Cats are truly remarkable creatures, and their incredible flexibility is just one of the many reasons why we adore them. With their lean, athletic bodies and razor-sharp reflexes, they can contort themselves into all sorts of amazing positions that seem almost impossible. It’s no wonder they’re often called the acrobats of the animal world!
At Paws Planet, we’re big fans of feline flexibility, which is why we’ve put together a collection of 25 stunning photos that showcase just how agile and limber cats can be. From twisting themselves into pretzels to leaping effortlessly through the air, these amazing animals never fail to amaze us with their incredible feats of dexterity.
Whether you’re a dedicated cat lover or simply appreciate the beauty of these graceful creatures, we’re sure you’ll be blown away by the stunning images we’ve gathered here. So sit back, relax, and prepare to be amazed by the awe-inspiring flexibility of our feline friends!
Here in this gallery, you can find 25 funny cat photos that show their bodies are so flexible and agile. All photos are linked and lead to the sources from which they were taken. Please feel free to explore further works of these photographers on their collections or their personal sites.
#1. Where does this cat start and how long is it?
Image Source: Imgur
#2. Is this a cat or a snake?
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#3. “In a νase, just chilling!”
Image Source: Imgur
#4. “The sunbathing cat, Tiny, melting on the ρorch”
Image Source: Imgur
#5. “My sink is clogged.”
Image Source: Imgur
#6. “They were napping when suddenly, the cat melted!”
Image Source: Imgur
#7. “Don’t eat me, please!”
Image Source: Imgur
#8. “Complete liquid phase, established!”
Image Source: Imgur
#9. The “donut” position
Image Source: Imgur
#10. “There’s a cat spilled all oνer my couch…”
Image Source: Imgur
#11. A very “flexible” way of doing some bird-hunting
Image Source: Imgur
#12. Life is better when the couch is exclusiνely yours.
Image Source: Imgur
#13. “Filling the sink to the brim”
Image Source: Imgur
#14. 95% liquid, 5% cat
Image Source: Imgur
#15. Kittens, don’t try this at home.
Image Source: Imgur
#16. “Well, Halloween is coming up, but 3 black cats in a pot? This can’t be good.”
Image Source: Imgur
#17. “Current status: melting in bed, thank you…”
Image Source: Imgur
#18. A cup of kitty to-go, please!
Image Source: Imgur
#19. “I’m ready to store your belongings.”
Image Source: Imgur
#20. “When your cat arriνes in the mail”
Image Source: Imgur
#21. This is what we call cat comfort!
Image Source: Imgur
#22. “The cutest flowers eνer!”
Image Source: Imgur
#23. “Nothing to worry about friends, I’m alright.”
Image Source: Imgur
#24. “Elasticat”
Image Source: Imgur
#25. Whoeνer said bones were anatomically required was wrong.
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Even as couples hire fewer wedding vendors every year, photographers still remain a requirement for 94% of weddings. If you run your own freelance photography business, it might be time to cash in on some exciting new hardware and see how it can change your practice.
The Super Endurance Foldable Quadcopter is a beginner-friendly drone with two high-resolution cameras and a long flight time, and you can get one for $99.99 (reg. $149).
Take your photography business to new heights.
This foldable drone can sit with the rest of your photography gear until it’s time for some dynamic shots from above. Your purchase comes with two batteries for a total of up to 40 minutes flight time. Connect your phone for a first person view as seen through either front-facing or bottom-facing cameras.
The front-facing camera has a 120-degree wide-angle 1080p HD lens for high-resolution shots from afar. Populate your business’s website with dynamic shots of weddings, or expand to nature photography and use Follow Mode to get your drone to keep a steady distance from the remote. The bottom-facing camera could be an excellent resource for unique shots from straight above. Capture video of a married couple’s first dance or get a lay of the land so you can find somewhere to set up camp and wait for the perfect shot.
This drone has a multitude of control features that could make it an asset to professional photographers. Altitude hold mode commands your drone to keep steady. Capture long exposure shots, or use the multiple channels of control for an exciting roller coaster of a video. The one-key flip means you can send your drone rolling through the sky at a moment’s notice. You can also press a single key when it’s time for your quadcopter to come back to you and land.
Save on a beginner-friendly drone
Expand the services offered by your photography business.
For a limited time, get the Super Endurance Foldable Quadcopter Drone for Beginners on sale for $99.99 (reg. $149).
It’s been a busy month on N-Photo magazine. First, I captured a long exposure of a waterfall before visiting the Cornish coast to capture summer blooms. Then, I photographed the Milky Way core (in the middle of the day) and finished by capturing a blurry image of the Loch Ness monster. And that was all before I photographed a portrait of a person – who doesn’t exist, I might add – and a zebra, riding a unicycle in front of a supermoon…
If you haven’t already guessed, I didn’t actually photograph any of those increasingly absurd images. Instead, I used an artificial-intelligence image generator: DALL•E 2. This clever browser-based software uses AI to generate images of whatever you type into a search bar.
• Why not try out the best AI image generators for yourself
Admittedly, it’s not perfect and it struggles to deal with more complicated or abstract requests. However, it’s seemingly appeared out of nowhere and joins a growing list of web-based trends and technologies – such as deepfakes and NFTs – that have the potential to dramatically shift the status quo.
AI is nothing new. Its implementation dates back to the Fifties and today varying forms of AI are used in a variety of industries, including healthcare, cybersecurity and, of course, photography. That’s right, deep-learning AF is AI-driven – and so is Adobe’s proprietary Adobe Sensei. These are all practical and exciting uses of AI, but on the other hand, there’s this whole dystopian idea of AI becoming sentient and inevitably attempting to destroy the world (ahem, The Terminator).
Here’s hoping that a chess computer hellbent on world domination is a little way off yet, but whether or not AI poses a threat to creatives is arguably a different matter. Last September, an AI-generated artwork knowingly won the digital category in the Colorado State Fair’s 2022 Fine Arts competition, which caught plenty of media attention and caused a bit of a ruckus online. And a book published in 2018 called 1 The Road is supposedly the first AI-generated novel ever made.
The question that most interests me, though, is if cheap AI creatives become virtually indistinguishable from human works, where does that leave the creative industry? Photography would surely be affected. And yet, I think it would fare better than many other mediums by its very nature. Most genres of photography revolve around capturing a specific moment in time or a specific person.
So, we won’t have to say, “Hasta la vista, baby” to proper photography until AIs are given legs. Hopefully…
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If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading about the best Nikon Z lenses for FX and DX cameras. If you’re clinging to your DSLR you can also check out the best lenses for the Nikon D850, and it you’re embracing the revolution then take a look at the best lenses for the Nikon Z50.
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Owls dive head-first to attack their prey. Their silent, stealth-like wings allow them to swoosh to the ground undetected.
A group of Wichita State University (WSU) students – made up mostly of aerospace engineering graduate students – is trying to replicate the owl’s uniquely designed wings to create silent drones for NASA’s University Student Research Challenge.
They turned to nature to try to find a possible solution.
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Drones have become a necessary tool in the TV news-gathering business. They’re also used for network sports events, surveillance, surveying, real estate photography, and much more.
One downside to drones is they’re noisy.
“One major problem that we have in aerospace is making drones quieter. So, we figured one way to make drones quieter is to look to nature. Look to the owl, because that’s obviously a well-known quiet animal and find a way to be able to replicate what makes an owl so quiet, and create strong propeller blades that are able to make drones quieter as a result,” said AeroFeathers team leader Will Johnston, a graduate student from Omaha.
The idea of the project was born last semester when the group of students formed the MadLab Innovation Club. One of the competitions they stumbled upon was the NASA University Student Research Challenge.
“And so what we found is that there’s really three main parts of the owl feather that make it quiet, that we tried to replicate. So, basically, the three parts of the owl feather are a soft velvety coat. On the leading edge, we have thick comb-like serrations. And then, on the trailing edge, we have these really thin flexible fibers that kind of feel like human hair bristles, if you will. And so this essentially is in part what makes an owl so quiet when it flies,” explained Johnston.
“It is actually the most fun. I guess this has never been attempted before. This is very new. We get to design 3D print tested, and then, you know, replay the process, again and again, to see if it makes sense, the design makes sense or not. So it’s, it’s pretty exciting,” said team member Amulya Lamte.
“We’re hoping to actually be able to produce 3D printed propeller blades that are able to make drones quieter. So hopefully, that sound pressure level decrease compared to normal blades about five decibels or so,” added Johnston.
If the AeroFeathers project gets off the ground, the idea could be applied to so many other things, big and small.
Valley Center woman has been driving school buses for 45 years and is still rolling
“It could be applied to ceiling fans or wind turbines or hand dryers, you know, or just the table fans if you can. Anything involving a fan, basically,” said Lamte.
“So, restroom hand dryers, vacuum cleaners. Anything to do with spinning blades. Wind turbines, that kind of potential use if we can demonstrate that these propeller blades are effective at what they’re doing,” said Johnston.
NASA funded the AeroFeathers team with a $40,000 initial grant. If the MaDLab crew can raise $2,000 on its own, NASA will come through with an additional $40,000. The funds would be used to buy a large-scale printer for printing the owl-inspired propeller blades.
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Peter Callesen is an artist from Mors, Denmark who specializes in the art of paper cutting. He creates breathtaking architectural sculptures using only a single sheet of paper, showcasing buildings in miniature and in states of ruin with incredible detail.
Peter’s works mainly feature white paper, particularly A4 sheets which are commonly used to carry information today. By stripping away all information and starting with a blank white A4 paper sheet, he found a material that everyone can relate to. This blank canvas allows him to infuse different meanings into his creations.
The fragility of the thin white paper adds to the tragic and romantic themes in his works. Through his art, Peter invites us to see the beauty and potential in something as simple as a single sheet of paper.
Scroll down and inspire yourself. Check Peter’s Instagram and Website for more amazing work and information.
Markus Brunetti: Facades III Yossi Milo Gallery 245 Tenth Avenue New York Through May 6
For nearly two decades, artist Markus Brunetti has embarked on the near-Sisyphean task of documenting historic cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and synagogues, throughout Europe. His medium of choice is photography, and, in collaboration with his wife and creative partner Betty Schöner, he documents buildings at a granular level: Each subject is photographed in thousands of shots, one square meter at a time, and then is stitched together in post-production to create monumentally scaled canvases of staggering detail. FACADES III, on view at Yossi Milo Gallery, is the latest installation of this grand project. The images’ meticulous execution is impressive.
In this era of mass—and instant—image production, Brunetti’s project stands out for the relatively glacial pace of the work. The title of each piece indicates the span of time between the first photograph and the final product. For example, Lincoln, The Cathedral Church of St. Mary, on display at Yossi Milo, was scaffolded for approximately three decades, so, as the restoration commenced, the duo photographed only partial areas of the facade over a period of several years.
That same consideration extends to the treatment of seasons, as the stitching together of those many images requires consistency in both lighting, surrounding foliage, and weather conditions. One example is Rocca di Calascio, Santa Maria della Pieta in Abruzzo. “We visited it years ago during spring, when the surrounding meadows were bright green and the mountains in the background were snowless,” Brunetti told AN. “Combined with the slightly pink color of the church’s facade, it was too picturesque, almost like a postcard. To create a coherent overall image and achieve the aesthetic we sought, we had to wait nearly a year for the end of winter before we could return to resume photographing the church.”
Eschewing the singular image favored by the Bechers, another German couple who worked together, the technical challenge of executing architectural photography is equally matched, if not more so, by the editing process in which those thousands of individual images are stitched into a seamless image. This extreme level of detail elevates the textural quality of the duo’s subjects and delivers prints of visual complexity and nuance. “The process of digitally assembling the individual shots is the most time-consuming part of our practice, as we cannot use any automated processes, but have to assemble everything manually, which can take a period of several months,” continued Brunetti. “This is the symbiosis between photography and painting—creating an image by layering and arranging according to our idealized vision. After we’ve made an image that is satisfactory, we’ll print the work in the larger scale and examine it for any faults or discrepancies. We’ll then return to the drawing board to make any necessary changes.”
The result, for the viewer, is transportive. Patinated ceramic pan tiles, masonry detailing, colored marble, gargoyles and all the nooks and crannies—sometimes containing pigeons or creeping moss—of these cultural reliquaries are rendered lifelike, all the more so through the encompassing collage perspectives, which offer views that are not possible in reality.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, May 6, 2023/einpresswire.com / — Kuwaiti photographer omar AlSayed Omar takes rare photos of the pelican, which is classified among the endangered birds, according to the World Conservation Organization. The bird documentary trip began from Boubyan Island in Kuwait, where the pelican was spotted for the first time, and Omar flew to the bird’s hometown in Kerkini Lake, Greece todocument one of the largest living flying bird species. He said,“I have managed to take some shots of Dalmatian pelicans during the breeding season in which their beak skin changed to red for male and orange for the female.” (245 to 351 cm in wingspan and up to 180 cm in length)
wildlife and nature photography have been gaining popularity in recent years, with more people becoming interested in capturing images of the natural world. This can be seen through the boom of social media platforms like Instagram, which have become popular among photographers and nature enthusiasts who share their work online.
Additionally, the rise of ecotourism and the increasing awareness of conservation issues have contributed to the growing trend in wildlife photography. Many are interested in capturing images of rare and endangered species, as well as the beauty of natural landscapes to promote awareness of conservation efforts. However, it takes more than a few pictures for pros to be satisfied with their job. Considered among the best, Omar Al-Sayed Omar has taken wildlife and nature photography to the next level.
Omar Al-Sayed Omar is one of the well-known names from Kuwait when it comes to skilled nature photography. A Telecom engineer by profession, Omar is a member of the board of directors of the Environment Lens team in Kuwait. Some of his works have been published in National Geographic magazine as well as in notable websites.
An artistic content creator, Omar showcases various types of photo content for a range of pursuits – capturing inspired imagery of landscape, wildlife and nature. He is committed to memorializing significant moments to be treasured for a lifetime through a creative lens.
Photographing wildlife often requires long hours of observation to capture the perfect shot. Omar has perseverance to land the shot, with a deep appreciation for the natural world.
Omar Al-Sayed Omar has a creative eye for visually stunning images. He is able to see the wonder of the natural world and translate it into compelling photographs. With a clear understanding of the raw environment, including the behavior of the animals, he anticipates their movements and actions.
Nature is unpredictable, and the perfect shot may not always present itself. Omar is highly adaptable and able to adjust to changing circumstances, whether shifting light conditions, changes in weather, or the movement of animals. He always prioritizes the welfare of the animals and never puts the environment at risk for the sake of a photograph, respecting the natural zones and its inhabitants.
Omar Al-Sayed Omar is also a social media influencer whose incredible collection of work makes him a notable face in the digital domain. As an artistic content creator and a brand strategist, it’s no secret that content in the form of photos has become the most popular choice for consumption today.
For Omar Al-Sayed Omar, the essence of photography lies within the beauty of capturing the lifetime moments. His work ranges from small internet shoots to branding campaigns. Each project is designed and executed to creatively attain his clients’ goals, while engaging with their target audience.
Omar Al-Sayed Omar is among the growing crop of independent photographers who have signaled seismic changes in the entertainment industry. His heart pounding and emotionally driven photographs serve as the icebreaker among his fans and supporters.
His content is tailored to represent a very recognisable and particular aesthetic. All of his hashtags target only people who are drawn to a certain theme.“Those are the ones likely to stick around and click ‘follow’,” says Omar.
Take a look at his Instagram handle where he has more than 118K followers and treat yourself to some daily dose of adventures. On social media, he shares tips on photography skills, funny videos, and shares entertaining reels from his personal life.
Jane Vaughann Dunn Pellier Media +1 305-444-3321 email us here
Affinity Photo 2 is a powerful image editing software that offers a wide range of features and tools to help users create stunning digital art, edit photos, and enhance their images. Developed by Serif, Affinity Photo 2 is a brilliant alternative to popular editing software giants like Adobe Photoshop. Affinity Photo 2 is known for its advanced capabilities, including professional-level editing tools, high-quality image processing and an intuitive interface — making it a popular choice for photographers, designers, and digital artists. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, Affinity Photo 2 offers the tools and features you need to take your creativity to the next level.
In our original Affinity Photo review back in 2021, we thought that it was a great piece of software with a good selection of some basic editing tools and we enjoyed the tone mapping and liquifying capabilities. While it’s had a bunch of updates along the way over the 8 years between V1 and V2, V2 has some whole new features which may be worth upgrading to Affinity Photo 2 for. We rated Affinity Photo 2 very well in our best photo editing apps guide, and we think it’s a fantastic affordable alternative to Photoshop.
Affinity Photo 2 review 2023
Affinity Photo 2: Pricing and Subscription
Affinity Photo 2 is subscription free, much to the delight of those who want to own their software outright rather than paying a monthly fee as you do with Lightroom and Photoshop. At the time of writing, you can purchase Affinity Photo 2 for Mac or Windows for $69.99/£69.99, and it’s also available on the iPad for $19.99/£19.99. If you want the entire Affinity collection known as V2 (which includes software Photo, Publisher and Designer), you can purchase the universal license for $169.99/£169.99 and get all the apps on all the platforms. And, if you upgrade from V1, they’re also running an offer where you’ll get 25% off when you upgrade.
The disadvantage with subscription-free software is that you only pay for that specific version of the software, so in this instance, when V3 eventually comes out, you will have to pay to upgrade to that version from V2. However, there were 8 years between the 2014 V1 and 2022 V2 release, with many updates in-between, so we think that $69.99 for potentially up to 8 years worth of the software is pretty good.
There’s also no option to pay for the license in monthly installments. While $69.99 is affordable for such a powerful editing program, not everyone can afford to shell out $69.99 in one go, especially given the cost-of-living crisis and the rise in food & utility costs over the last few years. We’re not suggesting Affinity switches to a subscription basis, but offering users an option to pay the $69.99 split across a fixed number of payments may make the software more accessible to a lot of people. That said, Affinity does offer a 30-day free trial for those who want to try before they buy.
Affinity Photo 2: User Interface
The develop persona is where you can make initial edits to your overall image — similar to what you’d do in Lightroom or Photoshop’s Camera Raw. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Interface split into five different personas
Layout not too dissimilar to Photoshop
Will likely spend most of your time in the Develop and Photo personas
One aspect of Affinity Photo 2 that separates it from its competition is its use of personas. The personas are essentially different workspaces within the software, each having a different purpose. We spent most of our time in the Develop and Photo persona where we made initial edits to our images (like you would in Lightroom or Photoshop’s Camera Raw), then once that’s done you are taken to the Photo persona where you can work with masks, layers and filters — this persona is similar in layout to Photoshop. There’s also a liquify persona, a tone mapping persona and an export persona.
The Photo persona is where most of the editing is done and is similar to Photoshop’s layout. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Like with any software, there is a learning curve if you’ve not used it before. That said, there are plenty of guides and information in the software itself, plus a plethora of tutorials on Affinity’s YouTube channel, so we found it simple enough to find the information we needed when we wanted to do something. If you are proficient in Photoshop then we think you’ll get along with Affinity Photo 2 just fine.
There’s not much in the way of organization and cataloging in Affinity Photo 2, so you just import the photos you want to edit straight from your computer library. There are many different ways to organize your images in your own library — one of the ways we prefer is to have a main folder for the year, then split that year into four quarters, then within each quarter have another folder for the location/shoot.
We’d love to see some kind of library system in Affinity Photo 2, not only to make everything more organized within the software itself, but we think it would give Affinity an edge over Photoshop, its biggest rival.
Affinity Photo 2: Key Features
Macros offer a convenient, time-saving solution to automate your workflow
Now has non-destructive RAW editing
New hue range and luminance masks work very well
Affinity Photo 2 now features a Live mesh warp tool, a feature that wasn’t included in V1. Overall this likely isn’t going to be a feature that’s heavily used for photo editing, particularly astrophotography editing, but it’s a very useful feature for warping and distorting images to create some really interesting effects. They can be used to straighten horizons or any crooked lines in images or can be applied to portrait images to manipulate any body or face shapes.
There’s even a Repeat Mesh Warp option in the filters menu, which is great if you’re using multiple layers and want to apply the same warp to all of them.
The Live Mesh Warp tool can be used to distort or warp aspects of an image — in this image we used it to straighten the bend in the road. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Another great feature of Affinity Photo that we love is the Macros. A bit like Photoshop’s ‘Actions’, and not a million miles away from Lightroom presets, Macros are a feature that allows users to record a set of steps in the photo editing or manipulation process that can then be saved and applied to other photos, essentially automating your image editing workflow.
We found that we needed to take the time to make the edits to create the macro in the first place, but it saves us from needing to do a lot of the same repetitive or time-consuming tasks on multiple photos. They can also be shared with others and it’s possible to import macros, too.
Macros can be used to record specific editing tasks to automate your workflow and save a lot of time in your editing process. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
When we had a go at recording our own macro, we found it to be an incredibly straightforward process and easy to navigate for a beginner. All you need to do is click the record button in the macro panel, perform the edits, then click the stop button and save it, give it a name, and choose a category (if you want to stay organized).
There are some macros built into Affinity Photo 2 to use if you don’t want to create your own, but if you’re editing astrophotography photos, chances are you’ll want to create your own anyway as it’s more of a niche genre of photography. You can record pretty much any editing step into a macro, even live filters, although there are a few exceptions.
It’s not possible to add a gradient, rearrange the order of layers, or resize an image by percentage. Even rotating an image within a macro can’t be done right now, which could potentially be annoying if you shoot with an older DSLR camera that doesn’t differentiate between a portrait and landscape orientation photo in-camera.
The product expert for Affinity Photo, James Ritson, has uploaded a whole load of free astrophotography macros which we found especially beneficial when editing.
We used the luminosity mask to brighten the sky while not overexposing the white tones on the puffin. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Version 2 came with some new live masks, one of which was the hue range mask. With this mask you can make adjustments to specific hues in an image, making them darker, brighter, or changing the color altogether (a really powerful tool if you do any product photography). This tool can also be used to manipulate the colors in those gorgeous deep sky images, and as these masks are non-destructive, you can easily go back and change them later on.
Another new live mask in version 2 is the luminosity mask, which works in a similar way to the hue range mask, only instead of manipulating the colors, you’re manipulating the luminance of an image. We found these masks a little confusing to begin with so we’d recommend experimenting with them a bit until you get comfortable. The Affinity Photo youtube channel has many tutorial videos to help with this.
Live filters are an incredibly powerful tool and a big player in maintaining a non-destructive workflow within Affinity Photo 2. Think of live filters like adjustment layers that apply filters instead of your regular adjustments. They also have built-in masks, so let’s say you have a portrait and you want to blur the background more — you can add a Gaussian blur live filter, then use a mask to bring the person back into clarity. But if you decide there’s too much blur, thanks to the live filters being non-destructive, you can easily go back to the Gaussian blur live filter and reduce it and see the results in real-time. Live filters could be great to use in astrophotography editing, they could be used for star reduction or glow, sharpening, luminance and color noise reduction — the list goes on.
The hue range mask can be used to isolate or change a certain color in an image — we used this tool to isolate the green hues of the beach huts. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Affinity Photo 2: Astrophotography Features
Affinity Photo can easily stack astro images with a number of different calibration frames. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Astrophotography stacking tool is very accurate
Remove background tool brings dark skies back to black
Gets confused if you try to stack images with the sky and foreground
One astro-specific feature of Affinity Photo 2 that we enjoyed is the Astrophotography Stack persona. Having had issues with stacking in our Adobe Photoshop review 2023, we were intrigued to see how Affinity Photo 2 would handle an Astro image with stars and foreground.
We stacked a few light frames with one dark frame and Affinity Photo 2 actually performed surprisingly well. The software prioritizes aligning the stars rather than aligning the foreground, so we found that all of the stars throughout the frame were lined up perfectly, but the foreground was out (as opposed to Photoshop where the foreground was aligned but the stars weren’t).
Some in-depth astrophotographers and astro editors may replace the foreground anyway though, so this isn’t too much of an issue. This also won’t be a problem at all though if you’re taking exclusively sky images with no foreground, such as nebulas or constellations. Its ease of use and impressive results will definitely make Affinity Photo 2 very attractive to astrophotographers.
The Astrophotography stacking tool lines up the stars pretty much perfectly, although if there’s a foreground in your image it could throw it off. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
While many aspects of Affinity Photo involve somewhat of a learning curve, using the astrophotography stacking tool is very straightforward and easy to get to grips with, even for a beginner. It’s essentially a case of adding in your photos, clicking ‘stack’, and it’s done.
There are options to add light frames, bias frames, dark frames, dark flat frames and flat frames (and you can add as few or as many as you like), so there’s room in Affinity Photo 2 to really produce some super detailed Astro photos.
We also really liked the Remove Background tool for astro photos — you just move the sampler to a background area of the image and it’ll use AI to remove the background and any color casts, making the dark skies even darker.
The Remove Background tool is useful for bringing those dark skies back to their original dark state. (Image credit: Kimberley Lane)
Should you buy Affinity Photo 2?
If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to Photoshop, then look no further than Affinity Photo 2. It does have its drawbacks, like not being available as a mobile app except on iPad, no integration with social media and no way of creating a contact sheet, but as V1 had so many updates since its release, there’s definitely scope for Serif to include these in future updates over time.
We think Affinity Photo 2 would be a great option for Astrophotographers specifically with its dedicated Astrophotography stacking tool and the remove background tool, making image stacking a breeze. While it’s not as robust as Photoshop, it can absolutely satisfy your image editing needs and provide you with some beautiful results.
If Affinity Photo 2 isn’t for you
The obvious rival to Affinity Photo 2 is, of course, Adobe Photoshop. The global mainstay of image manipulation, Photoshop is seriously hard to beat, and if you’d rather use software on a subscription basis rather than pay for a universal license while gaining access to all the professional industry-level editing tools, Photoshop will likely be the one for you.
Corel Paintshop Pro could be an option to consider if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly program with a broad range of tools that will be easy to grow and learn with. It’s not as advanced as Adobe or Serif, and it only works with Windows, but it features some excellent AI editing tools and won’t overwhelm you with confusing interfaces and has three separate workspaces. Like Affinity Photo 2, Corel Paintshop Pro is subscription-free.
If you’re looking for a high-quality, compact gimbal camera that can go anywhere, look no further than the Feiyu Pocket 3. This innovative camera offers a range of features, making it the ultimate choice for photographers and videographers who need to capture smooth and stable footage in any situation.
One of the standout features of the Feiyu Pocket 3 is its ultra-compact design, which makes it small enough to fit in your pocket. Despite its size, however, the Pocket 3 packs a punch when it comes to performance. It features a 3-axis stabilisation system that ensures your footage is always smooth and steady, even when you’re on the move.
The Pocket 3 also offers 4K/60fps video recording and a 120-degree ultra-wide-angle lens, which allows you to capture stunning footage with incredible clarity and detail. The camera also has a touchscreen display that makes it easy to control, even when you’re on the go.
Other features of the Pocket 3 include built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for seamless connectivity, multiple shooting modes (including time-lapse, slow-motion, and panorama), and up to 270 minutes of battery life. The camera also supports micro SD cards up to 512GB, so you’ll never run out of storage space, check out our recent review of the Lexar Professional 1066x microSDXC UHS-I
One of the unique features of the Pocket 3 is its cordless gimbal, which can be detached from the remote control handle to transform it into a multi-purpose, go-anywhere mountable camera. With magnetic installation, you can unlock more shooting angles than you ever thought possible and control the camera from the handle with the Feiyu App in your hand to achieve the best filming angle.
The Feiyu Pocket 3 is also waterproof, with an IPX8 rating that allows you to take stunning still images and time-lapse photography at depths of over 20 meters. And with the ability to connect directly to your smartphone via Wi-Fi, you can easily download photos or videos in real-time and share them on social media.
Overall, the Feiyu Pocket 3 is the ultimate compact gimbal camera for anyone who needs to capture smooth and stable footage on the go. To learn more about this innovative camera and back the Kickstarter project, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/feiyutech/feiyu-pocket-3-compact-and-versatile-3-axis-gimbal-camera.
(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) By Ayoub Khaddaj
(Photo feature) BEIRUT, May 6 (KUNA) — Lebanon has a unique geographic aspect and geological formations, especially a chain of caves that attract nature lovers and boost the country’s tourism. Lebanon’s caves are divided into two groups, horizental and vertical. The most famous horizental cave is Jeita Grotto, extending over more than 12 km. Vertical caves are called “sinkholes”, with Fouara Dara being the deepest at over 600 meters. Only experts can enter sinkholes with special equipment, while nature lovers can visit horizental caves with guides and safety equipment. (end) ayb.ag
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