Software News

Most of the software news for 2010 was featured in our March issue, but we have some quick updates to share.

Nik Software is best known for its Photoshop plug-ins. They have expanded beyond this with support for both Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom now in all of their products. One new addition worthy of mention is Viveza 2. If you’re not familiar with...

This is the third edition of Portrait Professional I have reviewed so I’ll focus this review on three areas of investigation in Version 11: what can it do, how quickly can it do it, and what’s new. I should note that I am reviewing the Studio 64 version that can handle Raw files and utilize 64-bit versions of Windows 7 or Vista. The Standard version works with JPEG files or 24-bit TIFF files; the Studio version can also work with Raw files but is limited to 48-bit color. The program can be used with Windows XP and up and also Intel Mac OS X 10.5 or later. It acts as both a stand-alone product and as a Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, and Aperture plug-in.

For over a decade, PortraitPro (formerly Portrait Professional) has been popular with photographers looking to retouch their own images in-house. The easy to use interface makes it easy to customize nearly every part of your edit, making it ideal for everything from high-fashion to family portraits. PortraitPro 18 brought AI to the table, making for a significantly faster and more accurate editing experience. The latest offering, PortraitPro 19, was released in mid-October. So what can users expect from this new version?

Just about a year ago we reviewed a fun new software package called PortraitPro Body, designed to add curves to a slender model or make a scrawny teenager look like a weightlifter. And now, parent company Anthropics is back with the updated PortraitPro Body 2, offering a number of new features and enhanced processing speed.

It appears our friends at Anthropics Technology are at it again! Not content with software that can practically take the face of Fido and turn it into Angelina Jolie using PortraitPro, the London-based company has introduced PortraitPro Body, an image editing program that can potentially transform that wimpy teenager down the block into Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, or add curves to any woman that would make a Kardashian green with envy.

Superimpose is a robust iOS app that quickly performs a variety of tedious Photoshop functions on your iPhone or iPad with a few taps of the screen. It offers a variety of exposure controls and filters, but the real strength of this app is its ability to automatic more complex tasks like blends, masks, blending, blurs and superimposed images.

It comes as no surprise that many professional and some high-output amateur photographers use AI-assisted editing apps and/or plug-ins to perform standard image editing operations in bulk. Pros have outsourced common, repetitive editing tasks (like knocking out backgrounds) for years. In fact, beginning back in the good ol' days of analog photography, studios routinely outsource retouching and — of course — film processing and printing.