Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links including Amazon Associate Program affiliate links. If you click on one of these links and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission. This commission comes at no cost to you. I am not paid up front to recommend a product or service, and I do not accept free products or services in exchange for my recommendation. I only provide links to products that I own and use myself, or that I have thoroughly researched and feel comfortable sharing. However, please do your own product research too before making any purchases. ~Kari
Photography + Website Design Software & Computer Peripherals
TOOLS + PRODUCTS I LOVE
My Favorite Brands
My Software & Computer Peripheral Picks
Photography Software
Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan
Adobe offers a Creative Cloud Photography Plan for $9.99 per month, which is tremendous! All software updates, including major version updates, are free. This plan includes a monthly subscription to Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Express, Bridge, Camera Raw, Lightroom, and Firefly, plus 20 GB of storage. If you would like more storage, Adobe also offers the same plan with 1 TB of storage for $19.99 per month.
I LOVE the Nik Collection software plugins, and in my opinion, these plugins are a must have! If you are looking for a suite of Lightroom and Photoshop tools to help you add that creative “somethin’ somethin'” to your color photographs, the Nik Color Efex plugin can’t be beat. The Nik Silver Efex plugin is considered by many, myself included, to be the industry standard plugin for making black and white images pop.
I also use the Skylum Luminar Neo software plugin occasionally to add finishing touches to my images.
I quite frankly can’t live without my Topaz Labs software. The Topaz Sharpen and Topaz DeNoise programs are the best I have found that combine fantastic results and simple yet customizable settings, without a lot of color shifting.
I still use the standalone Topaz AI plugins. However, the “bundled” Photo AI software is very good as well, and a bit simpler to use.
Web Sharp Pro Photoshop Plugin
Lumenzia is a luminosity mask panel for Photoshop, and Web Sharp Pro is a Photoshop panel that cuts the time it takes to sharpen and export high-quality images significantly. The latest version of Web Sharp Pro makes exporting HDR gain maps a breeze. I use both of these panels, but even if you already use another luminosity masking panel, I highly recommend adding Web Sharp Pro to your toolkit – it is the best web export plugin there is by far in my opinion.
Both panels are created by Greg Benz. Greg is an extremely knowledgeable and talented photographer, educator, and programmer, and he is an all-around great guy too. He provides excellent customer support and he has helped me out many times when I had questions. Greg also updates these panels often in order to include the latest Lightroom and Photoshop features.
Tony Kuyper’s TK9 Plugin for Photoshop
The TK9 Plugin for Photoshop is another luminosity mask plugin that I own and use. Some of the functionality of this panel overlaps with the Lumenzia panel, but both panels have a few tools that are unique unto themselves. One of the stand-out TK9 (v.3) features is that you can include TK9 panel selections in Photoshop actions! This feature is a huge time saver!
Tony has also teamed up with Sean Bagshaw, who has several excellent photography post-processing online courses for sale using the TK9 Plugin for Photoshop. I own a couple of Sean’s courses, and they have been very helpful.
TK9 is programmed in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Chinese, which is a nice feature too.
This is a must have in my opinion, especially if you create black and white images! This plugin makes using the Photoshop Channel Mixer adjustment layer a breeze. The TK Magic Mixer Plugin plugin price is $10.00 USD (at the time of this writing.) Huge bang for the buck!
The Pro Panel is another luminosity mask plugin created by John Weatherby. It is a bit easier to learn and navigate out-of-the-box than Lumenzia and TK9. This plugin has the added bonus of being a good Photoshop learning tool as well, since many of the panel buttons trigger adjustment layer actions. You can see the effect the action applies to your photo and then study the adjustment layers and settings that created the effect.
John provides excellent customer support, and he has created several Pro Panel tutorial videos that you can purchase separately to help you get started. John has several online photography and post-processing courses available for purchase that I own and find tremendous.
file storage
Backup, backup, backup, and always have your data in at least two places! If possible, I recommend keeping one copy of your data off-site as well. I use SSD drives for portability and fast data transfer (great for on-location). But since SSD drives can be expensive, for high-capacity network storage at home or a studio, a NAS system is a good and convenient option. But plain ol’ individual external hard drives (JBOD) will do as well. Here are my picks:
Samsung T7 4TB USB 3.2 Gen 2 Portable External SSD Drive
Synology NAS DiskStation DS1522+ (Diskless)
This drive enclosure is expandable (you can add up to 10 drive bays via expansion units), so there is a lot of headroom. This is an enclosure only – you’ll need to purchase SATA drives separately. I prefer Seagate IronWolf Pro drives.
Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB NAS Internal Hard Drive
Color Management
Calibrate your displays regularly ya’ll! 🙂
Calibrite ColorChecker Passport Photo 2
Did you know you can also calibrate your camera? Calibrite makes software that is compatible with several of their color checker products, including the ColorChecker Passport Photo 2, which allows you to do so.
Website Design
Here are a few resources that I used to build this website. If you have any questions, or want to book a photography website design consultation with me (I don’t build websites for others, but I’m happy to provide guidance and tips), please feel free to reach out to me via my coaching page.
If you like my website, I built it using Kadence WP. This is the first time I have built a WordPress website, and it was a great experience. Kadence WP is powerful, easy to learn, and FAST! There is a free version available too if you want to try Kadence out before purchasing a paid subscription. I also recommend purchasing a premium bundle subscription rather than purchasing each plugin separately.
I purchased Kadence Plus Premium Bundle to create my website. It includes Kadence Blocks Pro, Hooked Elements, Advanced Headers, Advanced Forms, and Kadence Galleries (photo galleries). The Hooked Elements feature alone is worth the price of this bundle!
Kadence Ultimate Premium Bundle
If you want to further customize WooCommerce, or if you think you might want to start building and selling your own WordPress photography website tempIates, I would suggest purchasing the Kadence Ultimate Premium Bundle. This bundle includes everything in the Kadence Plus Premium bundle, plus several additional plugins including Shopkit for WooCommerce and the Kadence WP Pattern Hub & Child Theme Builder.
Kadence WP Lifetime Ultimate Plan
Want to go all in? KadenceWP offers a Lifetime Ultimate Plan. This plan gives you the whole shebang, including lifetime support, and access to all future products and updates, for a one-time payment.
I host my WordPress website on Kinsta. Managed hosting is a bit more expensive, but Kinsta handles so much of the heavy lifting, that choosing them was a no-brainer. Worth every penny, and I can’t say enough about their tech support! Every single person I have worked with provided some the the best customer support I have ever experienced!
Brand & Build WordPress Themes
I subscribed to the Brand & Build Kadence Blocks Library (available as a monthly or annual membership) as a supplement to the KadenceWP Blocks Pro. These blocks are simply beautiful, and some are quite fancy too! If you want to see an example, take a look at these cool flippy-dippy blocks on my website. Michelle, the owner, is REALLY smart, and she provides wonderful tech support. She also has several KadenceWP child themes, including Nadia, a photography child theme, available for purchase on her website.
Because this was my first time building a WordPress website, I decided to start with a child theme. I ended up purchasing Savannah (compatible with Kadence) from 17th Avenue, and I am very happy with it.