Sunday, June 28, 2026

The Adobe acquisition of Topaz Labs is the story that will take the longest to understand. Friday's announcement came with no deal terms and nothing said about standalone app pricing or existing licence continuity — the kind of communication gap that makes photographers nervous, and reasonably so. By Saturday, a follow-up clarified that Topaz's standalone apps stay live, CEO Eric Yang remains, and the underlying technology rolls into Creative Cloud and Firefly Services. That's a more reassuring picture than the Friday blank — but 'apps stay live through the process' and 'apps stay live forever' are different commitments. Anyone holding a Topaz perpetual licence should be watching closely. On the same day Adobe confirmed the deal, Camera Raw 18.4 landed with three masking features that Lightroom still doesn't have — including one that photographers have been requesting for over a decade. Adobe was everywhere in the second half of this week.

The business layer of photography shifted in three other directions, each worth tracking. GoPro's going-concern notice — filed June 1 after PricewaterhouseCoopers flagged substantial doubt the company survives the next twelve months — surfaced in full on Thursday, the same week that Wednesday brought a Mission 1 Pro review at $699 navigating a market the brand used to own outright. The action camera category GoPro invented has moved on without it. Getty Images, meanwhile, announced a multi-year deal with OpenAI to place licensed content inside ChatGPT's search and discovery features, sending Getty's stock up more than 200% in premarket trading on Tuesday — the clearest signal yet that legacy image libraries are finding their AI footing through licensing rather than litigation. And at Tamron, Singapore activist fund Effissimo Capital Management quietly overtook Sony as the company's largest shareholder, holding 17.38% against Sony's unchanged 15.35% as of April filings. Effissimo has a track record of pushing structural changes at Japanese companies where it takes significant positions. That track record is worth knowing.

If there was a thread in the hardware, it was third-party glass expanding across every mount that matters. NiSi announced the 16mm f/2.8 for Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD — currently the fastest ultra-wide prime for medium format, with no other manufacturer offering f/2.8 or wider in this focal range for either system. Tamron's 17-70mm f/2.8 Di III-A VC RXD arrived for Nikon Z and Canon RF APS-C, shipping July 2. Samyang and Schneider-Kreuznach completed their Sony full-frame zoom trinity with the AF 60-180mm F2.8 FE. Thypoch's Voyager 24-50mm F2.8 FE — reportedly the first autofocus zoom from a third-party manufacturer for Sony E-mount — got a full review from The Phoblographer and came away as a genuine alternative to OEM glass. Third-party optics used to fill gaps. This week they were building lineups.

The Leica SL3-P went from a Monday rumour to Friday reviews in five days — the 44MP L-Mount body with 40fps burst and a $6,695 price point drawing coverage from DPReview and The Phoblographer alike. The SL system also gained a significantly lighter Summilux-SL 50mm F1.4 (nearly 500g and almost 50mm shorter than its predecessor) and the new APO-Macro-Elmarit-SL 100mm F2.8 macro. On the most practical end, the Nikon Z 70-200mm F2.8 VR S II landed its first hands-on review — noted as the lightest full-frame 70-200mm f/2.8 for a mirrorless system at 998g without the tripod foot. The week ended, though, with something that had nothing to do with specs: Martin Parr's final commissioned photographs, taken in the months before his death, now have an exhibition confirmed. In a week that was largely about who owns what, the reminder arrived that the images outlast the industry.