Quick and Easy Photo Enhancement

It is a known fact that people like taking photos of almost everything they encounter. They take pleasure in taking photos of places, other individuals, or unusual events in their lives. Since it appeared, photography has become more than a tool, it has become the means to remember nice memories from the past days, and see the past in a nice and unique manner.

However, when we entered the digital age, photo-enhancing software quickly appeared, so that people could easily edit the pictures in any way they wanted, giving them a unique and personal touch, and enhancing them in the way they needed.

Although digital cameras are great, and take nice photos, some people do miss the pictures made by the retro, analog cameras. There are some software products that do just the same thing, and PhotoStyler is one of them. PhotoStyler is a light, quick and simple photo enhancer designed to make digital photos look like analog style pictures, old, tattered sepia images with scratches, 30’s-like ones, and incredibly popular Polaroid pictures.

The Looks

PhotoStyler is pretty easy to use, because most of the interface is blank, allowing you to view the picture you are currently editing in the best way you can. The main features of PhotoStyler are available as buttons, located near the image that you are editing.

PhotoStyler will give you a unique look at the picture, by allowing you to edit it in the way that suits your needs. The interface is easy to use, and the buttons, when pressed, allow access to a drop-down menu where you can select or deselect the available functions.

In other words, this kind of interface is the one that you may embrace when using a photo-editing piece of software for the first time. It allows you to see the photo as well as you can, without hiding it under a lot of toolbars and menus. Another good thing is that most of the actions can be done quickly, and the program gives you a lot of customization, right from the main interface.

The Works

PhotoStyler is simple, and does not need any previous photo-editing experience to be used. The menus and the steps to employ it are pretty intuitive. You must select a photo, with any visual quality that will be used as the main photo for editing.

After that, you can access the color drop-down menu, where you can convert the photo to monochrome, give it a nice sepia effect, or a retro color magazine effect. This is great, especially if you try to imitate the nuances and colors of ancient times and seek to give your picture a cool and interesting look.

The surface menu will allow you to further edit the photo, by adding scratches and darkening various sides and corners of it. These effects are nice if you want your photo to also have a unique style. You can also add a frame to the picture.

As all the other effects, this is optional, but some people may like it, since frames give pictures a nice, warm look. You can also texturize the picture from the materials panel. This is a very nice feature, since most of the pictures nowadays don't have that texturization, and some of them aren't that great without it.

The composition panel allows some final touches to the pictures, giving you the chance to make the picture background transparent, or create a unique background that can be customized by you with a texture of your choice.

Some preferences are also available for customization. You can choose what PhotoStyler must do when starting up, like opening the last edited project, creating a new, blank project, or simply doing nothing, and waiting for some user input. Also, PhotoStyler supports software rendering, so, if you don't have hardware capable of rendering images, PhotoStyler can do that for you.

The Good

One of the best things about PhotoStyler is that it can be used by anyone. It doesn't require any photo-editing knowledge, and can be employed even by creative kids. Another nice thing about PhotoStyler is its interface that's both simple and intuitive, and allows you to clearly see the picture while editing it. The menus also are simple and straightforward. You don't need a huge amount of time to edit a picture, as you can do that in only five minutes.

The Bad

The bad thing about PhotoStyler is certainly the price. Charging 30$ for a pretty simple photo-editing piece of software will surely keep many people away from buying it. And this is sad, because PhotoStyler offers some nice features that you can play with.

The Truth

PhotoStyler is a good photo-editing program. It can be great for people who want to give their pictures a nice, retro style, and also suitable for those who are new to photo-editing and try to experiment. Although the price is a little high, PhotoStyler can surely be recommended if you have a passion for photography and want to try new things. Just try it and see for yourself if it suits your needs.