OnOne Perfect Photo Suite

Photo answers review

Photo answers rating

Focal Point
We’re keen users of wide apertures when we want to add great depth to portraits but sometimes when we view them on-screen we find that we just haven’t opened up wide enough – mainly making the mistake of not spotting something distracting in the background and throwing it completely out of focus. Not the look we’re after!
Controlling your desired effect couldn’t be easier with Focal Point. With the simple to use FocusBug controller you can quickly recreate the toy town effect that is captured when an image is shot with an expensive tilt-and-shift lens, or alternatively completely transform the depth of a portrait with some selective focusing. With that added ability to lighten or darken the edges and alter the contrast you have far more control over the impact of the area around your ‘sweet spot’.
For portraits we soon found that this software works better on an image that already has a bit of fall-off on the focus, therefore making the finished image more realistic. We tried it on a portrait we had shot at a small aperture (f/8) but the image just ended up looking like a fake tilt-and-shift. This could be because over the years we’ve just got used to seeing the ‘natural’ effects created by shooting portraits with a prime lenses at wide-open apertures. So to test FocalPoint properly we shot something a little different, namely a bride’s pair of heels at a recent wedding (see image above), which we thought would have far more punch if we altered the depth-of-field. Concentrating on the label inside the shoe made a perfect area for the ‘sweet spot’ and gives a more interesting image.


Photo Tools
With colour and mono effects, tints and textures, image overlays and a collection of borders, Photo Tools is perfect for the creative photographer in a hurry. If you’ve been known in the past to spend far too long ‘playing around’ with an image, then after a while either get bored of looking at it or, even worse, end up completely ruining it, the good thing about this piece of kit is that not only do you get written descriptions that accompany each of the plug-ins describing the effect but you also get to see an example image in a large thumbnail window.
We generally make quick improvements to all our images, normally giving them a little Levels and Curves adjustment, but sometimes you need more complex and time-consuming changes, such as removing blemishes in portraits. And if we really want to get arty and funky with fashion images we tend to tweak the colour channels to create a cross-processed appearance. All these adjustments help to give your images a more professional look, so spending a bit of time on your works of art is worth it. But what if you don’t have the time? That’s where software like Perfect Photo Suite comes in. At a click of a button you can make these alterations and adjust the strength of the effect.
Simply double-click the effect you want to play about with, adjust the strength with the fade slider and hit the apply button. If after selecting the effect you’re not happy, all you need to do is click on the eye logo to take you back to your previous version.


PhotoTune
This great colour correction tool allows you to compare your original images side-by-side. By improving the sharpness and tone of this image from the original you can see a dramatic improvement without the need to delve into Levels and Curves in Photoshop.


Mask Pro
Having the ability to mask out problem areas in images is one of the major advantages of shooting digitally. From stray hair to obtrusive backgrounds, sometimes editing images in post-processing is the only way to really clean them up. Unless you’re a master with Photoshop or have a lot of time to be extremely precise, working on images this way in Photoshop can leave your shots with jagged edges and a horrible halo around portraits, meaning masked images have an obviously fake appearance.


Perfect Resize
If you’re a keen supplier of stock photography, or producing large scale prints, then this is the feature for you. This is the next generation of Genuine Fractals and it lets you increase image size without the usual loss of sharpness you may expect from other post-processing methods.


Perfect Layers
This feature is a new addition to the Perfect Photo Suite package that gives you a fast and easy solution to a layered workflow in Lightroom, Aperture and Bridge software. Perfect Layers lets you directly create and work with multi-layered files within Lightroom or Aperture that are compatible with Adobe Photoshop.


PhotoFrame
Sometimes a dull image can be transformed with just a simple border. With PhotoFrame you can choose from hundreds of textures, edges and layouts to bring your image to life. The preview tabs allow you to view what each frame will look like before you commit to applying the frame to your image, saving you time going through the hundreds that are supplied with the package. You’ll soon work out for yourself your favourite borders and keep going back to them. Mine were the more subtle borders that give the effect of being shot on film or printed in the darkroom. Once you’ve selected the frame for your image it’s very simple to customise the chosen border by using the sliders to alter settings such as opacity, blur and the size of the frame effect.


PA Verdict
When we got our hands on Perfect Photo Suite the two main features that stood out for us were PhotoTools and PhotoFrame. After having a week to play about with the package we can safely say they both performed excellently and made our editing life a whole lot easier.
As firm believers of ‘getting it right when you press the shutter’, one feature of this software that we really didn’t think or, truth be told, want to like was FocalPoint. But the results speak for themselves, offering a more creative and slicker finish than we could have hoped for.
With the ability to give your shots so much more depth and creativity this package really does have a lot to offer. You may be put off by the price-tag but in our eyes it’s money well spent.