Woke up early to make the 2hr drive up to Pasadena, CA to attend it’s annual Pro Photo Expo. Hanson Fong was speaking at 8AM so we made sure to be there for that, as he is always a wealth of information when it comes to posing people – big or small – into a pleasing portrait. We find that it is important to continually learn from great photographers so that we may provide our client the best images possible.

One of the things that we got the privilege of viewing first hand is Nik Software’s recently announced Viveza Photoshop plugin. Viveza uses U Point technology that I first saw in Nikon’s NX Capture software that allow the photo editor the ability to define control points that serve to restrict and isolate color/brightness changes to specific regions of the photograph without need for creating layer mask or complex selection first. This is a huge deal and I have been waiting for the port of the technology to Photoshop. Viveza will cost $250 and is expected to ship in April. Until then, you can use NX Capture software if you want to try the technology out yourself. Canon RAW shooter will need to convert their files to JPG in order for it to work with Nikon’s software.