| Cult of Mac

Picture this: The new 4K Stogram lets you have your way with Instagram

By

4K Stogram
Take control of your favorite Instagram content with 4K Stogram.
Screenshot: OpenMedia

This Instagram management post is presented by OpenMedia, maker of 4K Stogram.

The download world is filled with third-party tools intended to enhance your experience with other tools, apps and services — and sometimes they really do help. One such case is 4K Stogram, an Instagram viewer and download app for macOS, PC and Linux.

Avalanche uses AI to convert from Aperture to Lightroom (and preserves your edits)

By

Avalanche is a universal translator for photo apps.
Avalanche is a universal translator for photo apps.
Photo: CYME

Do you still have all your photos stuck in an Aperture library? Aperture won’t even launch in macOS Catalina, so you’re going to have to do something about that. The long-time answer has been to move to Adobe’s Lightroom, but then all your carefully crafted RAW edits are lost, or at least frozen into JPGs, never to be reversed.

Avalanche is a new Mac app that can convert your old Aperture library into a Lightroom library. What’s more, it uses machine learning to reverse-engineer your edits, and then does its best to redo those edits in Lightroom. It seems amazing. And because it doesn’t need the Aperture app installed on your Mac at all, you can use it even if you’ve already upgraded to Catalina.

Bring vivid HDR effects to your photos with one click [Deals]

By

Photomatix Bundle
With one-click presets, HDR styles and streamlined settings, this HDR software bundle makes image enhancement easy.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

One of the easiest ways to make any photo pop is to process it with High Dynamic Range, or HDR. Basically, it combines high and low exposures so that your photo represents a wide spectrum of light and color. HDR gives you a ton of creative options, which you can easily explore with the three Mac apps and plugins in the Photomatix Pro Plus Bundle, which we’re currently offering at an unbelievable discount.

Adobe’s new camera app brings ‘AI magic’ to iPhone photos

By

new camera app from Adobe
Raise the cool factor on your iPhone photos with the Adobe Photoshop Camera app.
Photo: Adobe

After finally bringing Photoshop to iPad, Adobe says it will roll out a new smartphone camera app with a slew of creative lenses and AI powers that come at the point of capture.

The upcoming Adobe Photoshop Camera seems to borrow the lens-swapping feature of Hipstamatic. Adobe promises it will give users “Photoshop-grade magic right from the viewfinder.”

Halide brings Deep Fusion-style photo processing to older iPhones

By

Smartest Processing,
Shot with Halide.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Today’s release of iOS 13.2 brings Apple’s new Deep Fusion feature, so iPhone 11 owners can start taking beautifully detailed photographs of sweaters. But if you have an older iPhone, Halide has you covered. The iOS photo app’s new Smartest Processing update brings Deep Fusion-style detail to anybody’s sweater shots.

How to get Portrait mode-style depth of field with any iPhone or iPad

By

Portrait Photos, no iPhone X required.
Take Portrait mode-style photos, no iPhone X required.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

We’ve written a lot about the Focos photo app here on Cult of Mac, because it’s like the Photoshop of focus. The universal iOS app lets you edit the focus of your Portrait mode photos in crazy depth (pun intended). But v2.0 just launched, and it’s hands-down amazing.

Focos 2 uses machine learning to calculate the depth of any photo, and then apply portrait-style blur to it. That means you can take portrait photos on the iPad and, wildest of all, you can apply a portrait background blur to photos you’ve saved from the internet.

How to remove the background from your Portrait photos

By

Geese with transparent background
Honk honk! Goodbye pesky background.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

The iPhone’s incredible Portrait mode does a great job of blurring the backgrounds of photos, making the subject stand out from busy backdrops. (Apple also uses this depth information for its truly awful Portrait Lighting effects — has anyone ever gotten a good result from the Stage Light filter? — but that’s another story.)

What if you could use the depth information inside Portrait photos to get rid of the background entirely? Wouldn’t that be something? Well, yes it would. And if you have the right app, it’s really easy to remove photo backgrounds.