photo mechanic
This one used to be my main go to tool for culling photos on the first go-trough. Nothing faster than this app.
alien skin exposure
ASE is a full-on raw converter, but honestly, I never use most of the features. In my workflow it only comes to play for two things: adding natural looking grain and faking tilt-shift lenses.
for the hearts still beating presets
What do you expect me to say about my own presets? Well, of course, I love them. They help me to edit faster, more consistent and in the style I enjoy the most.
These are available for Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw.
Click the link to find out more about them.
JPEG mini
Get the smallest image file size without compromising quality or changing your workflow. You can upload Hi-Res photos faster, save tons of hard drive space, improve customer viewing experience and make your website faster.
Using patented image optimization technology, JPEGmini reduces the file size of your photos significantly (up to 80%), while preserving their full resolution and quality. Smaller image file sizes allow you to upload and download your full resolution images faster. For us photographers with an image-intensive website, our web pages will load faster, improving user experience and SEO.
pic-time
These nice folks from Israel changed the game with their online galleries. In my opinion these are the best looking galleries you can provide your clients with.
Plus: they keep on adding features on a weekly basis it seems. From an integrated online shop with connection to printing companies from all over the world, to your clients being able to design their own wedding album, to their newest addition: slideshows! These are awesome and you'd be stupid to not give their service a try. Whatever gallery provider you are using right now, I dare to say Pic-Time are better.
If you wanna sign up with them, feel free to use the code "HAFENLIEBE" for a free month.
narrative publish
When Narrative came out with Publish, they totally changed the game how photographers blogged their images. I remember how much fun I had working on all the details and layouts of my blog posts. It's so much fun.
But if you don't want to spend time and focus all the love on details, you can put together blog posts in one click - wizardry.
And there's so much more to it, best is to check the link below and try it for yourself.
narrative select
Select is Narrative's latest addition to their app roster. It's a game-changing image culling software, powered by smart tech.
Select shows you when faces are out of focus or blinking - so you can quickly eliminate the duds, resulting in a higher quality cull.
View closeup crops of all faces, all at once - making it a breeze to compare the same people across a series of similar images - pretty soon you’ll be culling group-shots like a boss.
(At the moment it's a MacOS only app.)
octoa
Octoa is a CRM developed by photographers for photographers. Based in Amsterdam, Octoa is completely GDPR compliant.
As there's a plugin for Flothemes websites, I can easily connect my contact form on the website with Octoa's database and keep my website's design consistent. (Of course you can also embed a form from Octoa on your site.
Octoa manages my contacts, integrates with Gmail, handles my contracts, surveys, my calendar and could also do the invoicing.
pixellu suite
Pixellu offer a range of products, from Smart Albums, which helps me design wedding albums in an easy and efficient way, to SmartSlides which enable you to prepare and publish slideshows in a few clicks to their newest online gallery feature.
flothemes
I can't actually tell you for how long I've been using WordPress themes by Flothemes, but it must have been at least since 2014.
These folks keep pushing on boundaries and exploring what's possible. With their newest Flexblock themes they enable people to design beautiful and individual websites without having to have knowledge of code.
I can not recommend these enough!
carbon copy cloner
My local backup solution. This app is set to clone my drives every night, so whenever there is change, there's an automated backup without me having to remember it.
Several backup plans for separate drives keep everything well organized.
crashplan
CrashPlan cloud data backups gives me peace of mind. I get all the data protection I need in one seamless online cloud backup solution.
Cloud backup runs automatically in the background. Doesn’t slow me down. There's no extra charge for space. It allows me to control how long my deleted files are kept. Backups of external hard drives are included at no extra cost. I can recover files right now, without extra costs.
google workspace
While I mainly use this suite for my emails to have these always on me and with one of the best spam filters available, I love how easily I can manage my emails with it, at home or on the go.
sunseeker
Sunseeker is a comprehensive solar tracking & compass app. It shows the sun’s hourly direction intervals, sunrise sunset times, twilight times, sun shadow, the golden hour & more. The surveyor view shows the solar direction for each sunlight hour. Sunseeker has both a flat compass view & a 3D Augmented Reality (AR) view to show the solar position & path.
It helps me to plan according to the golden hour or blue hour & optimal sunlight conditions, sunrise & sunset times & directions at and for any location.
planoly
Planoly is my go to when it comes to plan my Instagram posts. Via an app and web dashboard Planoly enables users to manage their posts and content visually before posting it live on Instagram. With the clean design, users are able to drag and drop their photos and videos around to visually see how it will look like on their Instagram profile feed.
Planoly offers paid plans as well as a free plan. As an official Instagram partner, your account is always safe.