Portrait Professional 8

If you were to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop, retouching a portrait could involve painstakingly removing blemishes and resculpting bones. With Portrait Professional all you need to do is wiggle a few sliders back and forth and watch the software transform the portrait before your eyes.

On loading your original image, you’re prompted to click in a few selected locations. Just follow the examples and click. You’ll be pointing out the eyes, nose and mouth but you don’t need to be particularly accurate. Next, you’ll be presented with a simple wireframe overlay which you click and drag into position over your subject’s facial features. It only takes a few moments and really doesn’t require any skill.

At this point the software takes over. After analysing the image it has a stab at retouching the picture for you. While this may not always result in a pleasing image, it’s a pretty good starting point, from which you can begin making your own adjustments.

The key to creating a convincing portrait is subtlety. Portrait Professional is so easy to use and so effective that it’s tempting to just grab the sliders and crank them up to the max. However, overdoing it with the sliders can easily transform your mother into a manga-eyed freak with a similarly cartoon-like complexion.

Thankfully the new version of the software helps you keep such tweaks in check, by colour-coding the effect sliders and dividing them into zones. If you want your results to look real, then keep within the green area. Venturing into the yellow and red zones will make far more drastic changes.

Exercise a little care and restraint and you’ll be able to achieve an utterly convincing result. Side-by-side ‘before’ and ‘after’ views help you see the effe cts of your edits in real time, allowing you to see how much you’ve altered the original image. If you’ve done your job well, the result will be an almost spookily better-looking version of your portrait that will easily pass for untouched.

Version 8 of the software offers a revamped user interface along with additional tools. These include the ability to alter the subject’s eye colour and to thicken or re-colour hair. Some tools now provide greater control and overall usability has been increased.

A selection of presets allows you to make instant changes with a single click. These include glamorous or dramatic styles as well as quickly switching between brown, green or blue eye colours. However, the best results are achieved by manipulating the individual control sliders yourself.

Some of Portrait Professional’s effects, such as colour adjustments, would be relatively easy to achieve in Photoshop, while others such as re-sculpting the face would be very difficult. In Portrait Professional everything is almost worryingly simple, be it removing spots, lengthening the nose, or changing hair colour.

To get truly professional results, you can polish off your image by using built-in masking tools to tidy up any areas that may need closer attention.

Even if your subject is beautiful to start with, you can still improve it, as many of the controls are designed to alter photographic parameters such as lighting and exposure, giving your photos a studio-like quality without the need to purchase costly equipment.
Portrait Professional is a superb piece of software at a great price.

For a little more, a high-end version is available with 16-bit colour and Raw file compatibility as well as colour profile support.