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Portrait Professional Version 8 - part 1 of 1 2

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2008

This is the latest version of Portrait Professional and appears for the first time in both Mac and PC guises. There are other refinements including:

Further enhanced training in human appearance particularly on the 3/4 views and more shape beautification modes, including neck lengthening (at the request of fashion, advertising and catalogue photographers)

Hair beautifying controls including hair re-colouring, thickening and smoothing to let you eliminate bad hair days after the event. To the best of our knowledge, a world first

It also has similar enhancements for eyes and mouths. Iris colour, iris saturation, whiteness of the eye, pupil colour, and the sharpness and size of each eye can be individually controlled by sliders. Whiteness of the teeth, the colour contrast, saturation, and darkness of the lips, and the sharpness of the overall mouth can be altered in the same manner

Improved Colour Calibration and Raw File Support as well as a an Improved User Interface and an Improved Help and tutorial System

Portrait Professional 8 is available in two versions:
1. Portrait Professional 8 Standard This is the standard version which works on JPEG and Tiff files
2. Portrait Professional 8 Studio This is the high-end version which also works directly on 16-bit Camera RAW files.

The high-end 'Studio' software is priced at £59.95 (US $119.95) while Portrait Professional Standard is £39.95 (US $79.95). Previous purchasers should go to the help menu...then check for upgrade, which will give them all the options to inexpensively upgrade to version 8 or to Studio. Remember new purchases should use the coupon code pim108 to gain an extra 10% off prices.

The most obvious change is the interface which has been completely remodelled. All sliders now have green, amber and red zones which act like 'volume controls' on the strength of the effect. They are controlled in groups by master sliders for each category, which are Face Sculpt, Skin, Eye, Mouth, Hair, Skin Lighting and Picture controls. Under the hood, colour management has been added and this should be you first port of call to set the default profiles to one of your choice.

The install default is your monitor profile which will get you into trouble if your work ends up on a non-colour managed system. A better choice would be your 'file profile' or Adobe RGB. There is no provision for the universally popular sRGB so unless you have that set as your camera profile, you will be in trouble on that route. We understand this issue is being addressed.

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1st Published 01/10/2008
last update 09/12/2022 14:58:03

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