Google Photos has a decent search experience right now. I was recently trying to find some photos of my sister's engagement from a few years ago, and a simple “yellow dress” with her name added in front brought all the images to my fingertips within moments. But Google thinks it …
Read More »Your Photos Aren’t Real
At a splashy media event this week at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google announced four new Pixel phones. But the most important stuff unveiled at the Made By Google event wasn’t the hardware itself, but rather all of the generative AI tools packed into the devices. Most notable …
Read More »Camera Face-Off: We Pit Smartphones From Xiaomi, Oppo, and Honor to Find a Winner
The best camera is always the one you have with you. That makes a smartphone’s camera one of its most important features—after all, phone makers have been vying for the title of the “best camera phone” for decades. Interestingly, the top Chinese phones today have crazy good camera hardware; namely, …
Read More »Analog Photography: The Beginner’s Guide to Film Cameras
Film is like the indestructible black knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail: It's not dead yet. Digital photography is well into its third decade, yet film keeps hanging on, lying there shouting, “It's just a flesh wound!” I'd argue that film photography will never die. In the postapocalyptic future, …
Read More »What Lumens, Lux, and Other Lighting Gear Terms Mean
Planning your lighting for a photo or video shoot can be complicated, and the terminology used to measure light in lighting equipment can make things even more confusing. When shopping online, most lights list “lumens” or “lux” among their technical specs, though sometimes “lumens” is written as “luminous flux.” You …
Read More »How to Choose the Right Camera: A Step-by-Step Guide
The first thing to know about buying a digital camera in 2024 is that it's virtually impossible to buy a bad one. You probably have a great camera in your hand right now. For many people, a smartphone will be camera enough, but if you want a camera separate from …
Read More »Adobe Adds an AI-Powered Eraser to Lightroom
Photo bombing is dead. Adobe is adding an artificial-intelligence-powered Generative Remove feature to its Lightroom photo editor that makes it dead simple to zap out unwanted elements, like that annoying guy in the background. The new feature is in a public beta-testing phase, but it will work across the Lightroom …
Read More »Apple’s Photo Bug Exposes the Myth of ‘Deleted’
Last week, an alarming complaint popped up from iPhone owners on Reddit and elsewhere: Old photos, long since deleted, had resurfaced in their Photos app. Vacations, nudes, concerts, all unexpectedly returned like an unwelcome Pet Sematary cat. Today Apple finally acknowledged the bug and pushed out a fix. But the …
Read More »I’m a Boy. Does Playing Female Characters in Video Games Make Me Gay?
I’m a guy “in real life,” but I’ve always played female characters in video games. More and more people say this means I’m either secretly gay/trans or a total creep. Am I allowed to just prefer it? —Gender Player Dear Player, It sounds like you have a lot of people …
Read More »The Best Total Solar Eclipse Photos
The arrival of the total solar eclipse in the US has brought with it an impressive array of photographs as well. If you weren't able to find a spot to view the eclipse in person—or if it was stuck behind uncooperative clouds—you can at least get a sense of its …
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