Portrait Professional software: worth it?

Anyone have any experience with Portrait Professional software?

Ive come across the program for $119.95, curious if it's worth it, or are there better programs out there within a reasonable price range?

Thanks

ExplicitSnow wrote in post #15574383
Anyone have any experience with Portrait Professional software?

Ive come across the program for $119.95, curious if it's worth it, or are there better programs out there within a reasonable price range?

Thanks

Hokey smoke, that's a lot. I haven't been to their website lately, but it's normally much cheaper than that.

It works effectively, it works as advertised.

A lot of people reject Portrait Professional because of the sometimes over-the-top before/after illustrations in their ads. That's like rejecting Mercedes because of the over-the-top driving they portray in their ads. If you don't want that much effect, just dial it down.

I have both Portrait Professional and Portraiture (which is the more expensive). I use Portrature much more often, mostly because it can be incorporated into Photoshop Actions.

Portrait Professional has the additional feature of "face shaping" to a calculated ideal standard that also puts many people off. Of course, you can switch that off as well. But there have been a few circumstances in which I've found it useful.

Those have been cases where my subject has suffered "angle of incidence error." Sometimes the camera angle can make a person's face look slightly weird, such as making the eye height look uneven. Portrait Professonal can very easily fix that.

It can also fix eyes that really are uneven. Take a close look at Anne Hathaway's eyes--her left eye droops downward. Portrait Professional will correct that. Or you can turn it off.

RDKirk wrote in post #15574450
A lot of people reject Portrait Professional because of the sometimes over-the-top before/after illustrations in their ads. That's like rejecting Mercedes because of the over-the-top driving they portray in their ads. If you don't want that much effect, just dial it down.

Portrait Professional has the additional feature of "face shaping" to a calculated ideal standard that also puts many people off. Of course, you can switch that off as well. But there have been a few circumstances in which I've found it useful.

I agree with both of these.

In my opinion, the "default" settings in Portrait Professional are way over-the-top, just too much. If left to its own devices the software will turn a portrait into a disturbing caricature - its "ideal standard" doesn't work for everybody. You might not notice if it's used on a stranger, but when used on a face you know, it gets more than a little weeeeird. I rarely use it, preferring to do most of my work in Lightroom or Photoshop. For skin cleanup, learn one or two processes for doing what you need, build an action or two that help you execute those processes, and skin work can be relatively painless.

Having said all that, I had a client a few months ago that wanted some face reshaping* and Portrait Professional made quick and easy work of it. I was careful to ONLY use the sliders that changed what I wanted to change, use them quite sparingly, and left all the rest turned off. The results were almost certainly better than what I could have accomplished with all the warp tools and the liquify filter, and definitely faster.


* Client: "This picture makes me look fat"
Nathan: "Honey, it ain't the picture that makes you look fat, it's the cupcakes and cheeseburgers"

....okay, I didn't really say that, I actually said,
Nathan: "Would you like me to make a few little tweaks, and see if you like it?"
Client: "Yes, see what you can do"
... and she was very happy with the results.

I would highly recommend checking out RadLabs ProRetouch 2.0. I've used both and always go to ProRetouch.

I don't have either of the two packages mentions, but I will say that this question does get asked occasionally.

If you look at the bottom of this page in the Similar Threads section, you will note that your thread title has keywords that triggered a forum "mini-search", check out the results, read those threads!

Ok, well considering the above comments...ill stick with LR4 and learn the ins/outs of it...used it last night to take away some skin blemishes and brighten the subjects eyes to a more natural look...figure with more practice and knowledge of the program as a whole, it should be enough for my current needs

thanks for the opinions folks

I would say if you do not have Photoshop and do a fair amount of portraits yes. Otherwise you can accomplish the same work in PS, so the added expense would IMHO not be worth it.

I've used it, but I'm not a big fan. I now use Perfect Photo Suite which has modules for portraits, special effects, resizing, layers, and masks and tons of presets. It is kinda sorta like PS, but much cheaper and one can do some wonderful things with it.

I realize most people use PS and it is no doubt a much more powerful tool. LR and Perfect Photo Suite more than meet my needs. Perfect Photo Suite runs standalone or as a LR plug-in.

smart-touches wrote in post #15578611
Hey folks.....

Why go for lesser software (and I include lightroom in that too) when you can get photoshop CS2 as a full version for free directly from adobe?

http://www.adobe.com …/cs2_downloads/​index.html

you can get the creative suite which includes bridge for all you raw file import needs, and photoshop, the only professional standard retouch software. yeah it's an old version but it still beat all the other software hands down.

plus it's not hard to learn really, especially if you are in the UK and can attend my classes!

www.smart-touches.com

CS2 has a TON of limitations, including not working with new plugins that are 64bit etc... hence the reason it is free!

The first time you do that, it pays for itself. That's why professional auto mechanics have more tools than shade tree mechanics.

RDKirk wrote in post #15578776
That's why professional auto mechanics have more tools than shade tree mechanics.

This is true