Portrait PR… Post Processing for the Portrait Photographer
With the days of labs, darkrooms, and chemicals long gone, the realm of digital editing using software has taken over the role of chemist and lab technician. These days, there seems to be no lack of various software pieces upon which the tech and gadget freaks (a.k.a. photographers) can spend their money. In a world that seems to be dominated by Adobe Photoshop, software editing for the portrait photographer can be an expensive undertaking to say the least. Add to that the learning curve of getting all the techniques and workflows organized in Photoshop and many long time enthusiasts are nearly ready to throw in the proverbial towel when it comes to post processing.
Enter Portrait Professional (i.e. Portrait PR) post processing software. This software is easy to use, easy to understand, and very affordable. When most portrait photographers enter the edit bay to do their post processing work, they typically have to deal with the same things as everyone else, plus a few things that landscape or architectural photographers do not.
Wrinkles, pores, blemishes, and the like are the bane of many nearly ‘perfect’ photos in the portrait photographer’s world. Blemishes alone can require hours of touch up, ‘healing’, and cloning brushwork to get to look natural. Skin smoothing for large pores and wrinkles can be even more daunting if one must tackle things in Photoshop or a similar piece of software. Mind you, I am not saying that it cannot be done or that it cannot be accomplished quickly and easily for those who know what they are doing with Photoshop. Nor am I intoning in any way that Photoshop is anything less than amazing when it comes to post processing of photography. In fact, there is a reason that all other software is compared to Photoshop…it really is that good.
However, many people simply cannot afford the monetary and time costs that Photoshop requires of one to reap the full benefits of the software. For those who find themselves in this particular boat, Portrait PR is a great affordable and workable option.
After playing around with the demo, I was able to see some very dramatic results on various shots I had taken. The skin on the subjects was much smoother, the catch lights in the eyes were highlighted better, the blemish healing tool works wonderfully, and the basic color correction tools allow for a great degree of customization.
Understand that this tool is not a complete editing solution for all situations; however, it is a wonderful tool for those who do portraits and need a quick, high quality workflow in post processing. Every piece of Portrait PR has customizable features allowing for either slight or dramatic controls over things like texture, tone, contrast, smoothing, and even color temperature.
Keep in mind that one must remain modest with the controls, the ability to do certain tasks automatically should never outweigh your brain and basic sensibilities. It is easily possible to smooth a model’s skin so much that they look like a life sized plastic doll. If this is the ‘look’ you are trying for, great. However, most people will not want their family portrait session to have that kind of ‘feel’.
Portrait PR is flexible in that it allows you to identify and ‘tweak’ all of the faces in your images. If you are shooting a family or group shot, you can go through and apply customized changes to each and every face in the shot. You can also control basic functionality and appearance of the color temperature, brightness, hue, and contrast to the entire photo. While it might not have some of the more particular tools that one expects to find in a complete photo editing software piece, Portrait PR is a great tool to speed up the workflow and editing process for those who engage in portrait shooting on a regular basis.
We will cover more on post processing in upcoming pieces, but let me leave you with this piece of advice: No hardware or software will ever make a sub-par image and transform it into a masterpiece. Use your skills, your brain, and your creative talent to capture the best images you possibly can, and then use the software and hardware to enhance those images and make them just a little better.
In the meantime, go ahead and try the free trial of Portrait Professional. You might like the results, and the price tag to purchase the full version is very reasonable and within the budgets of even the most frugal shutterbug.
There are 2 comments on this post.
Trackback URL | Comments RSS FeedThanks for the nice review. However, I’m not impressed by the example you showed. I think you picked a good example with nice skin with freckles but the Portrait Professional smoothed the skin so that it looks like a plastic bag now. High quality portrait retouching should erase blemish and lighten wrinkles without losing the natural skin texture… Don’t you think?
Ryujijj » I do agree
I love photo with freckles, if it wasn’t for the sake of the review, I wouldn’t even retouch that pretty face… actually I would accentuate those freckles.
But I think it’s my fault, I’m not very confident yet with the slides of Portrait Professional, as easy as it is, there are many options… and being a photoshop addict it is hard for me to think in other terms.