Software Reviews

Sort By:  Post Date TitlePublish Date
Joe Farace  |  Dec 06, 2013  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2013  |  0 comments

Shortly after I moved into my former home, there was a knock at the door. Standing in front of me was an 8-year-old girl who lived down the street. “I’m selling note cards,” she told me, “I made the pictures.” A second look showed subjects a kid might shoot but others demonstrated that she was thinking about the photographs before making them. I bought several note cards and asked about her camera, which turned out to be borrowed. With her grandmother’s permission I gave her an old, unused digital point-and-shoot. The girl loved the camera and was inspired to keep making photographs and we talked from time to time about her aspirations. Today she’s a young woman with professional ambitions.

Edited by George Schaub  |  Sep 13, 2013  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2013  |  0 comments

Every year member magazines from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) gather to consider and vote on the top products of the year in 40 categories, ranging from cameras to tripods to software and printers. This year’s selections represent technological sophistication along with features and functionality that make them leaders in their respective categories.

Jack Neubart  |  Sep 10, 2013  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2013  |  5 comments

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.

Jon Sienkiewicz  |  Sep 08, 2013  |  0 comments

If you’re long on artistic ambition but short on psychomotor skills (i.e., hand-eye coordination) like I am, SnapArt 3 from Alien Skin may liberate the Rembrandt hidden in you.

George Schaub  |  Aug 19, 2013  |  0 comments

There’s a considerable difference between resizing, which means maintaining the same pixel dimensions and adapting to different document sizes at the same print resolution, and resampling, which means building additional pixels from the original file to enable printing larger documents at the same resolution. Say you have a 24MB file, obtained from an 8 megapixel digicam, that will normally fill an 8.5x11” print at 300 dpi when printing. But you just got a 13x19” printer and want to try your luck at that size, still at 300dpi. Well, for that you would need a 62MB file.

Steve Bedell  |  Jun 21, 2013  |  First Published: May 01, 2013  |  2 comments

The job of auto-retouching software is to retouch faces quickly, easily, and with as little human intervention as possible. Most require you to either set or confirm where the major points of the face are, like the eyes, ears, and lips. After you’ve identified those areas, the software then goes about its business of transforming little Pamela into little Princess.

Steve Bedell  |  Jun 18, 2013  |  First Published: May 01, 2013  |  1 comments

As more photos are made on more types of devices, there’s a need for resultant images that aren’t just “OK” but as good as they can be. And part of the need, it would seem, is that some folks don’t want to spend a lot of time learning complex programs to get the image results they want. Companies like Athentech Imaging aim to make it a one-click affair.

David B. Brooks  |  Jun 11, 2013  |  First Published: May 01, 2013  |  1 comments

I always enjoy trying out the best new high-end products. It’s fun, but more important it tells me how good the best performance can be. But when reviewing color management tools I realize that photographers are not color scientists or computer programming experts, so I thought I’d start this review with a bit of a tech briefing on why they are important to all photographers who want to get the most from their work.

David B. Brooks  |  Feb 07, 2013  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2013  |  0 comments

While some, like me, like to spend hours working on an image in their digital darkroom, quite a few photographers express a desire to process photographs into good-quality digital files with as little effort as possible without having to learn a new technique or software. For those who don’t find it fun and the rewards too hard to come by, a company in Europe called Elpical may have an answer.

George Schaub  |  Sep 05, 2012  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2012  |  0 comments

The question is—does anybody really know what a given image would look like if they shot it on Kodachrome 25, or Fuji Acros, or some obscure color negative film that even in film’s heyday was little used or appreciated? Perhaps the more pertinent question is—how many people have made photographs using film? But film references are what a number of so-called film emulation software programs use for describing presets that can be applied to a digital image. Half academic and half nostalgic, the programs use film brand names to describe saturation, contrast, color nuance, and grain structure variations that are then applied to an image. Perhaps using film names is better than poetic fantasy terms, like “misty blue dawn,” but then again entirely subjective descriptors, rather than supposedly clinical ones used in these software programs, might be just as handy for today’s photography crowd. In any case, I recently tested one such program, DxO’s FilmPack 3.1, to see if it offered up creative variations that could be used as is or as foundation images when interpreting subjects and scenes.

 

Jack Neubart  |  Aug 08, 2012  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2012  |  1 comments

Attempting to make the HDR process more user-friendly, the newly updated HDR Expose and Photoshop-dedicated plug-in 32 Float, now both in Version 2, largely share the same features and enhancements. As I see it, the improvements center mainly on workflow—reason enough to upgrade, in my opinion, and reason enough to consider these as serious tools for HDR work. Both are available from Unified Color Technologies.

Jack Neubart  |  Aug 02, 2012  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2012  |  2 comments

CES is not a big imaging software show as evidenced by the short list of new products, though we did find a new camera profiling tool, updated monitor calibration tools, an old favorite Raw converter brought back to life under a new name, and software for editing on the fly and sharing photos.

 

ArcSoft introduced a Mac version of Perfect365. This software uses advanced facial recognition technology for one-click portrait touch-ups, letting you effortlessly adjust up to 21 individual facial features. Perfect365 allows you to add creative effects such as eye shadows, blushes, lipsticks, colored contact lenses, under-eye circle removal, and blemish removal. The software is available as a free download (www.perfect365.com) or in a premium edition ($39).

Joe Farace  |  Jul 30, 2012  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2012  |  0 comments

Tiffen’s Dfx 3.0 offers photographers software that can make their images stand out from the crowd. The bundle is a digital emulation of 2000 of the company’s glass filters that for convenience uses the same names of the company’s Soft/FX or Pro-Mist filters, so those who’ve shot with their filters in the past know exactly what to expect when applying their digital equivalents. For those who haven’t, rest assured that the company who made their name in filters knows their stuff. As a bonus, the software also includes effects created by lenses, lab processes, film grain, color correction, plus natural light effects.

 

I must confess that previous versions of Tiffen’s Dfx Digital Filter Suite, while interesting, did not make the final cut of power tools in my personal digital toolbox. All that’s changed in 3.0. It takes all of the good stuff from the previous versions, blends in new options, and wraps it around an interface that, while still containing a few less-than-elegant elements, retains its individuality and provides for smooth workflow.

Steve Bedell  |  Jul 26, 2012  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2012  |  2 comments

Judging by the popularity of facial retouching software, there seem to be a lot of people out there who want to make their subjects look like they just arrived off a private jet from Monte Carlo. And they want to do it fast, and not get bogged down with little technicalities like learning how to use Photoshop. So, is it possible to just press a button and instantly have a complexion that looks like J.Lo after an hour in the makeup chair? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out, so let’s take a look.

 

First, let’s take a look at what we have. Perfect Portrait is one of six products that combined give you onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 6. You can buy the whole bundle or you can buy just the individual products that you like. And while I’m not going to address the other products here, let me just add kudos to onOne for using the same interface for each product, something you’d think would be automatic with software suites but sadly is not.

Jack Neubart  |  Jul 19, 2012  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2012  |  3 comments

DxO Optics Pro Version 7 is a Raw converter for Mac and Microsoft Windows with some nifty tricks up its sleeve. It offers its own brand of nondestructive image editing, with tonal, exposure, geometric, and optical corrections that make it stand apart from the crowd. As was true of Version 6.6, Optics Pro 7 supports the company’s new FilmPack 3 film emulator plug-in (see sidebar below). We will have a more complete review of the film emulator in a future issue.

 

Optics Pro Version 7 is a dramatic departure from earlier releases. The Select pane is gone, so you no longer have to deal with tedious Projects (unless you want to). Now you go straight to work after opening a folder. Double-click on an image and that takes you right to the nondestructive editing phase, in Customize. Beyond this point the Mac and Windows versions part ways in one key respect: the Windows version runs faster than the Mac version, which continues to be laborious.

Pages

X