Photography, discounts, reviews, guidence and more
Category: Discounts, Promotions, and Coupon Codes
I work hard to get the best deals I can for my readers.
These posts contain the various discount, promotions, and coupon codes I can offer you. Take note of which offers are limited time offers. Expiration dates/times are listed.
And check back often as I’m starting to be able to get better deals just for my readers that will be posted here.
Disclosure: any post with the hashtag #affiliate means I am an affiliate of that product and as such may receive a small percentage of any purchase. It doesn’t cost you anything, in fact usually saves you something if you purchase from one of my links.
somehow I missed the notice on this so just a quick post now as this offer ends tonight. 6/16/25
Get up to 75% off
Cross-device Subscription (desktop & mobile) – only $99 Includes Luminar Neo desktop + Luminar Mobile + 100 creative add-ons for free + Neo video course worth $79
Luminar Neo Lifetime (desktop only) – only $119 Includes 100 creative add-ons + Neo video course worth $79 + 1 year of Generative AI tools for free
Cross-device Lifetime (desktop & mobile) – only $159 Includes Luminar Neo desktop + Luminar Mobile + 100 creative add-ons + Neo video course worth $79 + 1 year of Generative AI tools for free
Disclaimer: I may affiliate with a product mentioned on this page. As a result, I may receive some compensation from the vendor. This affiliation does not influence any of my commentary on any product that I may write about, nor does clicking on the affiliate links cost you anything, in fact, you may save some money.
Late last year I took a trip back to New Zealand. I wanted to provide some tips I learned for this trip to help save you some $ and the tools I used to help plan it. This is the first of 4 parts as I wanted to break up a long post. Although this is related to my recent overseas trip, it can apply to any trip that you take.
I knew this would be an expensive month long trip for me, so I started planning it early. More than a year early in this case since I have not taken such a trip in for some time (more than 5 years). So first up…
Furkot – My best tool for planning a trip
I started out with my new favorite tools. Furkot (https://trips.furkot.com/) When you go to the site the sub-header will say road trip planner, but this is way more than just a road trip planner. Yes, you can plan your driving route, but it does let you include your plane flights to get where you are going, helps you find things to do where you are going, and places to stay along the way. You can easily reorder stops and stays and it will recalculate your route. It has many options and I highly recommend checking it out.
When you are done, you will have a map of your trip and an itinerary you can print out. There is a free option for one trip, and the pay version as of this writing is just $14/year, which is a steal in my mind. But if you book your stays via Furkot, you will be eligible for a free pass. See their site for details.
Here is a small portion of my recent trip as shown in Furkot for the South Island of New Zealand
Other features I like are you can plan possible stops. On the map shown above you will see one flag that is in grey. This is a possible stop that I marked maybe for later.
Other icons are for things/activities/or Stays (The house icon) that I had planned.
The other feature that I found very helpful is you can define your start and ends times on days and how far you are willing to drive in one day. By defining those, Furkot will alert you that you need to book another stay if you have traveled too far or there is not enough time to do the things you marked giving your a lotted time slots. It will automatically pick a location where you will should find a place to stay based upon your travel settings. You can then use their Sleep tab to find a place to stay in that area.
I always start out with Furkot to plan the overall trip. Once I have that set. I can start looking for flights, and/or Rental cars, and places to stay in the various locations I marked on Furkot. BTW, if you need to adjust the whole start time, you can go that in Furkot and will readjust your entire itinerary.
One you have your trip setup, you have many export/print options. You can export a file to have it import into your favorite GPS app and then use your app for navigation.
Other features include the ability to share your trip with others in the Furkot community or you can “publish” your trip to it’s own website and send that URL to others you wish to view your trip. I used this option to let folks know our itinerary for where we were on my latest trip.
On this past trip there were some places and things we wanted to do that we ended up having to miss due to weather. I mention this as I’ve already started planning my next trip. Again starting with Furkot. On my future trip plan Furkot lets you import items from other Furkot trips you have in your library of trip. Via the import option you can select the previous trip and it will show you all the stays/stops/activities etc that you had marked on that trip. While viewing that list you can easily add any or all of those past items to your new trip.
The last thing I do wish to mention is if you get stuck using Furkot, do reach out to their support team after reviewing the excellent documentation. They are very helpful.
This is just few of the features in Furkot and I would highly recommend checking it out for your next trip planning.
Occasionally Skylum gives us affliates a special offer for our readers. This is one of those times. This is not an offer you will see in the wild. It is only available via affiliates that have been given the special pricing link.
you can activate Luminar and your extensions on up to 3 computers. So you can have it on your desktop at home and on your laptop when out an about.
You do have the option to make a one-time purchase to get that version and extension versions for a lifetime. (No upgrades) at a significant discount as well. The lifetime license is for one device. And a 1-year generative AI Access with a lifetime license purchase.
There is a 30-day money-back guarantee, so what do you have to lose? If you have been thinking about getting Luminar Neo, now is the time.
As always, do try my Luminar Neo Coupon Code of MARKDODD for possible additional discounts.
Disclaimer: I may affiliate with a product mentioned on this page. As a result, I may receive some compensation from the vendor. This affiliation does not influence any of my commentary on any product that I may write about, nor does clicking on the affiliate links cost you anything, in fact, you may save some money.
Well, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are done for 2023. And I hope some of you got in on those offers. I saved several hundred on my purchases for the year.
These vendors are still making the following offers.
Use the Skylum coupon code of MARKDODD for possible additional discounts
Disclaimer: I may affiliate with a product mentioned on this page. As a result, I may receive some compensation from the vendor. This affiliation does not influence any of my commentary on any product that I may write about, nor does clicking on the affiliate links cost you anything, in fact, you may save some money.
Disclaimer: I may affiliate with a product mentioned on this page. As a result, I may receive some compensation from the vendor. This affiliation does not influence any of my commentary on any product that I may write about, nor does clicking on the affiliate links cost you anything, in fact, you may save some money.
Not only are they releasing the next update, but they are running one of their best sales ever this summer.
Here is the summer special offer pricing and the special gift you will get along with your purchase.
Luminar Neo Explore year subscription for $59 + Creative Travel Pack as a gift
Luminar Neo Pro year subscription for $79 + Creative Travel Pack as a gift
Luminar Neo Lifetime for $99 + Creative Travel Pack as a gift
Extension pack for $149
Affiliates like me have been given a special 10% off coupon code for this summer special so be sure to use the Luminar Neo discount code
AFS-5k66bP
at check out to get your extra 10% off.
Now what’s in the 1.10 update
Improvements in Extensions
They have made major changes to the Upscale AI extension to improve its performance. I’ve seen a few samples and can’t wait to try it out.
The extensions can now collapse individual Extensions panels in the Catalog view so you just see the list of titles for each so the view is not so cluttered. You expand just the extension you want to view its options
Interface changes for Noiseless AI, Supersharp AI, and Magic Light AI
Added support for additional cameras
You can now learn more about each tool by clicking its “i button”
You are now able to purchase Luminar Marketplace items directly from within Luminar. No more going from Luminar Neo to the website, and back
Many speed improvements in the various tool and Luminar Neo overall.
And of course many bug fixes for both the Mac and Windows Versions.
I’ll be downloading the update as soon as it is released on June 1st at 11 am EDT.
I’m a little late to the show on this announcement, but we finally know Skylum’s plans for Aurora HDR. They are just adding HDR to Luminar Neo instead of updating Aurora HDR.
For the HDR they are adding it to Luminar Neo as their first extension option for Luminar Neo. It is not part of the main program, but an add-on that you purchase separately. This is in line with their plans to make Luminar Neo modular. This is the first step in that process.
The new extension will let you merge up to 10 exposure-bracketed images into a single HDR photo. Once your image has been merged you can then do your adjustments with the Luminar Neo tools. It gives you the same merging features you have come to expect from Aurora HDR in that it does Auto-alignment and removal of ghost objects in the image.
As before in Aurora HDR, you don’t have to use brackets, it also works on a single image.
Some good news for Luminar Neo itself though, they are adding a new feature of Dodge & Burn has been added.
Some other updates are
● Add Tools to Favorites with visible animation on macOS ● Rotate & Flip any photo from the Catalog ● New interface for the EXIF panel ● New interface for the catalog header ● Export 8-bit and 16-bit PNG images ● Improved Spanish localization and of course, they fixed another list of bugs.
Pricing
HDR Merge will be free for subscription users and owners of Aurora HDR 2019. It will cost $49.99 for lifetime license owners of Luminar Neo.
So in short, If you have Luminar Neo and Aurora HDR 2019, this extension is free, if you only have Aurora HDR 2019, then you will need to purchase Luminar Neo in order to use the extension.
If you have earlier versions of Aurora HDR, this will offer you a discount on the HDR Extension price. Make sure you are logged into your Skylum account to see the possible discounts.
For a limited time, you can also get the HDR Mega Pack for free
Starting July 1st, I’m now able to offer my readers a new Capture One discount of 10% of Capture One products.
To get the discount use the Capture One Discount code of
DODD10
to get 10% of your purchase of Capture One Products
Disclaimer: I may affiliate with a product mentioned on this page. As a result, I may receive some compensation from the vendor. This affiliation does not influence any of my commentary on any product that I may write about, nor does clicking on the affiliate links cost you anything, in fact, you may save some money.
Although the ability to replace skies has been doable for years, up until recently it required some serious Photo editing skills in either Photoshop or other editor of yours choice.
I’m not saying it is a bad thing that the new programs make it easier so that everyone can do it, but I do think sometimes people do it just because they can. The Sun Rays phase was another good example of doing it just because it was there. I saw multiple photos where the adding of Sun Rays did nothing to add to the overall view of their photo. In some cases, it was actually rather distracting.
Now I personally do not replace skies in my images, yet, but I so see when there is a case for it. But that is it, I would only do the replacement if it is absolutely necessary to create the vision of the image that you want.
I can see one scenario when you might want to replace the sky is if you are on a travel trip or somewhere you know you will not be back for a while or you won’t be back to at all and the sky is very boring such as a cloudless sky. Then I would consider it since it is a case you would not be able to return to get a better sky.
But if you do need to replace the sky, pay attention to what is in the image and the over all view and the light of the image.
I have seen several shots in photography groups I belong to on the web where the tone of the clouds added does not match the rest of the scene. Such as the clouds are the warm color of a sunset, but the foreground is a cool color. Another bad placement is when you see the light coming from one direction on the ground and another in the clouds. (pay attention to shadows and bright spots). If you replace your sky you want to pick a sky that matches the rest of the scene in tone and in the direction of the light.
So before you jump on the sky replacement bandwagon, take a serious look at your image. Does it really need to have the sky replace? Asked yourself, will my image be enhanced by a new sky. Once you have decided that make sure to check that the tone and light direction of the sky you have chosen as a replacement match the rest of your image. Some software like Luminar AI can assist you with matching the tone of your replacement sky to the tone of your image along with helping with water reflections.
In short, don’t use a new sky replacement feature just because it is there, think about how the feature will enhance your photograph. That pretty much goes for all the other options that you have, just because it is there doesn’t mean you have to use it on every single photo.
Since this is just an opinion piece, I do welcome your thoughts, just leave a comment below Do you agree with my thoughts?. I only ask you to be courteous in your statements but all options are welcome.
OK, back to your regular scheduled programming as they use to say.
Today On1 announced a new app geared towards the Portrait photographer that is both a standalone app or a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Corel Paintshop Pro, Apple Photos, with Capture One support coming soon.
This new On1 application is meant to assist those portrait photographers who currently are spending hours retouching single images or entire shoots to present to their clients using the latest in machine learning AI. The AI finds every face in a portrait and applies settings to make your subject look fabulous without you having to lift a finger. While many other Photo editors offer either on-off edits or require manual controls and at times a steep learning curve with no way to batch process and entire shoot, On1 Portrait AI takes care of all of that for you
On1 Portrait AI Standalone App/Plug-in will is available now for the introductory price of $59.99 for a limited time. The reverts to the regular price of $79.99 (Or 63.99 if you use my Coupon Code MDODD20)
Don’t forget about On1’s other Standalone/Plug-in Apps of
New enhancements coming to the On1 Photo Raw Mobile app for both iOS and Android today.
Masking has come to the Mobile App. This includes the edge-detecting Perfect Brush for precise masking while just using your finger. The new masking tools also include support for the Apple Pencil and the Andriod Stylus.
Local adjustments make use of On1’s proprietary raw processing engine to get the best from your raw images.
New Effect and Filters have been added. Those include Dynamic Contrast Filter, Curves, HDR Look and Glow to go along with the built-in filters of Split Tone, Black and White, Film Grain, Vegnettes, and Color Adjustments.
And more will be on the way.
Pricing.
The new masking capabilities are free for those who subscribe have a On1 Photo Raw 360 Subscription. Otherwise to get the masking fuctions in On1 Photo Mobie it will be either the $4.99/ Month or the $49.99/year.
For those who do not wish to use the Masking option, there is no additional cost for the other updates of On1 Photo Mobile.
On1 Photo Raw 2021
The 2021 release will be coming next month (October 2020) and will include a host of new features.
New Features
Full integration of ON1 Portrait AI, a new and faster method for organizing photos using a powerful new Smart Organize mode
Color range selection technology that combines the color and edge detection from the popular Perfect Brush with the flexible gradient masks
Custom brush shapes
Healing brush
Full-screen preview mode
Quick Slideshow mode
Camera-based presets
Color Replacement filter
Method to batch HDR and panoramic photos
Support added to work as a plug-in inside of Corel Paint Shop Pro or Affinity Photo, with Capture One support coming soon.
On1 Photo Raw interface images with the new features
On1 Photo Raw 2021 Pre-Order
You can pre-order the new On1 Photo Raw 2021 beginning today and will receive it when it is released in Late October, 2020.
New Customers can order for $99.99
Existing Customers can upgrade for a 20% discount of $79.99
Or you can get On1 Photo Raw now, On1 Photo Raw 2021 when released, and one year of On1 Plus training for $129.99
