OnOne Software Updates Perfect Photo Suite to V9.5
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OnOne, the well respected independent software provider of tools for photographers has released an updated version of their complete suite of such tools. The Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 brings a series of integrated photo editing and manipulation tools into a single package. The suite is very comprehensive. It starts with Browse, a tool specifically designed to help you navigate your photos. Lightroom users have complained about the time to render an image while browsing a large library. With v9 OnOne prompted the concept of using Browse as a front end for your other edit tools.
Next up is Layers. When Photoshop first delivered Layer capability it was a complete game changer, now most all apps other than Lightroom have some basic layer capability. Layers are very powerful tools but erosion into third party spaces has been substantial since Adobe did the Photographer's Bundle of Lightroom and Photoshop for $10/mth USD.
Enhance is just what it says. A flexible photo enhancement tool, based around extensible presets. It's like Lightroom or Camera RAW but with more presets and a simple to use interface.
Portrait is the portrait fixer. It is stunningly good, and I use it regularly when I have a large volume of headshots to get through particularly for the web. It automates the correction of skin blemishes, brightening and sharpening eyes, whitening teeth, and softening skin. Unlike a lot of the other "portrait" tools, this tool doesn't result in people who look "retouched" or worse, plasticized. Of all the tools in the suite, it's the one that I have used the most.
Effects does what it says. It brings a stack of presets to help photographers quickly and simply achieve a "look". This is not a tool that I use much at all, my preference is not to try to do what everyone else is doing, but if you have an image that needs the grunge look and you don't have the time to figure out how to get it, Effects will do the job masterfully. And of course there are plenty of different looks to choose from. Layers are integrated to this module as with all of them so stacking effects is super easy.
B&W is OnOne's black and white conversion and enhancement tool. It brings a number of really nice presets to the photographer and creates a platform for very nice work with lots of creative control.
Resize is a long time resident of the OnOne pantheon. If using Photoshop's resizing capability has given you headaches because it is not simple, Resize is the answer. It is blindingly simple and does a superlative job. I had a job to retouch a photo from a smartphone where the client wanted the outcome to the a 16x20 print. The smartphone image ended quite well, but had nowhere near the requisite data to go 16x20 natively. I used Resize to make the changes and the results were superlative.
All the OnOne components support the OnOne Perfect Mask, a very simple masking and selection tool that is very hard to beat when trying to make a mask quickly and without having time to finesse the refine edge and such.
V9.5 is called an update to V9 so it is primarily a series of performance improvements with some new masking tools. The press release is attached below. This is not a free upgrade, it is a paid upgrade. For more information follow the link on the main page.
Press Release: Introducing Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 We take user feedback seriously. Our team has worked hard the past several months to improve performance and user experience in the latest release of our photo-editing app – Perfect Photo Suite. In this latest release, version 9.5, we’ve improved performance and usability for customers in several areas which include; browsing photos, portrait retouching, processing speed, feature additions, and enhancements.
Browse Browsing photos is one of the key improvements and one of the most important tasks for photographers. Today, photographers use Perfect Browse as a front end to their workflow with other programs like Adobe® Lightroom® and Photoshop®.
Speed The biggest reason to adopt this workflow is speed. Browsing photos must be fast, period. Improved speed in viewing photos assists in organizing photo libraries and helps determine what photos you want to work on. Specifically, the ability to view large Raw files in detail can take forever with some apps. Not with Perfect Browse. Users will see up to a 50% increase in speed with the latest version. Quickly seeing all the detail in photos without pixilation allows for faster culling, sorting, and rating. Then send your photos with the ratings intact to Lightroom or other applications, faster than ever before.
Organize We’ve also added new features to Perfect Browse, which makes it a great standalone option for getting organized. on1 Albums allow you to create a collection of your favorite photos and provide a fast way to view them without searching. Want to drag and drop photos into an album? It’s simple to do right in Perfect Browse. Select the photos you want to add to the album and drag them to the Album Hot Spot. Photos in an on1 album can live anywhere, whether in the cloud or on your computer.
Faster Retouching and Effects Another area we’ve focused on is improved speed and performance for portrait retouching and filters in Perfect Effects. Perfect Portrait is now faster than ever for auto face detection, and finding the details of the face, eyes, lips, and mouth. With easier to adjust control points and smoother sliders it makes for much quicker portrait edits. Many of the filters in Perfect Effects have been updated to use the computer GPU to make them much faster.
New Features In addition to all the performance enhancements, Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 also has some great new features. The Line Mask tool allows you to create a straight path for masking sharp edges where brushing is difficult. Luminosity Masks have also been added for users to work on the luminance values or lighter and darker parts of a photo based on a specific selection.
