Software Reviews

Photo/Graphic Edges (PGE) from Auto FX Software has been with us for many years and the company recently released their latest version, 7.0, Platinum Edition ($249, stand-alone and plug-in; $129, upgrade for owners of Version 5 or 6). The interface is identical to that used by all Auto FX Photoshop plug-ins. If you already use another Auto FX plug-in, such as Mystical Lighting or Mystical Focus, learning to use PGE should be easy. Even if you’re not familiar with Auto FX products, you’ll likely find the interface to be very straightforward and uncluttered, with plenty of room to work on your images.

Whether you shoot people, products, or landscapes and nature, Mystical Tint Tone and Color 2.0 offers a cornucopia of 60 filters to add subtle to striking effects to enliven and enrich your photos.

We’re all familiar with image-editing software, but we may be a stranger to asset management, that is, organizing and managing your stock photo library so that image files are readily accessible. Bibble 5 Pro’s asset management begins with pooling data from all the images you’ve shot on any given day, occasion, event, trip, or job into individual databases that Bibble defines as “catalogs.” The process also entails assigning keywords and labels, which along with other criteria, can be used to search through all of Bibble’s catalogs, whether the images or the catalogs are stored on your computer’s hard drive or on external drives.

Boris FX Optics 2021 is a gourmet buffet of creative effects Photoshop plug-ins that span the entire spectrum from caviar to corndogs, from ketchup meatloaf to filet mignon with shaved truffles. In other words, these dynamic, fast-operating filters do the normal mundane operations like color correction—and also do highly imaginative manipulations that will dazzle you. There are 160 plug-in filters and each has dozens of presets—and more importantly, each preset has dozens of adjustable parameters. Additionally, Boris FX Optics 2021 can be used as a standalone special effects editor. All at an amazing price, too.

Capture One Pro stands as the Raw converter and digital asset manager of choice among many pro photographers, notably those using Phase One backs. But this software also supports many, many other cameras, with profiles for over 250 models plus a wide range of lenses. Version 7 (V7) has some new features of note, so I checked it out to see if an upgrade from 6 is advisable, and if it might tempt users of Adobe Lightroom/ACR. For this test I ran Capture One Pro 7 on a 27” iMac under OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, with 8GB of RAM.

For years, anyone serious about photography has viewed Corel Paint Shop Pro (PSP) as the low cost alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Originally developed by a tiny company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Paint Shop has grown up into a full-featured photo workflow tool with a built-in photo organizer that includes tagging options and fast previewing, an advanced image editor, and handy integration with Flickr and Facebook.

For $70, PaintShop Photo Pro X3 Ultimate is a smart addition to a virtual photo toolbox. A few performance problems and some slightly questionable editing capabilities puts PSP in the uncomfortable position of still being in the tall shadow of Adobe. That said, if you want to skip the $700 purchase price, PSP is on the right track.