I wish someone had taught me this in my first few years of photography because it would have saved me a lot of time.

3 secrets to better exposure in your photos.

You can go further with these concepts by coming to one of my next Shadow Hackers live workshop and you can also learn everything about Zones and exposure in my Exposed workshop.

Why this is way better than ETTR.

If you watch e my video on why Expose to the right is WRONG, this probably makes even more sense. It does the opposite. It lets you focus on the shadow where you should be and in doing so you’ll get more drama and stop over-exposing.

Does exposure even matter today?

It’s tempting to think this is not that important. Heck with packs like my natural HDR presets it’s honestly astounding how much exposure is in today’s RAW files.

But I promise. Doing exposure right changes your whole process. You will see more shadow and by extension light. You will learn to create drama and be the director of your photos and your in-camera and post-production work will improve really fast.

Why your meter make boring photos.

Is it wrong? Not exactly. l go into this more in my Shadow Hackers classes. But in short, a meter is just trying to give you a moderate exposure that is not clipped It works usually. But it’s not creating drama or nuance. It’s metering for a general-purpose photo and until you start overriding that with manual or just exposure compensation your photo will often be boring.

There are a lot of influencers talking about DXO PhotoLab 8. But most of those are sponsored videos or affiliates. This is 100% not. and today we do a no-nonsense review for pros.

Photo Lab 8 is subscription-free. But is it good? We’re gonna test it.

You can download a trial of Photo Lab Here. I’m also testing creating PowerFlow 8 for DXO. Good presets will help here. You can also use LUTS from packs like Filmist 2 in DXO.

Features and Price of DXO Photo Lab 8 vs Lightroom VS Capture One

There’s no doubt that at $10 USD per month, LR+PS which also includes cloud and a great mobile app is the most bang for the buck. But it also comes with being stuck in the Adobe ecosystem.

Capture One is another option that’s at this point pretty much subscription only. But it’s is good. While it lacks the advanced noise reduction of DXO Photo lab, Capture One is more like Lightroom in terms of overall developed features. But Lightroom is still ahead in terms of extra modules, export tools, and AI-powered selections.

But at $229 as of this writing, you could get Adobes PS and LR combo for nearly two years!

Are apps like DXO Photo Lab 8 getting better?

Paying more is not always bad. But we need to be given something special in return. The presets and actions I make here and not cheap. But they are true master-grade tools supported by my own time and energy and always listening to customers’ need.

Sadly this is not usually the case in larger software combines like DXO, Phase One, Adobe etc. They do what they think will make them more money and often they are out of touch.

Users keep telling DXO the basic features they need to improve like I did in my DXO Photo Lab 7 review, but the focus of development gets put on features that advertise better on new releases.

To be honest, Photo Lab 8 is much different than Photo Lab 7 and most of the complaints I had that are holding it back are still not fixed.

Time to play catch up tea.

Adobe is ahead in so many areas. Most RAW apps like DXO and Neo are behind in image processing features and then new features that will soon be requirements for pros like Content Credentials now integrated into the 1015 version of LR.

DXO, C1, and others don’t have to match Adobe features for the feature to be good. But they need to listen a lot closer to what the photographers using their product are saying and stop living in the echo chamber of what affiliates and fans are saying.

I rejected DXO sponsorship at this point not because I am against them. I am rooting for them. But I want to be able to say everything without bias

What’s next? You decide after watching my video above and tell me what you think.

Gavin Seim

Today’s video is another keystone in my Master Tips Series. I’ve shown in Shadow Hackers that contrast is not what we were taught and while shadow photography and pools should be first-year photography, it’s rarely taught anymore.

How to contrast photography pools improves all your photos fast.

In the video, I mentioned the free Portra 160 preset from Filmist, Silver 5 and Pictorialist. Also, make sure you join me for the next Shadow Hackers LIVE class.

Why shadow photography tools stop failed photos.

Taking advanced concepts and making simple methods out of them has been my mission lately because, in this AI world, practical photography technology is rarely taught anymore.

When I saw shadow block and contrast pools I also saw I was racking my brain to explain what I was seeing and how this worked. I realized that contrast is just pools of dark and light. But knowing the way those pools shape your photo changes everything.

Light and dark pools improve contrast.

We focus on shadow because if you start there great photos will naturally emerge. But as we see in the high key black and white you can not only use lighter pools but adjust them to make even windows disappear.

We’re using no cloning to Ai here. Just a practical use of tone value and zones. See the zone primer video here and we also look at them as we study shadow photography in Shadow Hackers.

There is no limit to your pools or to shadow photography

Once you start using shadow and contrast pools, they instantly give you building blocks to see any scene shadow first and build a strong image by moving, placing, and exposing elements to surround them in pools that lead the eyes.

You can have dark and light pools anywhere. But if you have none as we show in the “bad light” situation you will usually have a bland photo.

Contrast pools give you better photos and let you hack shadow hacking by simply framing your subjects with pools of feather-blended light and dark. shadow photography hacking completes the circle. Use pools from the camera to edit and you will be surprised.

Gavin Seim

The Drop color method starts with orange and green. But it does not stop there. Color is so misunderstood because colors are overused. This does not mean your images need to be low saturation.

Always know what color you need. Start with DROP COLOR.

In these videos you’ll see me using presets like Filmist, Silver, Natural HDR and more. This lets me apply years of testing instantly. But everything I show you here can also be done manually.

Ove the past weeks I’ve made a series of videos on specific color channels and what they do for and against our photos. Most are being used wrong and with just a slight easy HDR color adjustment the change is amazing.

Look close at BLUE and how it’s messing photos up…

Yes, the color matters in Black And White also…

You may have seen one or more of these but this post brings the entire series into one place so you can really understand the power of Drop color and HSL channels in both color and black-and-white photography.

So last but not least. Here’s how drop color affects black and white and how you can instantly make more impactful black-and-white edits.