It's easy to get shallow depth of field with a camera. You just need a camera with a large sensor, and a lens with a large maximum aperture and the laws of physics do the rest. But adding depth of field digitally is trickier, so let's see if a filter designed specifically to do this job can produce genuinely realistic results. The new Lens Blur … [Read more...]
What’s missing from this picture? Actually, it’s seven things, all removed with the Perfect Layers 8 Perfect Eraser…
Adobe's content-aware technology, as found in Photoshop and Elements, has a rival. Perfect Photo Suite 8 now has a Perfect Eraser tool in its Perfect Layers module. It works just like its Adobe equivalent – you paint over the object you want to remove and it magically vanishes, replaced by surrounding details and textures. Adobe's version is … [Read more...]
Who needs Photoshop when you can use Perfect Layers 8 with Aperture and Lightroom?
Aperture and Lightroom fans will need an external image-editor for more advanced image enhancement and manipulation – particularly if it involves combining multiple images as layers. But your external editor doesn't have to be Photoshop, or even Elements. Perfect Photo Suite 8, just out, has a new version of its Perfect Layers plug-in which … [Read more...]
Perfect Photo Suite 8 and its new Enhance filter
OnOne Software has worked hard to promote its new Perfect Photo Suite 8 product, and it's finally been launched officially. You can take a look for yourself at the OnOne website, and download a 30-day trial while you're there – click the 'Try now' link at the top of the page. I'm going to take a look at all the new features in forthcoming … [Read more...]
Do you sharpen on export? It makes more difference than you might think!
If you use Aperture or Lightroom, it's so easy to export pictures at specific sizes for web use or emailing that you probably don't give the settings a second thought. But in order to reduce your pictures to the required size, your software has to carry out a resampling process that can leave fine details softer than they need to be. That's why you … [Read more...]
How to combine Focal Point Focus Bugs and Vignettes
Focal Point 2 is part of OnOne Perfect Photo Suite. It's designed to replicate the shallow depth of field effects associated with wide lens apertures and the changing focus planes of tilt shift lenses, using one or more 'Focus Bugs' and manual 'focus painting' brush tools. More than that, though, it's designed to help you emphasis your picture's … [Read more...]