And another season begins!
One note I’ll make is that usually the best deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday are media cards, batteries and software deals, which is why I’m starting here. In the US, tariffs have been affecting physical gear prices so keep an eye out special pricing.
Of course your year end purchases go to your tax bottom line, so this is traditionally a time to get the gear you’ve had our eye on.

To start let’s go with software deals!
You may already be set in your main editing software for stills.
Both Adobe Lightroom

and Capture One

both require a renewable license. It’s a strong software trend these days.

Some folks feel that Capture One is better for Fuji. With 400k images managed on LR, I’m sticking with Adobe, yet have tried and liked Capture One. Personal preferences.
The holiday season brings in some deals on those fees so watch out for these on their company links here. When you get the full Creative Cloud Pro from Adobe you get over 45 apps, that you will use! Including a deal on Firefly for Adobe, a generative AI program.

A piece of software I use all the time is PhotoMechanic.

When you shoot a lot, whether it’s covering an event, wedding, or the school sport match, you want to edit fast and not waste time.
PhotoMechanic loads all your files super fast, and you can cull your photos without ingesting all onto your computer.
Be decisive, get your selects, download only those, and import into your fave editing software.

I’ll be honest: if you have minimal files after shooting like 40 or less, you may not need this software. Powerful though for the working photographer

If you are starting out, nothing is better that Adobe Elements.

From all of the learnings of Photoshop, LightRoom, Adobe has put together a standalone set of tools, with enough capability to get you moving. As you move on in your creator road, plenty of time to upgrade to more professional products

For plug ins I recco DxO , a great RAW editor plus other tools for your editing pleasure.

In Addition I keep Topaz Photo in the toolbox as well.

Both of these have deals going on.
Similar products you may want to test drive before committing
Upscaling, grain reduction, RAW processing.

I just recommend being gentle with these tools and use judiciously so your images don’t get over processed

As you may now be working in the video space, and you should, I have personally gone onto a new software. And it’s free.

From starting on Final Cut Pro, to Premiere Pro, I am now using BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve

Here is a tutorial link to check out. TBH, once I downloaded it, I was up and running in no time.
Don’t worry, there are enough online tutorials to get into the specifics if needed.

Plus you can get a great deal if you want to step up to the full studio, which is on a sweet sale today

It has all the tools, and yes, you can crop a 16×9 to 9×16 for all your socials on the free Resollve as well (yes, i’m jumping into Tik Tok, YT Shorts, and of course IG reels)

In addition, the BlackMagic Camera App is THE new standard for your iPhone.

Screenshot

Also, free! One of the best features is the menu that lets you choose your output format, since we can now shoot ProRes RAW on an iPhone! Much more of that in another post.
Download it Now!

Of course, if you are editing on your phone, and just maybe going right to Tik Tok or IG Reels, hard to beat CapCut.

For now, anyway!
Try it for free.
They are also running deals on a yearly sub.

Keep coming back for more gift guides!