PortraitPro Studio Max 15 from Anthropics Technology allows anyone to improve portrait photos with ease. All aspects of a portrait can be enhanced with intuitive and simple controls. PortraitPro Studio Max: Detects the face, age and gender. Automatically retouches the photo with customizable presets. Sliders to adjust the results.
When it comes to portrait photography, there seem to be two predominant schools of thought. The first says that retouching is bad, that people should be presented as they are and retouching is a no-no. The second school of thought says that when people have their portrait taken, it should be an idealistic representation of the person, flattering the subject and minimizing any flaws.
The truth, however, probably lies somewhere in the middle. When people have their portrait taken, they want the photographer to make them look as good as possible. Most portraiture requires some level of retouching, and truth be told, retouching was in vogue long before the digital age. Digital photography, however, has brought with it some new tools. One of those tools is PortraitPro 15, from Anthropics Technology.
The PortraitPro 18 Studio Max installer prompts you regarding plugins for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. For easy access to PortraitPro from those programs, install the plugins. Once installation is complete, you can open PortraitPro directly or via Photoshop (Filter Anthropics PortraitPro). Exclusive to PortraitPro 18 Studio and Studio Max: streamline your workflow with new Smart Filter capability. Switch easily between Photoshop and PortraitPro 18 and customize your portraits to suit yourself and your clients. Intelligent new hair finding techniques means more accurate and realistic hair editing. PortraitPro is the world’s best-selling retouching software. Fast and intuitive, PortraitPro intelligently enhances every aspect of a portrait for beautiful results. Macbook to windows remote desktop. PortraitPro: Detects the face, age and gender. Automatically retouches the photo with customizable presets. Sliders to adjust the results. PortraitPro Studio and Studio Max can both be used as plugins, and they also offer a variety of other options including RAW file support, color profile support, the ability to read and write TIFF and PNG files in 16-bit mode, and a batch dialog. The Studio Max version also offers a Full Batch Mode to greatly speed up your workflow.
PortraitPro 15 is available as a standalone application, or as a plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture. There are three different versions available; Standard, Studio, and Studio Max. PortraitPro Standard is the standalone version, which also has a few other limitations. PortraitPro Studio and Studio Max can both be used as plugins, and they also offer a variety of other options including RAW file support, color profile support, the ability to read and write TIFF and PNG files in 16-bit mode, and a batch dialog. The Studio Max version also offers a Full Batch Mode to greatly speed up your workflow. Compare all editions of PortraitPro 15 here.
Getting started in PortraitPro 15 is simple. If you’re using the standalone application, simply open the file you wish to work on. From Photoshop (if you’re using the Studio or Studio Max version), go to the Filters menu and Select Anthropics > Portrait Professional.
Once your image is open, PortraitPro 15 will detect the facial outline of the subject. It will sometimes detect gender and age, or it may ask if the subject is male or female or a young girl or boy under 12. You will then be shown a side-by-side comparison, with the image on the left showing the outlines of the face that the software will use for its retouching. These outlines can be adjusted to provide better accuracy, but the software does a pretty good job of selecting facial features on its own. On the right is a preview of what the subject will look like after the retouching is applied.
On the far right, you will see a navigator window that allows you to move around the image easily. Beneath that is a list of presets so you can easily apply a particular look to your subject. Beneath the presets is a group of “Portrait Improving Sliders”. Some of these sliders, particularly Face Sculpting may seem a bit controversial. Like most digital photo editing tools, you can certainly go too far with its use. But, there are times when it has come in handy and improved the subject, such as when one eye may not be fully open. As with all things, moderation is the key to using these sliders.
PortraitPro 15 is an excellent application for quick and easy retouching of portraits. Blemish retouching, eye enhancing, and cleanup of hair is simple and can PortraitPro 15 can provide a nice finished look to a portrait. In addition, the ability to adjust lighting can give added pop and make a flatly lit portrait much more interesting. The same goes for the ability to add or enhance makeup. It’s easy to see the effects of the changes you make usingPortraitPro and compare them to the unretouched photo, so you can judge the edits as you work.
My biggest issue with PortraitPro 15 is that it’s easy to go too far with an adjustment and suddenly your image looks fake or digitized, almost like a 3D animation. Like most photo-enhancing filters, a little goes a long way and moderation is required. In the right hands, PortraitPro can be an awesome editing tool. In the wrong hands, it can return some ugly results. Additionally, PortraitPro appears to have some issues when one eye is covered by hair or a hat, or when the face is at a 3/4 angle to the camera. So in those situations, you’ll need to pay extra attention to your selections, and in the case where one eye is hidden, set all sliders for that eye to zero.
My other issue with PortraitPro is that it does seem to be a resource hog. As soon as I enter the plugin from Photoshop, the fan on my 2014 iMac (with the max amount of RAM) starts up and keeps going until I’m done. Some of the adjustments are slow, and on my machine, adjusting the outlines takes a moment as my computer catches up.
Overall, I love PortraitPro 15 and the ability it has to retouch portraits quickly and easily. While I prefer not to use all of the features all of the time, such as face sculpting or skin lighting, things such as skin smoothing and eye retouching really help give my portraits a finished look. The learning curve is not terribly high and it is fairly easy to tell when you’ve gone too far. It’s become an essential part of my portrait workflow.
Awesome Tool for Fast, Quality Retouching
Review by Jessica Maldonado
Professional retouching in Photoshop requires years of experience and hours of meticulous work, but it’s rare we have the luxury to devote that time to every portrait. I’ve enjoyed reviewing PortraitPro in the past, so I jumped at the chance to test the newest version of the software, PortraitPro 17, which is available in three versions: Standard, Studio, and Studio Max. This review is for the PortraitPro 17 Studio Max version, which is the only version with a batch mode.
PortraitPro 17 can be used as a standalone app, and the Studio and Studio Max versions can be used as a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, or Photoshop Elements. I recommend using it as a standalone for quick batch processing and its ability to save your session as a project if you’re called away from your computer.
The PortraitPro 17 software instantly detects faces in each image opened. Results are quick and usually very good, but it’s easy to adjust the guide nodes if they’re off the mark. The standard retouching that PortraitPro automatically serves up is good, so you could potentially have a retouched image ready to go in just one minute. Closed eyes or extreme facial expressions can trip it up, so look out for this on batch-processed work.
Contacthmi controller. I don’t love that Face Sculpt and lighting adjustments are part of these standard results. As I’ve critiqued in the past, a scrupulous retoucher begins with the face as-is, only correcting as necessary for perceived flaws. Photographers choose their lighting carefully, so it’s off-putting to me that these are added automatically. It’s no problem, however, as it’s just one click to turn off any adjustment section.
There’s a tab full of Preset menus (Global, Face Sculpt, Skin Smoothing, etc.) that you can easily fine-tune with the sliders (back under the Controls tab). Batch processes only allow you to choose from the Global presets, but a fast workaround is simply to save anything you’d like as “Global” (I did this for no-sculpt-skin-smoothing-only batches to address my issues).
The best new addition to this version of PortraitPro is the ability to save Snapshots as you work, so you can experiment with different looks and revert back to the original version quickly if you don’t like them.
The Face Sculpt controls really are pretty cool, and do have their place in some portrait retouches, for example: Fix uneven eyes or lips—at the modest end—or slim and elongate for clients who desire it. Restraint and small movements will give pleasing results; pushing things too far will, of course, look cartoonish. Now that Photoshop has Face-Aware Liquify, these abilities are less unique, but for non-Photoshop users, definitely desirable.
Skin Smoothing is the superstar section of PortraitPro 17’s controls. Restrain yourself here, and you’ll never have plastic/over-blurred skin again. However, the Spot Removal sensitivity menu in the Skin Smoothing controls still doesn’t appear to do anything, and the Touch Up brush doesn’t work as well as I’d remembered (growing pains?).
Portrait Pro Studio Max Coupon
The Skin Lighting control section requires restraint to avoid strange artifacts around your subject, but it’s handy for adding back some of the dimension that can be lost from skin smoothing (especially around the cheekbones and sides of the nose). Makeup settings are useful and fun, but the presets aren’t great—I’d love Anthropics to team up with a cosmetics company for real-world looks. Eye and Mouth & Nose controls give you sliders for the left and right eye and the top and bottom lip, respectively. Here, you can brighten, sharpen, and whiten eyes and teeth, and adjust eye and lip color. Changing hair color is notoriously difficult to accomplish believably, even with Photoshop, and the Hair controls still yield artificial-looking results. Low settings here can improve the shine or vibrancy of the hair, but that’s about it. The Picture controls allow for overall exposure adjustments and the like. And a nice addition, new to this version, are Vignette controls.
Portraitpro 17
Background editing is the “big” new feature in this update, but it’s not ready for prime time. I was hopeful when the initial masks popped up (not bad!), but the refinement tools are clunky to use and don’t mask hair well—so critical to portrait composites. It’s less intuitive to use than other sections; for example, you can’t use the Spacebar to move around the image. Also, you must choose and finalize your new background while in PortraitPro 17, if you’re running it as a plug-in, since no mask or alpha channel are returned to Photoshop. PortraitPro Project sessions do retain the ability to change the mask and background. For someone with no access to Photoshop, this might be worth a try. Currently, it’s unnecessary bloat to an otherwise great application.
Despite my critiques on some features, PortraitPro 17 Studio Max is still the best option I’ve tried for quickly editing multiple portraits with good results. It’s fun to use, and gives tons of control for a reasonable price. Check out the website for online and upgrade discounts, as Anthropics was offering all three editions at 50% off at the time of this writing. ■
Comments are closed.