Review: Portrait Professional photo-editing software

There are a number of low-cost photo-editing programs available for the amateur photographer, but Portrait Professional concentrates specifically on editing and modifying portraits.

It includes the standard editing tools as in ordinary photo-editors, such as red-eye removal, and the ability to remove wrinkles and moles from people’s faces. It also provides additional tools for altering the appearance of facial features such as the eyes, nose and mouth. You can even stretch a person’s neck to make it look longer and more slender.

Portrait Professional starts by asking you to use the mouse to click on a series of specific points, such as the corners of eyes and lips. This allows the program to isolate those facial features and edit them with great precision, while leaving the rest of the photo untouched.

Once you’ve placed those points, the program switches into its main mode, in which it displays a split-screen window containing before and after versions of the photo so that you can see the effects of any changes.

The main editing tools are displayed in a panel on the left of the screen. These include a number of pre-defined options, such as ‘redden lips’ or ‘slim face’ that can instantly make changes, but there are also adjustable settings that provide more detailed control over specific facial features.

There are eye controls that widen eyes individually, alter shapes of eyebrows or even sharpen detail in eyelashes. The mouth controls include an expression setting that can stretch a mouth into a smile, or purse lips together. You can widen someone’s jawline to make them look more masculine, or soften their hair and make it look more glossy.

These tools work well and do provide very fine control over portrait photos, but it’s not always clear what each tool does. Many tools simply have vague labels such as ‘upper lip’ or ‘lower lip’ and don’t really explain how they affect that part of the photo. This means that you often have to experiment by randomly clicking on tools to see how they work or flicking through the online help files. More control over the changes would have been good too, so that you could click on the points you place on the person’s face with the mouse and stretch the image by hand.

Still, for just £40 Portrait Professional does provide some very powerful and precise editing tools. It’s obviously a specialised program, and will mainly appeal to people who do a lot of portrait photography. However, it could certainly come in handy for touching up wedding snaps or other photos where you really want people to look their best.

Vista compatible: Yes