Verdict: 4.6 stars CameraBag Pro is an effects tool with a wide range of great-looking preset effects and useful manual adjustments too. Best of all, it works with video as well as stills.
Life after Photoshop software reviews
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.
- Always download the trial version if there is one. My best guess at what photographers need is not necessarily right for you.
- This is an archive of all Life after Photoshop review content. There is also a curated guide to the best photo editing software.
Pixelmator Pro 2.1.2 Coral review
Verdict: 4 stars: Pixelmator Pro is Mac only and has fairly lightweight photo editing features, but it’s very fast, unexpectedly clever, and blends in text, vector and paint tools to turn your photos into posters, illustrations and more.
DxO PhotoLab vs Lightroom vs Capture One – which is best for RAW files?
Which is best for processing RAW files, DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom or Capture One? Here’s a set of eight image comparisons that aims to find out.
Skylum Luminar 4.3 review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Luminar 4 is an unusual and constantly evolving program. Increasingly, it’s specialising in altered, enhanced and augmented reality effects – and these are exceptionally effective. Luminar also has a full selection of basic photo editing tools like curves, cropping, layers and retouching. It’s a very versatile and effective photo editor.
ON1 360 review
Verdict: 4 stars: ON1 360 is a new add-on cloud sync service for ON1 Photo RAW that offers similar online sync options to Lightroom and Creative Cloud. It’s different, but is it actually better?
DxO Perspective Efex review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a simple, user-friendly interface.
Sharpener Pro 3 review
Verdict: 3 stars Sharpener Pro’s output sharpening tools are a reminder that images need to be optimised to look their best on different printers, and at different sizes. However, its ‘capture sharpening’ tools feel like they’re just a little too late in the workflow, when most of us would apply sharpening during RAW processing, or in the ‘host’ application used to launch Sharpener Pro.
DxO Dfine 2 review
Verdict: 2.5 stars Dfine feels like an old-fashioned solution to a problem that has changed. There are now many ways of controlling noise in-camera or in RAW software, and the real issue these days is not just finding a tool that can do it well, but doing it at the right point in your workflow.
HDR Efex Pro 2 review
Verdict: 4 stars HDR Efex Pro 2 manages to make HDR relatively easy, and it produces ‘good’ HDR which is dynamic, rich and exciting. It still wraps it up in a bit too much jargon, but it does produce a good variety of ready-made HDR presets so that you don’t have to get caught up in the manual adjustments if you don’t want to.
Aurora HDR review
Verdict: 4.5 stars Aurora HDR 2019 can create dense, wild and dramatic HDR effects, natural-looking images, and anything in between, and with out the ‘glow’ effects and other artefacts that plague other HDR tools. It also goes way further, with local adjustments, even image layers and masks. Brilliant.