Dan Carr - Shutter Muse Founder & Chief Educator

Macphun Changes Its Name to Skylum Software

April 14, 2022October 30, 2017 by Dan Carr

In the last couple of years, Macphun have emerged as a huge player in the photography software industry, and they seem to be gaining momentum every month. The company started life by creating iOS apps, but then quickly moved into image editing with a number of task-specific plugins for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. In the last couple of years however, the company has switched gears and produced two incredibly powerful programs called Aurora HDR and Luminar which operate as standalone programs, or plugins for other pieces of software. In my opinion, Aurora HDR is the best HDR program out there …

How to Add a Signature Watermark to Your Photos in Lightroom Classic

December 6, 2019October 29, 2017 by Dan Carr

Adding a watermark of some sort to you images should be considered a necessity if you’re going to share them online or with potential clients. Over the years there have been many instances where new clients have come to me, having found a photo of mine on the internet somewhere. It’s not always possible to determine the copyright holder of an image from the metadata, because much of the metadata is stripped from photos when they are uploaded to social sharing websites. Having a clear watermark somewhere on your image will give you a fighting chance at being found if …

REVIEW: Cecilia Leather Camera Straps

November 11, 2019October 26, 2017 by Dan Carr

It’s pretty hard to stand out from the crowd in the camera strap market and it seems that every couple of months I get another press release from someone that claims to have the “next big innovation” in this sector. I also get my fair share of requests from people to test their latest straps, and usually it’s pretty hard to get excited about that prospect. Recently I got an email from the folks at Cecilia though, and what struck me right away was the fact that they weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel with some form of clever sliding …

CanvasPop Print Service Review

March 22, 2024October 26, 2017 by Dan Carr

Printing images on canvas has become very popular over the last few years and CanvasPop has emerged as one of the more prominent online companies to offer this service. They recently reached out to me and asked if I’d like to test their services, and given that I’d never reviewed a print service before, I thought it would be fun. Up to now I’ve always had my own prints created locally in Vancouver, BC, so I haven’t had a good answer for people when readers have asked for an online printer recommendation. Armed with a credit for about $100 to …

3 Ways to Watermark your Photos Using Photoshop CC

December 6, 2019October 25, 2017 by Dan Carr

In this video I’ll show you three different ways to watermark your photos in Photoshop CC so that you can choose the one that fits best with your workflow. We’ll cover placing embedded smart objects, as well as utilizing Adobe CC Libraries to store commonly used graphic assets. The logo that I’m using for my watermark was created by Photologo, a great service that makes hand-drawn logos for photographers. I’ve written a lot more about this service, and my experience as a customer, in a previous Photologo review. Watermark Photoshop Tutorial

How to Recover Deleted Photos From Your Camera’s Memory Card (Stellar Photo Recovery Review)

December 6, 2019October 25, 2017 by Dan Carr

Accidents do happen, and if you take photos for long enough, at some point you’re probably going to find yourself in a situation where you’ve accidentally deleted images from a memory card. This sounds like a total disaster, but actually you might be surprised to find out how easy it is to get those photos back. Whether you delete a single image, or format an entire card, most of the data actually remains in place and all you need is a piece of software that’s smart enough to dig it out. You can’t do this forever, eventually the data will …

How to Auto Import Multiple Edits into Lightroom From Photoshop Round Trip

December 6, 2019October 15, 2017 by Dan Carr

Video Tutorial Get it on YouTube here, or scroll down for the full text description. Auto Importing Photoshop Edits into Lightroom At some point in the development of Adobe Lightroom CC an important change has been made that is sure to please a lot of photographers. So far this doesn’t seem to have been reported on, and Adobe’s own online resources still teach a now outdated methodology for this particular important piece of workflow. What we’re talking about today is the process for round tripping a photo from Lightroom into Photoshop and then back into Lightroom again. Most seasoned …

How to Set up Your Canon Camera for an Aquatech Underwater Housing

July 8, 2023October 11, 2017 by Dan Carr

When the Canon 5D Mark IV came out I wanted to buy an underwater housing for it so I could begin to experiment with some new types of photography. I went with an Aquatech Elite housing, and I’m guessing you did too if you’ve ended up on this page, or at least you’re thinking about it. This isn’t going to be a review of the product in any way, it’s simply a quick guide to getting it all set up. At the time of writing this, the Canon 5D Mark IV is the current model, but I’m pretty sure there …

Wordpress for photographersWordpress_beginners

Wordpress For Photographers – Beginners Guide

April 20, 2022October 3, 2017 by Dan Carr

WordPress is an incredible tool for photographers to use when they need a professional looking website. It’s also one of the cheapest ways to get a full-featured awesome design that can integrate a blog and sales portals for your prints. Learn all the basics in this feature-length guide for beginners.

MindShift Gear BackLight 36L Backpack Review

April 18, 2023September 26, 2017 by Dan Carr

In this review we’re taking a look at the BackLight 36L outdoor photography pack from MindShift Gear. I’ve been testing this as my main photo pack for the last month, prior to its public release. As usual, there’s a ton of photos in this review, as well as a video walk-through of the features and some suggestions about other bags that you might consider when looking to buy a bag of this size for outdoor photography. For those that aren’t familiar with the brand, MindShift Gear is Think Tank Photo’s sister company. Whilst Think Tank concentrates more on the urban, …