What Plug-ins should I buy? [Updated Dec 10, 2015]

Ron Martinsen’s December 2015 Best of the Best Ranking of the top Photography Plug-ins

Imagine that you were as rich as Bill Gates and retired. Even if you were and you have all the time on your hands to learn new things, I still doubt that any one normal human could use all of the great plug-ins available for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom. There are just so many choices and so much overlap that it can make your head explode trying to figure out which ones you really need! What’s more, there are a lot of very good ones available that do save you lots of time, but you may waste a lot of time tinkering around with all of the options they offer!

I’ve tried to be selective about what I review on this blog based on my own research. The products I focus on are mainly what I determine are the best products and what I’m hearing my Top Photographers and other industry experts are telling me that they use.

I have found an awesome collection of products that do really make my editing process quite enjoyable, but I must admit that as much as I love most of the products I have it is hard to find time to use them all. As a result I’ve decided to finally throw down the gauntlet and rank the products that I have on my machine in order of importance to my personal workflow. What this means is that if I could only use X (i.e., 5) then you could look at numbers 1 through X (i.e., 5) to see which ones I’d keep.

With this information available to you, you can then look at your budget and make your selections based on either your own research.  You can compare that with my advice to come up with the best plug-ins on the market to help make you more productive.

This list is only about plug-ins, even though some may run stand-alone in addition to being a plug-in. This means that some programs that I can’t live without (i.e., ImagePrint) will not appear on the list. I also will just flat out say that Lightroom is my #1 photo editing and asset management product but I’d have a hell of a hard time living without Photoshop. I’m not a fan of Aperture, but it is a nice product that will be perfect for some – just not me. As a Canon shooter I also find Canon Digital Photo Professional has a horrible user interface, but it is still a critical part of my workflow for certain RAW processing tasks. I know there are Nikon shooters who feel the same way about Capture NX2, which is actually a decent product that can serve as an end-to-end solution if you are on the Nikon platform.

Recommended Plug-ins as of Dec 10, 2015

Previously this was a stacked ranked list of what I’ve reviewed but with my Dec 2015 update, I’ve decided to trim it down to just what I’d recommend to a family member or close friend. Yes, there are a lot of other products on the market, but this boils it down to what I’d get if I had to start all over from scratch today.

• Topaz Labs Adjust – I used to think of this as the secret sauce for HDR images, but now I use it for so much more. In fact, Topaz has so many strong offerings that I’m often telling people that this product is just as valuable as Color Efex, so if you only buy one bundle then go for the Topaz bundle and trust this. Yes, some effects are hideous until you learn how to use them, but watch my one of my webinars and you’ll see that they don’t have to be.
  
• Imagenomic Noiseware - Noiseware won my Noise Reduction Roundup and I find myself using it the most out of all the products I’ve tested (including some not featured on the blog).
   
• Athentech Perfectly Clear / Lucid – I tried this product out a couple years ago and hated it, but now I find myself constantly using it both on my computer and my phone. I’ve edited more photos this year with this product than any of the others – combined (especially on my phone) – and I didn’t even start using it regularly until March! While I hate the skin softening results, I do find that it does make images look great – often by default – so I’ve poured countless images through Perfectly Clear. If you haven’t seen or tried this one out yet – you MUST – it’s pretty good with no hassle. [Note: Lucid is the stand-alone version with some reduced features so check out my review for more info.]
  
• Imagenomic Portraiture – I process a lot of portraits every year so I’m always re-exploring skin softening products to try to make this process easier. While many products have come a long way, there is still nothing better than Portraiture.
  
• Topaz Labs B&W Effects – There’s lots of great products in this space, but if I’m going to advise a friend to spend their hard earned money on only one then I have to go with this one. Topaz Labs has emerged as the industry leader in innovation with an active community to support it. Yes, Silver Efex Pro is good, but I’ve yet to find myself unable to get the same or better results with B&W Effects, so I’ve finally given up on it in favor of B&W Effects.
  
• Topaz Software’s ReMask –  This is the fastest and easiest tool to create complex masks fast. onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite has the potential to be greater, but I’ve just had a much harder time mastering the masking features. I find ReMask to be much easier to use and very powerful. It can save you a hell of a lot of time separating your subject from a complex background or doing complex masks that can’t be adequately handled using Nik Software’s U-Point control technology or the vastly improved Refine Edge feature of recent versions of Photoshop. 
  
• MacPhun Aurora HDR [Mac only] or HDRSoft Photomatix (esp with Trey Ratcliff’s Photomatix Presets) – If HDR is important to you then one of these has to be in the top 5. For as good as built-in HDR processing is in Photoshop and Lightroom, I still prefer stand alone applications. Aurora HDR is simply the best product on the market for HDR – bar none – but currently it’s only available on the Mac, so PC users will have to use the long-time industry standard Photomatix. Photomatix can create great results, but it’s cryptic controls can be difficult to master – especially if you want realistic results (and white clouds). Yes, you can go to Photoshop and work around its shortcomings, but Aurora HDR makes that easy to do in its UI without the need for Photoshop (or anything else).
  
• Topaz Labs Texture Effects, Glow and Impression – These are the hottest new plug-ins on the market for a reason – they create amazingly original looking work from the most boring of images. I really, really, love these products, but I do wish that they were all just merged into one product.
  
• Topaz Labs Restyle (alt review) – This is another one of those one click editing solutions that I love, but I don’t use it as much as I’d like to because it has so many choices! Seriously, I love choices but I sometimes find myself spending 20 minutes just pouring through all of the awesome choices it offers!
  
  It is very usefully for coming with up a “look” or “theme” for a project and leveraging favorites help reduce the time spent in the app. I adore this product and STRONGLY recommend you to check it out as this product is a game changer for those who want to focus on their photography, and not photo editing – yet still have professional results that don’t look like it was processed on Instagram.
  
• on1 Perfect Resize – There was a time where this would have been in the top 3, but resizing in Adobe products and printer drivers have gotten pretty good so this is more useful when you need the best possible results or when other methods just don’t do a good job. Generally speaking if you are going to increase an image by 200% or more, then this is the best game in town. Sadly it’s a hidden feature that is an optional install for the latest version of the on1 Photo bundle. My review covers an older version, but nothing has really changed in this product for quite some time. Sadly you can only get this with the entire on1 Bundle.
  
• Topaz Labs Simplify (review) – Great for turning your images into cartoons or drawings. It’s a cool app that I didn’t used to use that much, but I’ve learned that with the right scenes (especially leafy landscapes) it can create some exciting images that people want to buy. I also like to use it on busy backgrounds sometimes to remove distractions. This isn’t a product that most photographers would use every day, but when I pair it with the right image I often get a big grin on my face. Topaz Clean also is capable of doing this and more, so check it out while you are at it to see which works better for you. Personally, I tend to favor Simplify.

There’s of course a lot more that isn’t included here, so check out the Software Reviews section to the right or on my recommendations page to see if I’ve reviewed your favorite product. If you’d like my opinion one one not featured on my site then contact me.

What Happened to the Nik Collection by Google?

For as long as this blog has existed, I’ve been singing the praises of what used to be called the Nik Software Collection. They were the defacto standard by which all others were judged, and myself and so many others couldn’t live without it. However, my personal opinion of Google’s purchase of Nik Software, is that it seemed to be more of a patent grab than anything else as the innovation that Team Nik brought vanished after the acquisition (as well as many of the Nik employees).

If my calculations are correct, we are approaching 4 years since the last update of Color Efex and 2 years since the last update of anything (Analog Efex). As a result, it’s appears that these products are in sustained engineering mode. Given Google’s history of cutting products and services that aren’t part of their core business, I can’t escape the fear that one day an operating system change will come and we’ll hear that the Nik Collection will not be updated to support it.

With this in mind, I’ve been trying hard to wean myself off my favorite products like Color Efex, Silver Efex Pro, and Viveza for fear that I’d be up a creek without a paddle if I had an important job and they stopped working – with no plans to fix them.

I’ll be clear and state that these are still phenomenally good products, but if I’m going to advise my readers to spend their hard earned money then I want to point them to software solutions built by people with a ton of passion to make their products better (i.e., companies like Topaz Labs with their Complete Collection and MacPhun with their beautifully designed Creative Kit).  Sure, if you have bought the other recommended products and have an extra $149 to spare, then by all means pick these up as they are still quite good. However, I don’t recommend that people with limited funds make this their first purchase for the aforementioned reasons.

A Word About Bundles

One thing that is very clear is if you think you’ll ever want to own more than 2 or 3 products from a given company then you should just bit the bullet and get their largest bundled version. While it might be painful in the short-term buying such an expensive product, you’ll spend exponentially more if you find yourself buying all the products over time. The bundles are a great deal and the only way to go if you can make that happen. With that said, I do a quick run down of my favorite bundles here in priority stack ranked order:

1. Topaz Labs Plug-In Bundle – It has taken some time, but Topaz Labs has gone from the bottom to the top thanks to so many creative and game changing products. I find myself using Adjust and B&W Effects quite a bit now. Texture Effects, Glow, Impression, ReStyle and Simplify highlight the amazing innovation coming out of this new industry leader in photo editing.
   
   These products can give your photos that wow with minimal effort allowing you to focus on photography instead of photo editing, and save shots that would otherwise be duds. I’m also a huge fan of ReMask when I have to do masking because it is much more accurate than Refine Edge in Photoshop. As a result, these 8 products easily justify the cost of the bundle (which is available at a discount on my blog).
   
   While many people swear by them, I don’t really use Clean, Detail, Lens Effects,or Star Effects that much, but the other products still make the bundle worth it. I don’t care for  DeNoise , so I always use Noiseware when I need to do digital noise reduction (from using higher ISO’s).
   
   This is my new “if you could only have one” bundle choice because it offers so much to help create new art from your photography, that I think it really deserves the top spot.
   
2. Imagenomic Pro Plug-in Suite – Noiseware is the winner of my noise reduction series and as of now, nothing has changed that. I also have become obsessed with Portraiture as my preferred skin softening product for both photos and videos, so you may as well get the bundle. You’ll effectively get Real Grain for free, so it’s worth getting the bundle.
   
3. MacPhun Creative Kit – This company has some of my friends from the once brilliant Nik Software, and its beautifully built user interface is the one by which all other products should aspire to mimic. While it lacks the brilliant U-Point controls that are the secret sauce of the Nik Collection, it has everything else and so much more. This is really a great solution for Mac users, but sadly isn’t on Windows yet so I can’t give it a better rating.
   
4. Google Nik Collection – As I previously mentioned, this had been my favorite for many years. However, the product seems to be in maintenance mode with all of my Nik contacts leaving Google without any apparent replacements. Google has no meaningful financial interest in the product anymore, so I have concerns about its future. As a result, I’m reluctant to recommend it anymore, despite the brilliant software that remains.
   
   Yes, this is still a great product and I adore it, but I’m lost as to what Google is really doing for its future. As a result, IF you’ve got the other suites and a an extra $149 lying around then it’s a worthwhile investment – just make sure you have a plan B if it stops working unexpectedly in the future.
   
5. on1 Photo 10 – I used to be a big fan of onOne Software, but this suite has been dumbed down so much with its confusing user interface that it’s left nothing really compelling to me anymore. I’m also tired of it coming out with new names and releases before they get the bugs out of the current one, so I really can’t get excited about this one anymore. Yes, Matt Klosowski makes it look pretty cool, but unless you’ve got his gift for photo editing, I think you’ll find yourself frustrated with the results you get with your own photos.
    
6. Alien Skin Bundle – Alien Skin makes decent products, but with so much goodness offered these days I just don’t find myself saying “I need that” over the other products in my workflow.

You really can save a bundle by getting bundles, so before you make that stand alone purchase ask yourself – will I want to buy any of these other products in the future? If you say yes to at least 3 products offered in the bundle then pony up now to save big later – get the bundle!

Topaz Labs Photoshop Bundle – The Best Place to Spend Your Money

Adjust is a mainstay in many great photographers digital workflow because it’s a product that is so unique that really nothing competes with it. Topaz created this same kind of magic with Glow, Impression and ReStyle all of which are super hot sellers that I love. With ReMask still being the best manual masking solution and the strength of Simplify and B&W Effects, you really have a true artist toolkit with this bundle. Lens Effects, Clean, Detail. Star Effects  and InFocus add value but I just have so many plug-ins that I don’t have a need for them. I’m still not a fan of Denoise even though some readers swear by it.

Imagenomic

Imagenomic makes three popular products which can only be purchased separately. The first two mentioned below are staples in my regular work, so I couldn’t live without them.

Based on my extensive testing during my Noise Reduction Roundup, nobody out performed Noiseware.  It’s a great product that I go to for my most important jobs because I know it will do the best job to preserve the detail. It’s only disadvantage is the lack of Nik’s U-Point controls, but most of the time I will just create a layer mask and roughly sketch out where I want selective noise reduction, so I’ll just use Noiseware in both those and global noise reduction scenarios.

I’ve stopped using my long-time beloved Nik Software’s Dynamic Skin Softener (filter found in Color Efex) in favor of Portraiture which does the best skin enhancements I’ve ever seen. I turned my mentor on to this product after his copy of Color Efex wouldn’t work on his upgraded version of the Mac OS, and he loves Portraiture more than anything now! 

Real Grain isn’t my cup of tea, but most people probably don't realize that it simulates a lot of films which could be handy to some. It also has nice grains which can prove useful in printing or dramatic stylistic effects like reproducing the artificial grain found in the movie Saving Private Ryan.

The Rest

There are thousands of Photoshop & Lightroom plug-ins, and many of them are fantastic. However, I don’t have the bandwidth to test everything, nor can I use everything, so what you see in this article represents my reality. Don’t assume that if  product isn’t mentioned here that I don’t like it, but rather assume I probably haven’t used it very much – if at all.

I will say that I’m no fan of Portrait Professional and Focus Magic as I feel both offer mediocre solutions for which there are much better options.

If you’ve got a great product that you think I must know about then feel free to leave a comment with your suggestion(s). Do not link as spam comments will not be approved.

Special Offers

Visit my Discount Coupon Code page for specials on plug-ins and a wide variety of products – many of which aren’t available any where else on the web!

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Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

REVIEW: onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7–Look Out Adobe, Nik, Imagenomic and Anthropics!

onOne Software is one of those companies that just keeps trying harder and harder to be the best and I think they are going to get there (especially if Google blows it with the Nik Software acquisition).

I just got my copy of Perfect Photo Suite 7 recently and I’m super impressed. In fact, I’m so impressed that my original plan to post an article about it in mid-December had to get pushed up so I could share the news with everyone before they blew all of their money on Black Friday & Cyber Monday – ha, ha!

Perfect Effects – Color Efex Killer?

Perfect Photo Suite 7 is fast and powerful – a big improvement over 6!

While the photo editing above is pretty ugly (created to illustrate some points during a quick tour of the UI), what I’m seeing that has me so excited is that there’s even better layers support with blending modes and stacking that feels very Photoshop like. This is a huge win for Lightroom users who don’t own Photoshop, but long for its powerful masks and blending modes.

There’s also the addition of some popular Nik Software Color Efex filters like Tonal Contrast, Green Enhancer (called Foliage in Color Efex) and Golden Hour Enhancer (called Skylight in Color Efex). While I wouldn’t say the default settings are as good as the Color Efex equivalents, the flexibility in the in Effects Options gives you the ability to get there – and do it with only one suite instead of having to buy both Perfect Effects and the Nik Software bundle.

If you use Lightroom/Aperture and don’t have Photoshop, I think onOne just changed the game where you’d be better off owning Perfect Effects than Color Efex. Color Efex is my bread and butter app that I can’t live without so I won’t give it up because I own Photoshop, but what they’ve done in this release is making me give it a closer second look!

Perfect Help (aka Guidance)

Help that’s well, Helpful!

One of the things I really love about this release is that right off the bat you are given very helpful intro help on how to use the products. No more wading through long videos or docs – it just tells you what you need to know now to get going – much like cell phone apps – woohoo!!!

Perfect Resize is Perfect!!!

Oh my God, sometimes things are better than what you can wish for and that’s the case with Perfect Resize 7.5 Pro! I would have never dreamed up the presets that they have for the different papers and iOS devices, but that rocks big time!!!! WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!!

onOne Software just took the best resizing product ever and made better – I’m floored! If you’ve got to resize images, at a minimum you’ve got to get this upgrade – it’s totally worth it (especially if you do gallery wraps).

Look Out Silver Efex Pro, onOne Software Perfect B&W is coming to get you!

Perfect B&W makes me think of the perfect BMW’s because their slogan is The Ultimate Driving Machine®, but when I use Perfect B&W I start to think it could make a run as the The Ultimate Black & White Plugin. Seriously, they’ve taken all the goodness that I love about Silver Efex Pro 2 (and I REALLY love that product), and one up’d it. Now my workflow with Silver Efex is pretty set and I’ve built my own presets, so it would take me a while to recreate the same exact looks with this product – but just like with Perfect Effects vs Color Efex – the potential to do that is there. You certainly don’t need both products as both are amazingly powerful.

If you buy Perfect Photo Suite, your black and white needs are done – you’ll create excellent B&W processing of your images.

This was huge surprise for me – I didn’t see this coming and I definitely thought it would be a half-hearted attempt. However, this is the real deal – the full monty and more!

It Even Has Insert Image as a Layer Booyeah!!!!

By accident I stumbled across this gem – woohoo!!! You can now throw another image in as another layer and use blend modes (think textures), opacity (think watermarks), masks (think crappy sky replacements) and more. This is another case where onOne Software is really peeing on Adobe’s lawn – seriously!

Perfect Portrait – Say Goodbye to Portrait Professional!

Anthropics Portrait Professional is popular due to its massive advertising and its ability to take some of the tedious work out of portrait retouching. However, I’ve never been super impressed with its results. Honestly I think it’s kind of cumbersome in its own right, and if I’m going to spend that kind of time I can do it better myself.

Perfect Portrait builds on top of the “automatic” features that you find in Portrait Professional and makes things even easier and faster by offering excellent presets and easier to understand tools and UI. I’m probably still biased towards Portraiture for my skin softening, but for everything else portrait-wise this product can really save me a ton of time! I like it, and I’m definitely going to start using it on my portraits!

Conclusion

This product is blazing fast – way faster than Photoshop – and damn near as powerful. The only thing I see it really lacking is a good noise reduction and sharpening product/solution (I’m still not crazy with what it offers). Add those things (done well) and there’s really little reason for most photographers to own Photoshop. This product is that good and comprehensive. It smacks Nik upside the head and says “c’mon punk, I’m coming after you”; it turns its back on Portrait Professional and says “welcome to the new world”; and it flat out puts up a big middle finger to Adobe and says “who needs you anymore”.

Oh yeah, onOne isn’t going to make any friends with this release because they pretty much have given most of the products in my recommended plugins list a run for their money. I think that is a good thing though as it offers a better value to those who can’t afford Photoshop, and it pretty much keeps the rest of the industry on its toes.

Order Now and Save 15% with Coupon Code RMART20 [EXPIRES MARCH 2nd, 2013]

If you don’t have it, you should get this one. If you do, then you definitely should upgrade (it’s only $127.46!!!). It’s that plain and simple as this is a game changing release. It’s dirt cheap too for what you get – especially when you compare how much stuff you’d need to buy (on top of Photoshop) to get the equivalent products.

Click here to order your copy of Perfect Photo Suite 7 or any of its individual products. However, the bundle price is so sweet I recommend just getting the whole thing. With my discount, it’s actually less than I paid for my first copy of Color Efex!!!

What’s more, if you own any Nik Software product you can get the entire suite for 50% (expires February 28th, 2013) . See my article entitled Nik Software Owners: Get onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7 for 50% off for more details.

If that’s still not good enough, then you can try Perfect Effects 4 for free with this offer (not a trial version):

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• Nik Software Color Efex 4 Video Tutorial (Review)
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Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. I was also provided with a copy of this product for the purposes of evaluating it for a review.

Photo Thoughts: Having Fun with PhotoFrame

Click to fully appreciate this shot
Copyright Ron Martinsen - All Rights Reserved

One plug-in that I don’t talk about much, but I really love is onOne Software’s PhotoFrame. It’s one of the products included in Perfect Photo Suite 6 and it can be really fun to use sometimes.

In the photo above I selected 4 snapshots in Lightroom 3.4.1 and chose “Edit In | Open as Layers in Photoshop” feature to create a single PSD. I then moved the images so they were all side by side. I then merged the layers to clean up the noise with Noiseware and used Color Efex Pro 4’s Tonal Contrast filter to give the image more punch. Finally I used PhotoFrame by onOne Software to add the film frame and I did a copy and paste 3 times of the edge of the frame to create separators.

Here’s what my layers palette looked like:

 

It’s a pretty simple edit, but it takes some pretty poorly shot individual frames and makes one fun frame that’s a little more easy to forgive than if they were stand alone shots.

This shot is for me and my family so it’s all about having fun with family snapshots. I encourage you to play with PhotoFrame (review). The latest version is much more stable than older versions – especially in 64-bit.  If you’ve tried it before and been frustrated, I’d encourage you to try it again. If you decide to get it, then consider saving more by getting the bundle, and don’t forget to use my discount coupon code page to save even more.

Here’s another fun frame I really enjoy using (found in the Presets by Jack Davis – Paper):

Kyoto Golden Temple (金閣寺) – Copyright © Ron Martinsen – All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer

I may get a commission if you make purchases using links in this article – thanks for supporting my blog by using my links!

onOne Software Announces Perfect Photo Suite 6

onOne Software Announces Perfect Photo Suite 6
for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture

New products Perfect Effects, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Mask and the Perfect Layers update provide photographers with essential tools to realize their photographic vision.

Portland, OR– September 7, 2011 – onOne Software, Inc., a leading developer of innovative, timesaving solutions for professional and advanced amateur photographers, today announced Perfect Photo Suite 6 along with new products Perfect Effects, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Mask, and an update to Perfect Layers. All products in the Perfect Photo Suite 6 now work as standalone applications in addition to working directly from within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop.

Giving photographers intuitive tools that work where they do, the Perfect Photo Suite 6 now offers solutions for photographic effects, portrait retouching, creating and working with multilayered files, replacing unwanted backgrounds, image resizing, depth of field control, and edge effects, in one affordable package. The Perfect Photo Suite 6 includes Perfect Effects 3, Perfect Portrait 1, Perfect Mask 5, Perfect Layers 2, Perfect Resize 7, FocalPoint 2 and PhotoFrame 4.6.

With this new version of the Perfect Photo Suite 6, photographers can now move effortlessly between individual applications within the Suite and have complete flexibility to use the products where they work. The Perfect Photo Suite 6 now operates not only as a plug-in for Photoshop but also as a standalone application. This additional functionality means that the Suite can be used directly within Lightroom and Aperture without the need for a separate host application as was previously required. Perfect Photo Suite 6 will continue to include full support for Photoshop CS5 and CS4 with many of the products now functioning as Smart Filters.

"We are extremely excited about Perfect Photo Suite 6," said Craig Keudell, president of onOne Software. "We have always set our sights on creating tools that help photographers create high quality images so that they can spend more time behind the camera or with clients, and less time behind the computer. With the release of the completely new products Perfect Portrait, Perfect Effects, Perfect Mask and the update to Perfect Layers, the Perfect Photo Suite 6 provides photographers with products that are even more intuitive to use, and that integrate seamlessly into their workflow, so that they can realize their photographic vision."

Perfect Photo Suite 6 includes full versions of the following onOne Software products:

Perfect Effects 3 (New!): Perfect Effects builds on the popularity of PhotoTools to provide an even faster and more powerful way to create images with impact. Perfect Effects 3 includes a complete library of professional photographic effects that can be previewed live, full screen, on an image before being applied. Perfect Effects 3 now includes blending options that provide even more control over how effects are combined and applied.

Perfect Portrait 1 (New!): Perfect Portrait is a completely new product that offers the latest innovations in portrait retouching for photographers. Photographers can now focus on the art of retouching and portrait creation because the most time consuming tasks have been automated in Perfect Portrait. Perfect Portrait automatically finds faces and features in images so that photographers can get directly to the work of retouching and enhancing an image. Improving skin texture and color, removing blemishes and enhancing features like eyes, lips and teeth have never been easier.

Perfect Layers 2 (New!): Perfect Layers allows photographers to combine photos for endless creative options. Create and edit multi-layered files with Perfect Layers directly from Lightroom and Aperture, or as a standalone application. All Perfect Layers files can be edited in Photoshop later. Perfect Layers is the heart of the new Perfect Photo Suite 6.

Perfect Mask 5 (New!): Perfect Mask 5 is the next generation of Mask Pro, the leading software for background replacement. Perfect Mask takes the core strengths of Mask Pro to another level, by automating many common masking tasks with incredible accuracy. Perfect Mask's new masking technology makes selecting subjects and isolating backgrounds surprisingly easy. With Automatic Background Removal, an initial mask is made on the image and can then be fine-tuned using the Erase and Refine Tools. With these new features, high quality masks can be created in just a few clicks. Perfect Mask 5 makes masking tough subjects like hair and glass on complex backgrounds easy.

Perfect Resize 7: Perfect Resize 7—powered by Genuine Fractals—is the industry standard for image resizing. It is renowned across the photographic and printing industries for its ability to increase image size well over 1000% without the loss of sharpness or detail that is normally expected. The patented, fractal based interpolation algorithms work like nothing else and the results speak for themselves.

PhotoFrame 4.6: Add the perfect finishing touch to images and layouts with PhotoFrame. With over one thousand design elements like film edges, borders, textures, backgrounds and adornments, PhotoFrame 4.6 even has complete layouts where users can simply drop an image in and they are done. It is the easiest and fastest way to add an authentic darkroom touch with a film edge or to create beautiful albums or scrapbook pages.

FocalPoint 2: Like bringing the camera lens inside Photoshop, FocalPoint 2 gives photographers the best way to add the most realistic depth of field and selective focus control to any image after it is photographed. Photographers now have an incredible amount of flexibility and control over the look of the blur with FocalPoint 2's new blur algorithm, FocusBrush, Lens Presets and multiple FocusBug features.

Availability

The new Perfect Photo Suite 6 will be available in late October 2011. Owners of the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5, Plug-In Suite 5 or earlier versions, can upgrade to Perfect Photo Suite 6 for $149.95. Customers who own one or more of the products in Perfect Photo Suite 6 will be able to upgrade as well by visiting http://www.ononesoftware.com/upgrade/. For more information on the Perfect Photo Suite 6, please visit http://www.ononesoftware.com/.

For those that have purchased the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 on or after August 7, 2011, onOne Software will issue a complimentary upgrade to the Perfect Photo Suite 6 via download when it is available in late October 2011.

Special Offer

Please visit my Discount Coupon Code Page to get a code to save 10% off onOne Software Products.

Photo Thoughts–Giving Dull Images Some Punch

Copyright © Ron Martinsen – All Rights Reserved
Canon 5D Mark II – 1/125 sec at f/8, ISO 160
Elinchrom RX600 & Deep Octa

If you hover over the image above you’ll see the before image that I started with. I was quite happy with that image, but I’m thrilled with the final edited version. Here’s what I did:

1. I used Lightroom 3 to export the raw file to Photoshop CS4 using a decent starting point and some cropping.
2. I used Imagenomic Portraiture and I downloaded one of their free actions from here so I could use the PTBlackSkinAverage1 action to get a pleasing skin enhancement for this young mans skin.
3. Next, I used the healing brush to remove skin blemishes.
4. I used Viveza 2 to bleach out the background so I could get a quick and easy selection of just the background using the quick selection tool. I did the selection on the blue channel using a technique I learned in The Photoshop Channels Book (my favorite book on selection). I also used an overlay brush to paint around the edges of the hair (a technique described in the book) to quickly get the edges of the hair perfect in the mask. In this Viveza enhancement I also brightened up the gold chain.
5. The image was looking good at this point but I wanted it to be a “wow” image, so I used a trick I just learned in some training I’ll discuss here soon. I selected the red channel from the channels pallete, pasted it into a new layer and then set the blending mode to soft light. This trick was like magic and really gave this image the look I wanted. I used a layer mask to keep only the portions I wanted.
6. With a good selection of just the background I used Photoframe to add this really cool background. I used the refine edge masking feature to get my mask perfect so there weren’t any halos along the hair or torso.
7. I used Nik Software’s Tonal Contrast filter found in Color Efex to give the shirt a little more texture.
8. I used the liquefy tool to deal with some problems in the shirt on the left side and by the bicep to that the shirt looked a little cleaner along that edge.
9. I did a LAB Color enhancement at 25% opacity on the b channel per the instructions in Scott Kelby’s fantastic 7 Point System book.
10. I finished off with some sharpening (but only on the subject, not the background) using Sharpener Pro to give it a final touch.

Total time spent – about 4 hours, most of which was experimenting and doing the cloning and healing work.

Lot’s of cool tricks were used on this one, so my advice here is to read the books mentioned and get the add-ins I used if you like this look. All my tools were super helpful on this one!

REVIEW: onOne Software PhotoTools 2.6

I’m a busy guy so it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to do a review on . The last version I reviewed was PhotoTools 2.0 Professional back in June 2009, so this is an update that is looonnng overdue.

If you read my last review I had a lot of rants and raves but more importantly the software had a lot of bugs so I ultimately stopped using it. That’s a shame because I know that onOne Software is a great company who listens to customer feedback and tries hard to make great products, but I think that 2.0 came out before it was ready.

I’m happy to report that this version, at least on my 64-bit Windows 7 based systems and my MacBook Pro seem to be very reliable and more importantly – very fast! I had some troubles when I used 1.0 and 2.0 so the improvement can be directly attributed to a lot of great work by the onOne Software team so I congratulate them for getting over the growing pains of building a new and complex product.

Installation

Overall the installation went fairly smoothly for me. However, I did hit one issue on one of my machines (not all) that caused this “Unknown error: -65” dialog to display when I ran any onOne Software product:

After a quick email to onOne Software I found out that this error was resolved by using the instructions at http://www.ononesoftware.com/support/1269/. It turns out that I didn’t have .net 4.0 installed and that was required. While I would have liked their setup program to have detected this issue and ran the update for me, it was a pretty painless process and I was up and running with no major headaches after that. In fact, you may already have this update and not even see this problem which is very easy to fix.

I should note that on my Lenovo W701ds Windows 7 system and my MacBook Pro I did not have any problems – they both just worked right out of the box. I am including this note in case you hit it too so you won’t have any delay in getting going again.

What’s New

Here’s some of the new feature’s you’ll find in this version:

• NEW! Portrait photographers get a new Blemish Removal brush.
• NEW! Includes new effects designed specifically to enhance HDR photos.
• NEW! Includes over a dozen new texture overlays.
• NEW! Over 12 new effects added including new black & white effects.

Example: Editing a Portrait

While you can use this product to edit landscapes, architecture, etc… I thought I’d start by editing a portrait that was in bad need of some help. In the table below you can see that the original has tons of problems, but I started by fixing the white balance in Lightroom by clicking on the grout in between the tiles to get rid of the orange cast (thank goodness I shot in Raw!).

This image was shot at ISO 1000 so I went ahead and ran Imagenomic Noiseware to get rid of the noise. I had tried the noise reduction in PhotoTools, but it appears to be the same as what you find in Photoshop which means it sucks. In my Noise Reduction Series I compared various noise reduction products and Photoshop wasn’t even in the game, and even with CS5 it has a long way to go to catch up to Noiseware.

I decided to try a few techniques to fix this photo. I’ll discuss them more in a moment, but you can see the final results here. When you hover over the text in the bottom row of the table below, the image will switch to the method that you are hovering over. I’ve listed them in the order in which I liked the results. You may click the image or the text to get a larger version to examine the differences (recommended).

Original @ ISO 1000 and White Balance accidentally set to 5100K
Magic Portrait Fixer	Auto Portrait Fixer	PhotoTune 3

NOTE: I did use Sharpener Pro on the first two images after I was done editing them

Magic Portrait Fixer

PhotoTools 2.6 on Mac OS X 10.6.5 and Photoshop CS5 64-bit

This is a filter featured when I typed “Portrait” into the search box to filter down the dizzying array of choices in PhotoTools. I ran this one and it actually adds several filters to the stack. You can see which ones when you click on the image above for a larger size, but it is worth nothing that I masked out the changes to the lips on the Turbo Boost layer and I masked out the hair on the Auto Skin Smoother layer that PhotoTools creates in its stack. I also played around with the fade on several of the layers until I was happy with the final results (not shown above).

Dynamic Light Filter

I thought this effect darkened up the face to much so I went ahead and applied the Dynamic Light Filter which uses the spider tool like you would find in FocalPoint to allow for a little more light on the face which is very much like the effect that Vincent Versace teaches in his book Welcome to Oz, but with a lot less hassle. I loved this feature and the spider tool was a great way to make this adjustment very fast!

With this enhancement and the changes I made to the layers, I was very happy with the results I achieved very quickly with the Magic Portrait Fixer filter.

I should note that I finished this image off with Display sharpening using Sharpener Pro as I found it to be the better tool for sharpening than what I found in PhotoTools. However, I’ll make the disclaimer that I’m still getting reacquainted with this product again so if I find something better that is built in I’ll be sure to report back.

Auto Portrait Fixer

PhotoTools 2.6 on Windows 7 and Photoshop CS4 64-bit

Here I tried the Auto Portrait Fixer which is a little less aggressive. Once again I masked out the eyebrows and hair on the Auto Skin Smoother layer using the Masking brush. If you hover over the image above you can see the mask it applied. I liked the results and think they are very good, but the Magic Portrait Fixer version has some extra enhancements like Selective Focus that help to control the viewers eye.

All in all, I’d say this is a good filter that I can see myself using, but for this exercise I favored the more heavy handed Magic Portrait Fixer filter.

I should note that the for the final image for this one I did use Sharpener Pro as I had done in the photo above.

PhotoTune 3

For kicks and giggles I thought I’d see what would happen if I just used the People wizard of PhotoTune. Overall the results were okay, but nothing like the other two. PhotoTune is easy and great for the beginner, but I like PhotoTools way better for enhancing my images. 

I did not use Sharpener Pro on this one as the final step is sharpening so I didn’t feel it made sense to sharpen again.

Add a Frame with PhotoFrame 2.6

I was having a lot of fun playing around with the software inside onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite that I ended up doing something I rarely do – I added a frame to my final shot.

To do this I just went to the File menu and chose Automate PhotoFrame 2.6 and it brought up the library window. From there I typed film and chose one of the film frames. Since this is a snapshot I thought it was the perfect frame for the shot. Here’s some of the choices I had available, but it was pages of really cool options in this window:

It is easy to preview tons of great choices
with this brilliant user interface!

After I chose my frame I moved my image around and scaled it a bit smaller so that it would fit nicely in the film strip without being so heavily cropped as was the case in the default scenario. Fortunately I can do this quite easily in the PhotoFrame UI and it takes care of modifying my image and canvas to accommodate everything in Photoshop. This user-interface is very powerful and SUPER fast and reliable in this release:

Resize your image here and PhotoFrame takes care of the rest
(NOTE: Image shown is not from the final image used below)

The cool thing is that PhotoFrame gives you lots of options about how your frame can be applied but my favorite is this mode where the frame is separate from the image. In addition I can edit the layer mask to paint in only parts of the frame effect which is really cool when you want ragged edge frames. Here’s what my image looked like:

This could have been done in the main
image PSD but I broke it out to make
it easy to read here.

In just a matter of a couple minutes I had a fun frame and a great time creating it.

Conclusion

The Final Result
(Mouse in and out to see before & after)

The slogan for Perfect Photo Suite is “software that gets you back to shooting”, and I think that is a very accurate claim. I spent about 5 minutes in each filter experimenting with it and then another 2 minutes making the frame, so with little effort on my part I got a huge improvement (hover over above to see the before image) in less than 30 minutes. I’m very happy with the results and the improved performance and reliability will get me back to trying the onOne suite of products more often. I’m jazzed and ready to go edit some more images!

Special Offer

Visit my Discount Coupon Code page to see my latest special offer details for onOne Software. As of the time I am writing this offer they are offering $100 off the Perfect Photo Suite until December 31st, 2010. There’s also upgrade options (including a free upgrade for some) if you are a previous owner. Click here to see the latest offerings by onOne Software including a NEW special offer on Perfect Photo Suite!

Disclosure

onOne Software has provided me with an evaluation copy of all of their products for my review. I may get a commission if you purchase using the links in this article, so I appreciate your show of support by using the links on this blog when ordering.

Topaz Software & InFocus save a throw away photo

Your mother warned you this would happen… :-)

It happens to everyone – even Top Photographers – at some point. Your camera’s auto focus hits the wrong spot and the result is something like the shot above - a nice sharp elbow with much of the rest horribly out of focus. When it happens with a good shot it is even more annoying, so what do you do? Well, if you are lucky and have taken multiple frames then maybe you have a decent shot that you can edit and you can toss the blurry shot.  However, what do you do if your blurry shot is a good shot that you wanted wish you could save (i.e., baby’s first smile, the photo you took of your spouse at an overseas landmark you’ll never visit again, etc…)? Well that’s where Topaz Software’s InFocus comes in! The purpose of InFocus is to try to save that shot you’d otherwise trash.

Now this blog is no stranger to the concept of saving bad photos as my review of Focus Magic (not recommended), and Nik Software’s Sharpener Pro have both taken on this problem with Sharpener Pro being the incumbent winner for this problem – until now. 

Saving a photo with Topaz Labs InFocus

Photo Save After InFocus and Friends
Mouse over to see the before shot

Now when I first used InFocus to try to save the photo above it didn’t seem to work for me. I went through the getting started guide and just didn’t get it, so I sent Topaz Labs a copy of my shot and asked them to prove to me that this wasn’t yet another piece of junk software making a claim that it couldn’t live up to. Here was Nichole Paschal of Topaz Labs response:

Thanks so much for your interest in writing about InFocus, and I hope I can provide you with some information that will be helpful.  Also be sure to check out our new workflow tips and tricks:

http://www.topazlabs.com/infocus/infocus_workflowtips.pdf

I played around with your Santa girl for a minute, and I've attached what I was able to achieve in about 5 minutes.  I would take more time, however I want to show that it can be a quick process if needed and I'm a little rushed for time myself :). 
First, for any image that has noise or jpeg artifacts, the best results will be seen if it is run through DeNoise or DeJPEG first (I chose not to here for time constraints...but usually I would have). When I downloaded and opened your example, I noticed immediately that the girl's elbow had become the focal point in the image and her face and hair had become fuzzy.  Because of my experience with InFocus so far, I've learned that if only part of your image is out of focus (her face), the clear/in focus areas of your image will generate high amounts of artifacts (the settings of InFocus are applied to the entire image, not just the out-of-focus areas).  Therefore, I knew I needed to selectively use InFocus on her face and parts of her hair.

Once I had selected the area I mainly wanted to bring into focus, I took it into InFocus.  First, I used the Generic Blur type, however was unable to find a setting that really worked.  I also tried the Out of Focus blur type, as I usually try these two before moving on to the Unknown/Estimate Blur type.  However I did end up in Unknown/Estimate Blur type.  The important thing to realize about this blur type is that you will probably need to try several different settings and areas/zooms of your image before optimal results are seen.  With your example, I started out at a 100% zoom, trying almost all of the Blur Radius options before zooming in to 200%....this pattern continued until I reached 400% zoom, with the settings I've attached in the screen shot....this is where I felt the best results for this image was.  As a guideline, it is best to find an area of your image that has strong lines and is the area you are trying to bring into focus (with a large image, it may take some time to find the area/zoom that will produce the best results).

I pressed OK and brought the selection back into Photoshop.  While I am not ecstatic about how her eyes turned out (they seem a bit animated at 100%), I believe it is an improvement...note that her hair surrounding her face has been enhanced as well....view it at 66 or 50% for best results.  I did no other adjustments or sharpening, which I would usually do....probably an overall general sharpener, avoiding her face of course.

From this email I both learned a bit and discovered that it wasn’t impossible to save the shot, so I gave it a try myself on the same photo to see if it would really work – or if it was just smoke and mirrors.The shot you see at the beginning of this section is the result – along with some additional enhancements I’ll discuss below. While I wouldn’t send the result in to Maxim for the cover of their Christmas issue, I’m satisfied that it is a save that is usable for personal use. Because it is a human and we are drawn to eyes on humans, this makes it the toughest subject we can throw at InFocus, so I think it did okay for the subject matter. If this were building or some shot where you can’t see eyeballs like you see on the Topaz web site, I think the results would have been much better than this.

Deconstructing the Save

Here’s how I go the results you see in the after shot above:

1. The original photo had skin defects that I didn’t want to show in this article so I cheated and just ran Imagenomic’s Portraiture on the background layer to quickly fix up the skin.
2. I didn’t want to have to deal with noise from this ISO 800 shot so I ran Topaz DeNoise 5 (a big improvement over DeNoise 3 reviewed ages ago on this blog).
3. Next up I ran InFocus just on the face as Nichole had suggested as you can see in the shot below:
   
   with the following settings:
   
   
   
4. As you can see from the shot above, it wasn’t exactly a perfect save even in InFocus, but when I would toggle between the original and the preview and I looked at the thumbnail I felt I had done as much as I could do so the rest would be up to sharpening later in the workflow.
5. To sharpen the photo I decided to use Topaz Lab’s Detail with its Bold Detail preset as a quick way to get some detail in the face. If I wanted to spend time with this photo I might have used InFocus again or done some manual tuning in Detail. Here’s my settings:
   
   
   
6. I still wasn’t crazy about the color so I ran Topaz Adjust 4 and used the Mild Color Pop preset as shown here:
   
   
   
7. Now normally I’d use Viveza 2 as I did in my ColorChecker article, but this photo was just for this article – not for my portfolio so I saved and was going to just call it a night. However the background was really bothering me, so I decided that instead of using the Quick Mask tool and the selection techniques I learned in The Photoshop Channels Book, that I’d try to see how easy the new Topaz Labs ReMask 3 really was at extracting the girl from the background (see my ReMask article here).
   
8. With my nice mask I just needed a decent background so I decided to turn to my favorite background app – onOne Software’s PhotoFrame. Here’s a screen shot from its UI of the the background I chose:
   
   
   
9. I moved this layer underneath my mask, set its fill to 25% (see the layer pallete at the top of this section) to adjust it from from red to pink and that was it.

Here’s another inline copy of the save with the before on mouse over and the after on mouse out:

Photo Save After InFocus and Friends
Mouse over to see the before shot

Can anyone get these results? (The Dublin Pub Shot Test)

It’s great that I was able to bring life back into a crappy photo, but I began to wonder if I could pull the same results off on one where I didn’t have any help. I decided to try my Dublin Pub shot (used in previous reviews) where the bartender didn’t do such a good job with the shot. The results are below and you can click to get a larger version:

After InFocus and basic sharpening
(Hover to see the before & click for a larger version)

Although it is tough to see from this small version (please click for a larger version), I think this is a big improvement and saves the shot! This photo was still just a little out of focus unlike the previous photo in this article, so I think this is more realistic about what you can really do with InFocus. Here’s my settings:

InFocus Settings

If you want to compare this photo to the original, Focus Magic or Sharpener Pro then then check out my Sharpener Pro article and click the images to get large versions that you can download and compare.

Overall I’m happy because bartenders and others that might take a shot for me when I’m travelling can now screw up a little and I can just fix it later for that keepsake travel photo like you see here.

Does it work with other shots too?

Well the answer is – it depends. I found that for some shots I couldn’t get good results (i.e., blurry shot taken while in the moving elevator on the Space Needle), but others that had more predictable motion were recovered quite nicely (like the pub shot above).

With this in mind I would expect the novice user of this product to have mixed results. If you are detail oriented and are willing to tinker for a while I think you can probably get some nice saves (please link to them to this article or my flickr group if you do).

Conclusion

InFocus does indeed work for some photos, but not all of them. It isn’t a magic bullet that you can run and automagically have your photo fixed as it does require tweaking.

I had the best luck with the Unknown/Estimate option which requires you to click the Estimate Blur button every time you change the Blur Radius and Edge Softness sliders. For slightly out of focus shots it will generally be a slam dunk, but for difficult blur scenarios (my Mrs. Claus girl here) then it’ll take some time and some compromises to get something out of the shot.

If your shot is an important keepsake or sentimental shot then this product is totally worth its low price after you’ve saved just a few shots that might have gone in the garbage. I definitely think this product is worth its low price (especially if you get the bundle) to us occasionally to fix your out of focus photos, and it is way better than Focus Magic or Sharpener Pro at deblurring images. 

Special Offers

Click here to see a complete list of Topaz Software products that qualify for my 15% Off Topaz Labs Discount (also found on the Discount Coupon Code page) when you use the coupon code RONMART. The full bundle offers the best value if you plan to purchase several of the Topaz products.

onOne Software also has a 15% off discount on PhotoFrame when you use the coupon code RMART20.

Additional discounts for other products mentioned in this article and updates to these codes (if they don’t work) can be found on my Discount Coupon Code page.

Disclosure

I was given free evaluation copies of the software used in this article under no obligation from the companies that provided it. I have chosen to write about my experiences using these products based on my own natural workflow that found me using these products.

If you purchase any products using the links in this article, I may get a commission. I appreciate you supporting this blog by using the links!