Portrait professional

So I have been trying out this new piece of software (well new to me). Portrait professional. You may have tried taking portrait photos and afterwards you need to do a few touch ups.
Photoshop is usually the tool of choice and you can indeed do just about anything (just about since it still doesn't make coffee and bring it to you).

However using photoshop you have to know the tools and all the little tricks of the trade or well at least it does help you.

Now trying to cut down on the time spend touching up on photos I was trying out the software package portrait professional.

Basically the software is doing what photo editors have been doing for many years. The good news for you is that you don't *really* have to know all the tricks or why it works the way it does. You just pick your photo to edit help the software correctly identify eyes, nose, mouth and outline of face (yep it does multiple people in a photo too).
Once you have identified the key elements a few adjustments can be done to ensure that the adjustments are done in the right areas. This sounds difficult but trust me once you get to it... it's a breeze. I think from start to finish it's less than 10 min. to begin with and once you get used to the interface it most likely is a 2 min. task tops... Gotta love that :-)

Once the portrait is done you can select degrees of adjustment using some very easy sliders. e.g. pick the eye adjustment and just roll the slider and it's all adjusted real time. Now how hard can that be.... btw. the skin controls can even give you a tan!!!

But that's not all (Ok now I really sound like a sales representative) if this is too much then there are a number of preset adjustments which most likely will cover all you need in 90% of your photos.
The presets include: complexion, dramatic, glamour, subtle, spot removal, sephia and black&white. If you do a custom setting you can save that as a preset too (yeah) :-)

Here is a quick example done with a low res (it was already on the blog) photo.
Here is the starting photo.


Using portrait professional to add a female complexion:



And finally trying the somewhat extreme dramatic preset:



And finally a side by side comparison of the different versions:


Right now the software package is $59.95 which isn't really bad for what you can get out of it. But check out the company website http://www.portraitprofessional.com/.

ohhh and btw. I am not on the payroll with them but well commissions or donations are accepted ;-)