14 DAY TRIAL // The world is going digital and no one can deny this. Our identities seem to adopt a new interface and we are keen on accepting that cosmetics and beauty products really have the power to transform us into high quality printed posters. You all know that these are lies and that all the beautiful and perfectly shaped cover-models are just the result of photo enhancing software products. But why blame them? It's not about faking ordinary faces just for the sake of faking. It's about publicity, so let's consider this from the advertising point of view. Think about the companies that want to sell products and need the perfect promotion campaign. Impeccable ads make promising success, so let's see how exactly you can turn a common portrait into an advertising masterpiece.
It all starts with choosing the right picture and finding the right software. You need a close-up frontal portrait, the better the initial resolution and image quality, the better the final results are! In what concerns the software, I've chosen to test Anthropics's Portrait Professional, an image adjusting utility that promises to make every portrait perfect.
Prepare the best image files and let's get ready to transform a nice portrait into an even nicer one! What I find absolutely great (as a first impression) is that Portrait Professional supports RAW image files. These allow you total control to each pixel of the image and so you can obtain high quality and accurate results. Note that the key points of the portrait that you want to adjust are different from male to female so you will have to choose the right figure type in order to obtain a more veridical image.
The next steps request your intervention in locating the precise positions of the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils and mouth so that you will be able to control them without difficulties. After setting the basic facial structure with blue outlines, you may start enjoying the powerful features that Portrait Professional provides.
In order to work more efficiently, you can set the viewing mode as 'Before and After' or as 'After only' or you can move the Tools and Adjust Sliders toolbars all over the workspace, wherever you find it convenient. This makes Portrait Professional very flexible. The Tools menu lets you manage major controls like Zoom, Crop, Blemish Touch up and Skin selection and if you've done controlling these, you may simply close the toolbar and allow yourself more space to analyze the image.
The Adjust Sliders panel effects offers a complete guide to the step by step portrait adjustment. Even if the application performs a basic retouch that removes blemishes, spots and wrinkles, you can apply as many further retouches as you wish. The Face Sculpt menu allows you to modify the Jaw line, the Nose positioning, the Eyebrow and Mouth's shape and also the Expression intensity. The Eye and Mouth controls let you whiten the eye's white area and the teeth area and allow you to 'improve' the eyes and lips color properties as well. While many softwares tend to exaggerate these modifications in order to make them more obvious, Portrait Professional acts smoothly and applies minor but relevant effects that don't change the initial image to some predefined standards, but only refine it.
I've tried Portrait Professional on two different computers and I must admit that on the least powerful of them I had to deal with some small delays when changing the effects, but then I found the 'Draft mode' function that lowers the preview quality and optimizes the editing process. This is useful indeed and produces no harm to the final image, as it will keep its initial quality.
The Good
One handy feature that I seemed to enjoy while testing Portrait Professional was the very simple keyboard control. Zooming in and out is just as easy as pressing the 'CTRL' key and this comes in very handy while you may use the mouse moves for managing the Adjust Sliders. This is a common inconvenient that image editing applications happen to ignore, but which I consider a 'must' when handling high resolution images.
The Bad
No other technical difficulties found whatsoever and I can say that the only annoying thing about this software was the appearance of help bubbles each time I was changing an effect's intensity. Indeed, they were useful when using the software for the first time, but not too long. However, you can deactivate this option from the Help menu, so it really shouldn't be considered a negative part.
The Truth
The best thing about Portrait Professional is that it doesn't require any artistic skills or anatomy and make-up knowledge. You are guided through simple steps and the program does the entire job for you. It is true that you cannot edit other kind of images with it, but that's why they call it Professional! The software has been designed to adjust portraits and it truly makes this at its best.
