Portrait Professional 9Anthropics Technology

SOFTWARE LATESTOctober 14th 2010

The Review

For those who prefer taking photos of people rather than landscapes Portrait Professional 9 is a complete must have program. I personally couldnʼt live without it and although Photoshop is often my best buddy if I could only have one piece of photo software on my Mac it would without doubt be Portrait Professional.

The uncomplicated interface makes digitally enhancing photos a breeze and the results can be awesome. I cannot emphasize enough how simple it is to get amazing results. You need know nothing about airbrushing or have any technical ability. All you need to know is where your eyes, nose and mouth are. Click on these key points as seen below and within a minute your photograph is transformed.

Improve portrait photos as much or as little as you like, remove a few blemishes or take thirty years off your granny !! Once you have improved your photograph via the blue, first stage key points as shown here you can then further fine tune it with the help of over a 100 individual sliders, all clearly marked with the part of the face, neck or hair you are re-touching. Shown here are just a fraction of the sliders available to further enhance your photograph. There are simply

an abundance of sliders for every inch of your subjectʼs head, face and neck including master sliders that will fine -tune all areas in one hit.

There is a lso a selection of saved effects. As you can see in the image below this contains a number of styles from the minimal to the extreme. Once you have clicked on

the blue key points and pressed the space-bar for the results, the choice is yours. As you can see from the illustration below there are a variety of saved solutions that will improve any portrait photograph you care to upload. You can transform a portrait of a plain pimply face to a glamorous movie star in a matter of seconds. On the other hand if you feel the changes are too dramatic then you can use the reset tab to bring your image back to its original state and just use the individual sliders to manipulate and enhance your portrait as much or as little as you see fit.

In version 9 there is an improved ʻintelligentʼ touch up brush that requires no artistic skill as it will automatically find the skin defect beneath the brush and replaces it with seamless clear skin.

This software is a must have for both professional and amateur portrait photographers in fact in my opinion it could rapidly help the amateur on the road to being a professional in no time at all, all you need is enthusiasm and youʼre on your way.

To my friends, Portrait Professional turned me into a Portrait photographer overnight

for with just a few clicks their make-up became faultless, their skin flawless together with eyes and teeth to die for.

I could go on for pages telling you how version 9 has full multi-processor support for a major speed increase or that it now supports profile shots (side-on). I could also tell you about the new skin smoothing effect that in seconds eliminates any amount of blotchiness on the face. And of course Version 9 Studio edition works as a stand alone version or as a Photoshop plug-in which really speeds up the work flow situation. Another helpful feature of Studio

version 9 is that it has built- in support for camera RAW files and allows absolute color calibration control of images that high end enthusiast and professional users require. To be honest there are a whole lot more to tell about this brilliant piece of software but thereʼs a truck load of help on the Portrait Professional website as well as well supervised forum. If you are keen on portrait photography I wouldnʼt even waste time downloading the trial, just go out and buy whichever version is best suited to your needs., version 9 or version 9/Studio you will never regret it and your friends will love you for it.

System requirements:

PC

Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista1Ghz CPU or betterMin 512MB RAM XP, 1GB RAM Vista

Mac

OS X 10.4 or laterIntel CPU 1Ghz or better512MB RAM or more

Note: !While Portrait Professional 9 is compatible with all modern Intel Macs, it not compatible with ! older ʻPowerPCʼ Macs

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5 out of 5 Rating

Reviewed by Maggi Farran Wilson