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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Legendary photographer <keyword id="12031194" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="steve-mccurry" source="Orion">Steve McCurry</keyword> has visited <keyword id="11892774" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="afghanistan" source="Orion">Afghanistan</keyword> more than 30 times. </li><li>McCurry told Insider he is "heartbroken" about what has happened to the country in recent weeks. </li><li>He hopes to return to the country soon and believes Afghans will have the strength to move forward.</li></ul><p>Over the span of almost four decades, Steve McCurry has witnessed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-defense-secretary-suggests-us-no-longer-superpower-after-afghanistan-2021-9?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">Afghanistan</a> in war and peace. </p><p>The legendary American photographer became one of the first to capture the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-us-war-afghanistan-only-tragedies-achieved-zero-2021-9?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">brutal Soviet-Afghan conflict in 1979.</a> He disguised himself in salwar kameez and turban at the time to smuggle rolls of his film across the Afghan border.</p><p>In the years that followed, he accompanied Mujahideen fighters into the remotest parts of the country, photographed Afghans as they tried to rebuild their lives, and made friends with hundreds of locals.</p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="510" width="757" msid="85950910" hostid="261"></div><p>So as the Taliban <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-plans-to-take-in-50000-afghans-fleeing-the-taliban-2021-9?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">took control of Kabul last month</a>, sparking chaotic evacuations and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/marine-who-died-afghanistan-suicide-bombing-was-expecting-a-baby-2021-8?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">two deadly suicide bombings</a>, McCurry couldn't help but feel heartbroken.</p><p>"It's really devastating to see the situation now," McCurry told Insider from his home in Pennsylvania.</p><p>"My experience in Afghanistan was always very good. The people are wonderful, hospitable, hardworking, and have a great sense of humor, but things just went terribly wrong."</p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="2700" width="1800" msid="85950913" hostid="261"></div><p>The last time McCurry visited Afghanistan was in 2016.</p><p>At the time, he captured a much more peaceful life. Women walking unaccompanied on the streets, little girls attending school, and men praying in mosques. </p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="2700" width="1800" msid="85974817" hostid="261"></div><p>"People had hopes, dreams, and were aspiring to do something. There was kind of a normal aspiration that you would expect in literally every other country in the world," he said. </p><p>"But now it's become very dark for a lot of people. Their hopes of becoming whatever their dreams were have been dashed," he added.</p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="1200" width="1599" msid="85950914" hostid="261"></div><p>McCurry, originally from Pennsylvania, has been a photojournalist since 1979 and has traveled all over the world.</p><p>He said he keeps coming back to Afghanistan because it is "such a fascinating story, an important story."</p><p>"It's human, I think has huge human and political and geopolitical and human parts to it," he said. </p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="2700" width="1800" msid="85950916" hostid="261"></div><p>The photographer's claim to fame came in 1984 when he took a picture of 12-year-old Sharabat Gula, also known as "Afghan girl," in a refugee camp in Pakistan. </p><p>The photo was featured on the front cover of National Geographic multiple times and became one of the most recognized images ever. But it is by far his favorite.</p><p>"It was popular when it first came out," he told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/aug/07/steve-mccurrys-afghanistan-in-pictures">The Guardian</a>. "But the phenomena around it grew over the years. It is a fine picture and it's better to be remembered for one than not at all." </p><p>McCurry and a team from National Geographic tracked down Gula in 2002 as part of a documentary.</p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="2700" width="1800" msid="85950919" hostid="261"></div><p>In 2016, Gula found herself in the spotlight again after being arrested by Pakistani police on suspicion of forging an identity document.</p><p>A year later, the Afghan government gave her and her family a house in Kabul. It is unknown where she is now.<sup id="cite_ref-:3_4-1"></sup></p><div type="image" title="Steve McCurry Afghanistan" height="2774" width="1800" msid="85950920" hostid="261"></div><p>Despite the turmoil the country has faced over decades, McCurry remains hopeful.</p><p>He plans on going back within the next few years and says he believes Afghans will "pull through this."</p><p>"They're some of the most resilient people I know. They have a great deal of dignity. And I think that the vast majority will, you know, gathered the strength to move forward," he said.</p>

Acclaimed photographer Steve McCurry captured the beauty of Afghanistan for almost 4 decades. He describes his hopes and fears for its people after the Taliban takeover.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>"Afghan Girl," who was on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, was just evacuated to <keyword id="11905554" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="italy" source="Orion">Italy</keyword>.</li><li>Sharbat Gula, 49, lived anonymously for many years in Pakistan and <keyword id="11892774" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="afghanistan" source="Orion">Afghanistan</keyword>.</li></ul><p>The "Afghan Girl" with piercing green eyes who gained worldwide recognition after appearing on a <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/afghan-girl-revealed">1985 National Geographic</a> cover has fled her home country and arrived in Rome.</p><p>The Italian government <a href="https://www.governo.it/en/articolo/statement-presidency-council-ministers/18652">said in a statement</a> Thursday that the move was "part of the wider evacuation program in place for Afghan citizens" since the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan. CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/afghan-girl-national-geographic-italy-scli-intl/index.html">reported</a> that she had been granted refugee status by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.</p><p>The girl, Sharbat Gula, now 49, was photographed in a Pakistani refugee camp during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1984.</p><p>At the time, Gula was roughly 12 years old and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2002/03/13/1139820/afghan-girl-mystery-solved">sitting in a tent being used as a classroom</a>. After her picture was taken, she grew up, left the refugee camp in the early 1990s, started a family, and remained largely anonymous until the American photographer who took her photo, Steve McCurry, tracked her down again in 2002.</p><p>McCurry <a href="https://www.npr.org/2002/03/13/1139820/afghan-girl-mystery-solved">told NPR then</a> that Gula had led a "relatively peaceful" and "traditional Pashtun" life.</p><div type="image" title="photographer steve mccurry seated, signing a book" height="1345" width="2100" msid="87920511" hostid="261"></div><p>But then, in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37923826">2016, Gula was deported</a> from Pakistan to Afghanistan after she was accused of buying a fake Pakistani ID card. At the time, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/afghan-girl-sharbat-gula-welcomed-home-president-ashraf-ghani">welcomed her back to the country</a> and promised to house her in a furnished apartment.</p><p>"I've said repeatedly, and I like to repeat it again, that our country is incomplete until we absorb all of our refugees," Ghani said at the time, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/afghan-girl-sharbat-gula-welcomed-home-president-ashraf-ghani">The Guardian</a> reported.</p><p>Five years later, it was Ghani <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/south-central-asia_ghani-says-he-fled-afghanistan-avoid-kabul-bloodshed/6219383.html">himself who fled Afghanistan</a> as the Taliban took control of the country in August.</p><div type="image" title="a protester holding up a sign with the photo of the afghan girl on it, which reads 'You Valued My Beauty, Now You Value My Life.'" height="1320" width="1760" msid="87920512" hostid="261"></div><p>McCurry told NPR the photo of Gula was one that people tended to come back to "over and over again."</p><p>"I think part of the chord that it struck in people all over the world is this combination of a young girl who's very pretty, yet there seems to be something troubling about her," he said. "There's a dignity, there's a fortitude, there's a lot of different levels."</p>

'Afghan Girl' from 1985 National Geographic cover is evacuated to Italy at age 49

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sen_meister/4429669538/sizes/l/">Mario Spann/Flickr</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Here's the thing about shooting photos for National Geographic: It's a slog.</p><p>Known for its decades of astonishing photography, the magazine serves as a kind of Mount Everest for many photojournalists. There are few outlets in the world with as respected a team of photographers. No other publication seems to transform its shooters into celebrities the way National Geographic does.</p><p>But it's not an easy lifestyle.</p><p>The magazine only lists <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/masthead/">two staff photographers</a> on its masthead. The rest of the images come from a stable of veteran freelancers.</p><p>On the National Geographic website, the magazine suggests aspiring young shooters <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/siteindex/careers-faqs/">complete a degree in something other than photography</a> and find a specialty like underwater shooting.</p><p>National Geographic freelancer Ami Vitale, who <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/panda-photos-national-geographic-ami-vitale-2016-7">spoke to us recently about her wild photo essay about pandas</a>, said she got her start as a <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/panda-photos-national-geographic-ami-vitale-2016-7">war and conflict photographer</a> before moving into wildlife shooting.</p><p>And she explained that sacrifice is a key job requirement.</p><p>"I find projects that I'm super passionate about," Vitale said. "And just so you know, I literally invest a ton of money myself in the beginning. Everything I make goes right back into the work."</p><p>So, despite its pages being hallowed ground, it can be difficult to make a decent living exclusively shooting for the magazine.</p><p>"I've got to do a few commercial things every year to make the documentary work sustainable," Vitale said. "Frankly, I know there's a few people that have been able to do it. But I have to do things like give talks all the time, and do a lot of other things to make this sustainable. It's not really a money-making endeavor."</p><p>She's not alone.</p><p>Other well-known National Geographic photographers, like Melissa Farlow, Randy Olson, and even the <a href="http://www.techinsider.io/steve-mccurry-photo-editing-scandal-2016-5">world-famous (and controversial) Afghan Girl photographer Steve McCurry</a> shoot commercial work to supplement their photography for the magazine.</p><p>Beyond that, the best thing anyone can do is practice - and know the job is not likely to make you rich.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photographer-climate-change-2015-12">A photographer reveals how climate change ruins people's lives</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="xjNmlseTqCWv7Y3mlMYHZn4hxT8ciobG" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

A famous photographer explains what it takes to shoot for National Geographic magazine

<p>Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was a country notorious for its ongoing civil war. In recent years, the country has begun to reinvent itself alongside its new name.</p>
<p>Last year, book publisher Editions Didier Millet sent 30 photographers to travel around the country and capture scenes from the up-and-coming nation.</p>
<p>Now released as "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/9814385700/?tag=googhydr-20&amp;hvadid=48432973840&amp;hvpos=1t1&amp;hvexid=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=16099154126585826516&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=b&amp;hvdev=c&amp;ref=pd_sl_9ne139ceb7_b">7 Days in Myanmar</a>," the photo book contains images of <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Myanmar's people, landscapes, and traditions from major urban centers to tourist sites and small villages. </span></p>
<h3>Shwedagon Pagoda dominates the skyline of Yangon, the former capital of Burma. The pagoda, known as The Golden Pagoda, was supposedly constructed during the time of the Buddha and is one of Myanmar's most popular tourist attractions.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Athit Perawongmetha</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>A shinpyu Buddhist novitation ceremony is held at the Shwedagon Pagoda. These young men leading the procession are dressed as royal princes, while the young girls who follow wear the costume and headdress of a princess.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Bruno Barbey</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Workers carry heavy sacks of rice to a barge on the Yangon River. A hard day's work by the dock pays roughly $3 per day. To the right of the workers, a boat operator repairs his vessel with a hatchet.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Chang Chien Chi</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Young men wielding long swords train at Myanmar Thaing Federation's martial arts school in Yangon. In addition to bare-fisted combat, practitioners are trained to use long poles, swords, lances, and large knives.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Chris Steele Perkins</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>A night train stops at Naba station. Without electricity, these women sell food to passengers by candlelight.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Gilles Sabrie´</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>A train travel ling from Mandalay to Lashio crawls slowly across the famous Gokteik Viaduct. Originally built for the British by the Pennsylvania Steel Company in 1901, the crossing stands at 315 feet high and 2,257 feet across as it stretches over a deep ravine formed by the Myitnge River. Among the American engineers who constructed it was a young Herbert Hoover, who later became the 31st president of the United States.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Kyaw Kyaw Winn</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Win Sein Taw Ya is one of the largest reclining Buddhas in the world. The Buddha is filled with rooms that showcase dioramas of the teachings of Buddha. After 15 years of construction, it is still not complete.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Raghu Rai</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Myanmar's teenage soccer players are resourceful when it comes to creating a playing field, as they often turn backstreets and temple grounds into pitches and make goals out of bamboo stakes and twine. This platform at the base of a Mandalay Pagoda was turned into a soccer pitch.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Steve McCurry</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></h3>

8 Gorgeous Photos Of Myanmar, The Southeast Asian Paradise That's Making Its Way Back Onto The World Stage

<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Since 2006, photographer </span><a href="http://www.mantoani.com/" target="_blank">Tim Mantoani</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has captured more than 150 photographers and the iconic images that made them famous in a single shot for his "</span><a href="http://behindphotographs.squarespace.com/#" target="_blank">Behind Photographs</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">" series.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span>"</span><span>It was important to step back and understand that cameras didn't make these photos, photographers made these photos," Mantoani told <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/01/famous-photogs-pose-with-their-most-iconic-images/#slideid-495787" target="_blank">WIRED</a>. "Without these people and their understanding of photography, these moments would not be there for us to understand and appreciate over the course of time."</span></span></p><p>To create the images Mantoani rented a massive <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">20x24 Polaroid camera made in the 1970's to </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">shoot legendary music photographer, Jim Marshall and sports photojournalist, Michael Zagaris. "I asked each of them to bring in a few of their most iconic or favorite shots and I made my first portraits," Mantoani wrote Business Insider.</span></p><p class="p1">Here are a few from Mantoani's portraits republished from "<a href="http://behindphotographs.squarespace.com/#" target="_blank">Behind Photographs</a>" with permission:</p><h2 class="attachment-link-container" style="text-align: center;">Girl In Afghanistan</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>Steve McCurry: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984. I looked for this girl for 17 years and finally found her in 2002. Her name is Sharbat Gula.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">Beijing 1989</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div><span style="font-size: 1.17em; color: #000000;"><br /></span></p><h3>Jeff Widener: Beijing, 1989. Widener holds his image of the Tank Man confronting a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square during the Tiananmen Square protests.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">9/11</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>Lyle Owerko: New York, 2001. No one knew such beautiful warm day would serve as the backdrop to one of the most painful and confusing events to the heart of mankind. This picture is one small part of such a huge event that ties the threads of thousands of stories and millions of people together.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">Brown Bear</h2><h2><span style="font-size: 1.17em; color: #000000;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div><br /></span></h2><h3>Thomas Mangelsen: Brooks Falls Katmai National Park, Alaska, 1988. I pre-visualized this possibility (of an image like this) from watching documentary films about the bears at Katmai and seeing a photograph in Alaska Air Magazine of a group of bears here at the falls.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">The Beatles</h2><h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></h3><h3>Harry Benson: New York, 1964. Beatles Manager, Brian Epstein, had just told them they were number one in America and that I was coming with them to New York.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;"> Ali vs. Liston</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>Neil Leifer: Lewiston, Maine, 1965. </h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">John Lennon</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>Bob Gruen: New York, 1974. John Lennon asked me to come to his penthouse apartment on the east side of New York to take pictures for the cover of his 'Walls + Bridges' album. After we took a series of portraits for the record cover we took some informal shots to use for publicity. I asked him if he still had the New York City t-shirt I had given him a year earlier and he went a put it on and we made this photo.</h3><h2 style="text-align: center;">Napalm Attack In Vietnam</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><h3>Nick Ut:  Trang Bang Village, 1972. Kim Phuc 9 year-old girl runs naked on a road after being severely burned from South Vietnamese napalm attacks. </h3><p><em>To find out more, please visit the <a href="http://behindphotographs.com/">Behind Photographs website.</a></em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/taiwan-navy-stealth-missile-warship-corvette-2014-12">The Taiwan Navy Just Unveiled A Stealth Missile Warship Dubbed The 'Carrier-Killer'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VzZTRncjpwgLe6_-fMu3OhMAZehw4Hn_" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Legendary photographers posing with their most iconic images

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Less than shocking news: The photo above isn't actually a museum-aged Kodacolor portrait of my grandfather. It's a digital picture of my friend Sean, who dropped by my headshot studio and was nice enough to lend his picture to this article.</p><p>The film-like texture, dust, and scratch marks are courtesy of an Alien Skin filter. For years, this was Alien Skin's entire business model for its Exposure series - filters and presets to add on to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom in order to emulate the look of film. Lightroom stood largely untouched for years as the best photo processing and editing tool for serious photographers, so it was entirely possible to build a business devoted to enhancing it.</p><p>But with Exposure X, released last December, Alien Skin is directly challenging the megalithic Creative Cloud that gave it life. CEO Finley Lee told Tech Insider he intends this software to be a cheaper, more intuitive, and organizationally superior alternative to the ubiquitous Lightroom (or the Bridge/regular Photoshop software combo many photographers use).</p><p>Here's how it stacks up against the giant.</p><h2>A fast, no-nonsense organizational system</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Screenshot</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The worst part of Adobe Creative Suite for photographers is how complicated organizing everything can be.</p><p>You essentially have two options. </p><p>The first: Use the file-management tool Adobe Bridge <em>and </em>Adobe Photoshop all the time, and save new copies of your files for every edit you make.</p><p>The second: Import every photo you take into an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalogue, which lets you make non-destructive edits. That is, edits that are stored in a sidecar file to the catalogue so as not to save over the original photos and be tweak-able at any time. But catalogs are somewhat difficult to organize and easy to error out if you ever touch the photos with an outside program. Large catalogs also tend to run a bit slowly on even medium-power computers.</p><p>Exposure X solves that problem.</p><p>You can drag and drop any folder into Exposure X without moving it around on your computer. Once there, you can scroll through, re-organize, and tag the images within the program. The system is reminiscent of Photo Mechanic, a powerful, expensive tool photojournalists and wedding photographers use to organize their massive batches of images. But it comes built-in to the program.</p><p>Once you're ready to work on an image, it's just a click away from a full suite of non-destructive editing tools. The small files that record your changes sit in a sub-folder within the folder where the image is found. (That also makes Exposure X straightforward to use across multiple computers - just keep the image files in a Google Drive folder and watch your changes instantly sync across PCs.)</p><h2>Somewhat less powerful, but much easier to use</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Screenshot</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Exposure X offers a similar, though not identical, set of panels and sliders of editing images to Adobe Lightroom.</p><p>For example: The main image controls deal simply with "highlights," "shadows," "contrast," and "exposure," while Lightroom also offers "whites" and "blacks" sliders to make more exacting adjustments.</p><p>The most obvious difference though is Exposure X's tendency to present users with simplified routes toward common tasks. One of the first options when you click the adjustment brush is a skin softening tool - something you have to buy from a third party or (more commonly) design for yourself in Lightroom. I found Exposure X's brushes at least as effective as the ones I have saved to my Lightroom, though appreciated the ability to continue to alter them.</p><p>I found Exposure X's brush to render more quickly and fluidly on a Surface Pro 4, both with the touchpad and the stylus. The changes appeared quickly enough on the image that I felt like I was painting them on.</p><p>Compare that to Lightroom, where the slower render leads me to temporarily use a bright color just so I can keep track of where my brush has been:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>My experience was that Exposure X was much easier to use for my purposes. However, for a severely mis-lit image I'd still want to the precise power of Photoshop's RAW editor.</p><p>Here's how I processed my favorite RAW file after about 10 minutes in Exposure X:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>And here's the shot that took me closer to half an hour to import, select, and process from scratch in Lightroom a day later:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>I actually like my Exposure X result more. Working at speed in Lightroom I made more errors, including generally over-lightening the shot, which flattens Sean's look and erases some of the subtleties of my studio lights.</p><h2>Exposure X is missing one important feature though</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Rafi Letzter/Tech Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The most glaring omission from Exposure X is any sort of blemish removal tool.</p><p>In the screenshot above, you can see me using the Surface Pen to select the area around a stray hair for Lightroom to cover with transplanted pixels from another image. This is a simple feature, but very important for many photographers. As I move toward using this software more than Lightroom, I'll probably keep opening final proofs in regular Photoshop to cut out stray hairs and razor burn.</p><p>A representative for Alien Skin tells me this feature will come in a future iteration of the product, though its absence could be prohibitive for some buyers.</p><h2>Conclusion: A better (if a bit quirky) option for many photographers</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Screenshot</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The idea of building a full photo-processing suite out of an oddball filter pack is, on its face, a bit strange. But somehow it works.</p><p>Exposure X is best thought of as a Lightroom replacement that happens to offer you the chance to mimic the entire history of film on its left-hand panel. I had some fun playing with that, though in my opinion the virtue of crazy old-school films was that they changed the way you shot in fundamental, textural ways. The power to switch between them after the fact feels like cheating, though the results are impressively accurate looking. Steve McCurry may have <a href="https://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/the-end-of-an-era-1935-to-2010/">shot the last roll of Kodachrome in 2010</a>, but with Exposure you could probably fool most viewers into thinking it was you.</p><p>At <a href="https://app.alienskin.com/store/product/?id=1436">$149</a>, Exposure X really stands out for being a much better value than Lightroom. Adobe charges a $10/month for its software, which means Exposure X will be a better value for some users in the long term. However, don't expect unlimited free updates of the kind Creative Cloud offers.</p><p>I'd recommend this software to anyone who likes to work fast and light, or who wants off Adobe's endless subscription plan.</p><p>Just for fun, I've rounded up a few of the more and less subtle film effects below.</p>

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Acclaimed photographer Steve McCurry captured the beauty of Afghanistan for almost 4 decades. He describes his hopes and fears for its people after the Taliban takeover.

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Legendary photographers posing with their most iconic images

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This new image-editing app is so good, I'm ditching Photoshop

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