Choosing the right software isn’t easy and you often have to try quite a few different applications to find the ones that suit you. We’re all looking for different things, and quite often a single piece of software won’t do everything that we need.
So these reviews are designed not just to see whether the software out there is any good or not, but to explain exactly what it does and how it might fit into your workflow.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Affinity Photo 2 is not a huge leap forward from version 1 for photographers, but more a major refresh and rebranding for Affinity. It remains an extremely powerful professional Photoshop rival at an exceptionally low price. Its tone mapping is superb, its RAW processing can now be applied non-destructively and its central Photo personal is hugely powerful.
Verdict: 3.3 stars $199 is a lot of money to pay for a simplified AI photo fixer and there’s not even a trial version, just an ‘unconditional’ money back guarantee. When it works, Photo AI is good, even spectacular, but the image and its problems have to fall within its window of fixability. Photo AI is also slow, over-aggressive with noise reduction and can only fix the right sort of blur.
Verdict: 4 stars Radiant Photo sounds like countless other ‘magic’ photo apps and plug-ins that use the power of AI to make your photos perfect. The difference is that it works. Not every image will be transformed equally, but the dullest, most difficult and downright impossible images are the ones that get the most benefit.
Verdict: 3.8 stars DxO ViewPoint 4 takes distortion and perspective correction to a new level, with Volume Deformation correction, a new ReShape local warping tool and more. But its core perspective correction tools will likely already exist in any host application you choose to launch it from. For ultimate perspective and distortion control, it’s hard to fault – as long as you do actually need what it does.
Verdict: 3.3 stars Luminar Neo uses Skylum’s latest AI tech for results that can be spectacular, variable or, occasionally, somewhat pointless, though there’s no denying its ability to transform regular photos into more ‘idealized’ versions of reality. But its constant updates, complex bundles, extensions and paid add-ons don’t inspire a lot of confidence.
Verdict: 3 stars Paint Shop Pro 2023 offers a lot for the money, but in use it’s clunky, dated and often counterintuitive. The image organization and RAW processing tools are adequate and no more, and while the editing and effects tools are all right, it’s clear that Corel is pitching Paint Shop Pro at a fairly basic ‘crafting/project’ user.
Verdict: 2.5 stars ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac 8 is the MacOS version of ACDSee’s all-in-one Photo Studio application. From its features, it looks like a strong rival to Lightroom or ON1 Photo RAW, for example, but the reality is very different. It’s both basic and technical at the same time, it’s missing features many might take for granted, and it looks like a Windows program ported on to the Mac, even if it isn’t.
Verdict 4.3 stars: ON1 Resize AI 2022 is a tool for upsizing your photos so that they can be viewed or printed larger. It adds more pixels to make a larger, more detailed photo than you had before. There’s no hype or resizing ‘magic’ here, just a very good implementation of the power of AI.
Lightroom vs Photoshop, which is best? It’s not that simple, as anyone who uses them will know, because although there is some crossover (well, a lot of crossover), they have very different roles and very different strengths and weaknesses. One is not better than the other because it depends on what you want to do….
Verdict 4.8 stars: ON1 Effects 2022 is a standalone version of the Effects module in ON1 Photo RAW. The effects and tools are excellent, and this is a cheaper proposition that can also fit perfectly with your existing workflow.