China. It gets rid of blemishes and makes your face slimmer, skin whiter, and eyes bigger. You can see it in action in the video above.

Intriguing work by Anthony Cerniello:

Kottke writes,

Last Thanksgiving, Cerniello traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure. Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair.

[Vimeo]

PetaPixel notes, “The video was captured with a Vision Research Phantom Flex 4K camera with a Fujinon 18-85mm lens mounted to it, shooting wide open at T2” at 1977 frames per second:

A video posted by Fazza (@faz3) on Mar 10, 2016 at 8:14am PST

There’s a little black spot from the Sun today…

via GIPHY

PetaPixel writes,

[NASA satellite] DSCOVR snapped its first photo in July 2015, so this view of a total solar eclipse is the first of its kind. Since the DSCOVR has a fixed view of Earth as it rotates on its axis, this is the first time the shadow of an entire eclipse has been documented in a series of photos.

In August 2015, DSCOVR also captured an amazing series of images showing the moon passing across the face of the Earth.

Love this animation. I don’t know who created it, but HT to Katrin Eismann for sharing it.

via GIPHY

I’m guessing the average GoPro buyer’s life cycle goes like this:

• Watch amazing GoPro-shot footage.
• Wow, look at these adventures! If I get one, I’ll have adventures!
• Go shoot a bunch of footage, sit down to watch it.
• Wow, this is… dull. But hey, I’m gonna get around to watching it & editing down to the good parts… [never].
• Also, I don’t have a lot of adventures.
• These new cams are cool, but I didn’t really use my current one, so…

And thus to address their “Achille’s heel,” GoPro just spent $100M+ buying Stupeflix, makers of the excellent Replay movie-making app (Apple’s 2014 App of the Year) as well as video editor Splice. Congrats to the makers of these excellent tools. I’m really eager to see what they can do together & with GoPro.

Meanwhile GoPro competitor the TomTom Bandit uses sensor data (speed, G-force, even max heart rate) to annotate what it captures (see below). As someone who knows just how hard it is for software to discern the really important moments in a video (Cf. the movies feature in Google Photos), I’m excited to see richer data sets captured & surfaced to users. Check out The Verge’s review for details.

Photographer Eric Paré created this 360-degree light painting photo booth for Adobe’s MAX show last fall:

PetaPixel writes,

The rig was built using 32 DSLR cameras, which were connected to be triggered in perfect sync with one another. Surrounding the photo booth was a dark black tent that helped keep light out. Nearly 1,000 attendees entered the booth over the 3 days of the conference, creating 4,000 sets of images.

[Vimeo]

Beautiful, terrible images from firechaser Jeff Frost & team:

FIRE CHASERS – 4K download [exp 03/15] from Jeff Frost on Vimeo.

US wildfires burned 10 million acres in the US last year exceeding six billion dollars in costs, making it the most destructive annual natural disaster in the world. Fire Chasers plunges deeper into California wildfires than ever before with unprecedented access granted by CalFire and the breathtaking imagery of acclaimed film and photo artist, Jeff Frost. This visually groundbreaking project follows the intersecting lives of firefighters and those who record their fury; an epic adventure film with a vital message.

Coffee table photography book to be released through minormattersbooks.com.

[Vimeo] [Via]