Portrait Professional Promotes Picture Pulchritude!

I do a reasonably good job editing portraits, but I never get that slick "Hollywood look" you see on the cover of glossy magazines. I lie to myself that I don't like that look, but I really hate the fact that I have no idea how to get that look. When Portrait Professional was running a big web campaign a few months ago, I ignored the product as just another cheap but clever image manipulation program. However, when a pro friend told me he really liked it, I decided to download it and give it a shot.

Wow!

I'm pretty leery of statements like "The easiest, fastest face touch-up software in the world," but I have to admit that Portrait Professional might well live up to that claim. It takes me about an hour to edit a typical portrait. With Portrait Professional, it takes less than ten minutes and does a much better job. Now I can emulate that Hollywood look for which I've been striving.

Start off by helping the program identify key facial features. It then lays on a mass editing effect which you can then adjust to your requirements. The number of physical features you can adjust is very impressive.

Of course it's REALLY easy to overdo the editing using this product, but that's true of any editing software. So, if you see a very plastic looking "after" picture, don't assume that's the look you get. The software provides plenty of controls to enable you to master the final effect.

I picked up the standard version for about fifty bucks, well worth the price and discounts can be found (see below). More "advanced" versions provide more options including RAW support and a PhotoShop plugin, so compare the different versions carefully before you buy.

The developers encourage people to spread the word by providing each buyer with a code to enable anyone else to get a fifteen percent discount. Using coupon SDYM-EVZH-YYCO-XLWA gets you 15% off. Full disclosure: if you use that code, it gets me a free upgrade to the next version (whenever that might come out).

Problems:

Four stars and not five? Well, it's not perfect, but since it's already on version eleven, it has come a long way and the developers are obviously working to improve it. I did find a few problems. While it's possible to change hair color (awesome feature!), it's difficult to get really fine control over the individual hair strands and locks. This is not the old "KnockOut" product. If the subject's face is at an odd angle, you may have rotate your original to make it work properly. Sometimes, I got weird artifacts in the subject's teeth after saving the file. There are certainly no insurmountable or show stopping problems with this program.