Thanks in part to performance improvements in version 11 and the overall efficiency of Portrait Professional, you’ll be spending less time in front of the computer and more time with a camera in your hands. Essentially, there’s no facial feature that can’t be enhanced-although you need to be especially mindful of the old adage that less is more, particularly with some of its sculpting tools. Eyes can be widened, necks elongated, and hair and eye color can be changed. There are tools to change the shape of the face, nose, eyes and mouth, with special sliders to reduce under-eye bags and crow’s feet. But Portrait Professional goes much deeper than core retouching. As expected, you can enhance skin tones and texture, eliminate wrinkles and blemishes, whiten teeth and brighten eyes. With its combination of basic image-adjustment tools-including white balance, exposure, tint, brightness and contrast-and its advanced portrait enhancement options, Portrait Professional provides a one-stop solution for portrait photographers. Portrait Professional is a surprisingly powerful plug-in, especially given its ease of use. Info: Anthropics Technology Portrait Professional 11 There are helpful tutorials on the website, and the user manual (free via download) is an excellent guide that will ensure a quick and efficient portrait editing workflow. Of course, there are presets that are one-click simple to apply, and while you can’t save your own presets, Digital Anarchy promises additional presets will be released in the future. And, for clients who do their own makeup, you can easily retouch the shiny areas of the skin. Using face detection and advanced algorithms, the application automatically detects skin tones and creates a mask (adjustments can be made to the mask, if needed) while you control skin enhancement with parameters such as the amount of smoothing and sharpening. Don’t let its basic user interface fool you: This plug-in provides a wealth of controls to make your subject look his or her best. Info: Digital Anarchy Beauty Box Photo 3.0Ī time-saving plug-in for portrait photographers is Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box Photo 3.0 (a version for video shooters is available, too). You’ll also find an increase in workflow options as well as a redesigned user interface, a visual preset browser with live previews, and the convenient ability to hide and reveal panels with a single click. Version 5 is a fairly major update to its predecessor and is the first Alien Skin plug-in that also functions as a standalone program. But if and when you want to get edgy, Exposure 5 offers those options as well. Unless you’re doing a funky senior portrait, you’ll probably prefer the more subtle or gentle styles. Creative options are almost limitless, with long lists of styles in black-and-white and color, with various other categories such as Cinema, Lo-Fi and Cross Processing. Other enhancements include individual controls for adding borders, dust, scratches and light leaks. Equally important is the addition of new textures, which is a great bonus for those who love a vintage look. In addition to a wide variety of film emulations and presets, Exposure 5 offers numerous tweaking options ranging from filters and toning to sharpening and focus (in case you want a little more bokeh). Check out these ten plug-ins to see which one best suits your portraiture style and post-processing needs.Īlien Skin Exposure 5 is all about style, especially for the portrait photographer who wants to create a unique look with the plug-in’s many color and black-and-white options. Either way, adding plug-ins to your main image-editing program will generally save you time and help make your images stand out from the crowd. Others offer creative options that can be tweaked to represent your own unique style. Some plug-ins are practical, offering tools that every portrait photographer needs to ensure that a subject’s skin looks perfect (or close to perfect) but realistic. Image-editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom get you just so far sometimes using a plug-in to elevate your images to the next level is the most efficient solution. Carefully planned lighting, posing and styling, along with your expertise behind the camera, will get you most of the way there, but post-processing is also an integral part of the job. As a portrait photographer, your job is to make your clients look their best.
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