Camera hardware is dominating industry news right now, and for good reason. Big announcements from Nikon, Canon, and Fujifilm definitely get the blood pumping. But once we navigate past Photokina and settle down later this month, there will also be a couple of important software releases as well.

Both macOS Mojave with its redesigned Finder and Luminar 2018 with Digital Asset Manager will provide new tools for Mac photographers wanting a fresh look on their computer screens.

The redesigned Finder is good news for photographers because of its enhanced viewing experience via dark mode and gallery view. Without having to open any applications (not counting the Finder as a app), photographers can sort through folders of images using powerful search tools. Apple is also providing extensive image metadata in the gallery view, something they did not give us in Photos for macOS High Sierra.

It will be interesting to test the official release of Mojave to see how far the Finder can take us toward managing our images.

Speaking of digital asset management, Skylum is putting the finishing touches on their DAM, which will also be released this Fall. Much in the way they invigorated image editing with their Luminar app, they plan to bring that magic to digital asset management. There are working on versions for both Mac and Windows platforms. So just about everyone can take advantage of these new tools.

All of this will come at very little cost to the customer. macOS Mojave will be a free download to Mac users. The Luminar DAM will be a free upgrade for Luminar 2018 users. That's a lot of goodies for very little investment.

The second half of 2018 is boon for photographers. With all the new hardware, plus new tools on the software side, we could be looking at a much different workflow by the end of the year.

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