Jun 11, 2017 - From Photoshop (if you're using the Studio or Studio Max version), go to the Filters menu and Select Anthropics > Portrait Professional. Portrait Professional Studio, on the other hand, is a lot cheaper (although still very expensive by normal software standards) and it has a minimal learning curve. 30 minutes experimenting with a.
0 Comments When it comes to portrait photography, there seem to be two predominant schools of thought. The first says that retouching is bad, that people should be presented as they are and retouching is a no-no. The second school of thought says that when people have their portrait taken, it should be an idealistic representation of the person, flattering the subject and minimizing any flaws. The truth, however, probably lies somewhere in the middle. When people have their portrait taken, they want the photographer to make them look as good as possible. Most portraiture requires some level of retouching, and truth be told, retouching was in vogue long before the digital age.
Digital photography, however, has brought with it some new tools. One of those tools is, from Anthropics Technology. An example of a portrait retouched using PortraitPro 15. Overview of PortraitPro 15 PortraitPro 15 is available as a standalone application, or as a plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture. There are three different versions available; Standard, Studio, and Studio Max. Is the standalone version, which also has a few other limitations.
And can both be used as plugins, and they also offer a variety of other options including RAW file support, color profile support, the ability to read and write TIFF and PNG files in 16-bit mode, and a batch dialog. The Studio Max version also offers a Full Batch Mode to greatly speed up your workflow. Before and after using Portrait Professional 15 Getting started with PortraitPro 15 Getting started in PortraitPro 15 is simple. If you’re using the standalone application, simply open the file you wish to work on. From Photoshop (if you’re using the Studio or Studio Max version), go to the Filters menu and Select Anthropics Portrait Professional.
Once your image is open, PortraitPro 15 will detect the facial outline of the subject. It will sometimes detect gender and age, or it may ask if the subject is male or female or a young girl or boy under 12. You will then be shown a side-by-side comparison, with the image on the left showing the outlines of the face that the software will use for its retouching. These outlines can be adjusted to provide better accuracy, but the software does a pretty good job of selecting facial features on its own.
On the right is a preview of what the subject will look like after the retouching is applied. On the far right, you will see a navigator window that allows you to move around the image easily. Beneath that is a list of presets so you can easily apply a particular look to your subject. Beneath the presets is a group of “Portrait Improving Sliders”. These sliders include;.
Face Sculpt Controls. Skin Smoothing Controls. Skin Lighting Controls. Makeup Controls. Eye Controls.
Mouth and Nose Controls. Hair Controls. Skin Coloring Controls. Picture Controls Each of these groups of sliders affects different aspects of the image and provide an incredible amount of control over the retouching process. When you open an image using PortraitPro 15, the application will ask you to confirm the gender and age of your subject. Whether you choose to use the plugin version or the standalone version, the workflow is the same. From Photoshop you’ll select Portrait Professional from the Filters menu, and from Lightroom, you’ll select “Edit In”, which will open the current image in PortraitPro 15.
If using the standalone version, simply go to File Open. Facial features selection PortraitPro 15 will try to automatically detect the age and gender of your subject and try to select their eyes, nose, and mouth. If it is unable to detect the gender and age, or any facial features, you will be prompted to do this. Selection, if needed, is easy. You’ll click the outer corner of the left eye, hit next, then click the outer corner of the right eye. Hit next again, and you’ll be prompted to click the tip of the nose.
You’ll continue until the eyes, nose, and mouth are selected. PortraitPro will then find the top of the head and the jawline. The main screen of PortraitPro 15 First editing steps Once the selection is made, PortraitPro will automatically adjust your image using the Standard settings. From here, you are free to choose a different preset or start moving the sliders to better retouch your portrait. The first slider I adjust is the Face Sculpt Controls.
I will say that I’m not a huge fan of this adjustment so normally I just turn it off. There are times it can get too aggressive and will really alter the look of the subject’s face.
You can minimize the amount of adjustment using the Master Fade slider to amend the overall look, or the individual sliders to only affect certain features. For instance, I will often set all the sliders to zero but then use the Eye Widening slider if the subject happens to have a sleepy eye. I do try and keep the digital plastic surgery to a minimum. Skin Smoothing The next slider group is the Skin Smoothing Control. This set of sliders does a nice job of minimizing wrinkles and removing blemishes.
You do need to be careful when you have a subject with freckles or beauty marks that you want to retain. Again, adjusting the individual sliders will help you find the right amount of smoothing without making things look too plastic, and the Touch Up Brush will allow you to remove strong blemishes without affecting the overall skin texture. If you need to adjust the area affected by skin smoothing and lighting, you can manually paint in your selection.
PortraitPro offers some quick tips when you select the various sliders. In addition, you may notice that the application hasn’t quite selected all of the skin you want to be retouched, due to changes in tone. Or, conversely, that it has selected areas which you don’t want to be affected, such as clothing with colors close to the skin tone, or hair. You can adjust the skin selection by clicking View/Edit Skin Area and adding or subtracting from the skin selection using a brush, similar to applying a selection. Makeup The Makeup Controls sliders allow you to add digital makeup to your subject. Everything including lipstick, mascara, eye shadow and eyeliner can be added or enhanced here. As with the Face Sculpting and Lighting Controls, you will want to be careful not to overdo things here.
But again, I’ve had occasions where a little eyeliner or a change in lipstick color has helped the image. By the same token, if you are taking a portrait as a starting point, you can create some incredibly different looks by changing the subject’s makeup.
This makes it an excellent tool if you are creating a digital illustration from a photo. Make-up added heavily, this is over done. Facial feature control sliders The Eye Control sliders do a nice job of enhancing the subject’s eyes and bringing them out. Brightening the irises, sharpening the eyes, and whitening them are all done here. You can even change the eye color and add catch lights.
The biggest mistake I’ve made (and seen others make) is going too far with the whitening, giving the eyes an unnatural glow. Eyes can be adjusted individually, so you have a lot of control over their look. Eye color change applied. Mouth & Nose Controls are sliders to enhance the mouth and nose. Here you can adjust the saturation of the lips, their brightness, and contrast.
You have the ability to make the same adjustments to the nose. Hair and skin sliders Hair Controls is a set of sliders that I like a lot. You have the ability to re-color hair, adjust the shine, reddening, and vibrance. In addition, as with the skin selection, you can adjust the hair selection. Especially cool is the Hair Tidying Mode, which allows you to smooth and soften the hair. It can give the hair an almost painted look, which is one I tend to like, but again, it is possible to go too far.
Skin Coloring Controls allow you to adjust skin color, add a glow, or a bit of a tan. In addition, you can add cheek coloring here and adjust the exposure on the face. On the right side of the application window, you’ll find a navigator, a list of presets, and the Portrait Enhancement Sliders.
Picture Controls Finally, the Picture Controls slider allows overall adjustment of the color temperature, tint, exposure, contrast, and vibrancy. You can also crop here. If you’re using Photoshop or Lightroom, these adjustments are better handled there, after retouching. But if you’re using the standalone version, this is an excellent way to finish off your image. Once you’ve finished with the face you’re working on, you click the Next button at top right, and either click “Return from Plugin”, or “Enhance Another Face”, if you have more than one subject in your photo. Pros of PortraitPro 15 PortraitPro 15 is an excellent application for quick and easy retouching of portraits.
Blemish retouching, eye enhancing, and cleanup of hair is simple and can PortraitPro 15 can provide a nice finished look to a portrait. In addition, the ability to adjust lighting can give added pop and make a flatly lit portrait much more interesting. The same goes for the ability to add or enhance makeup. It’s easy to see the effects of the changes you make usingPortraitPro and compare them to the unretouched photo, so you can judge the edits as you work.
Before and After Cons of PortraitPro 15 My biggest issue with PortraitPro 15 is that it’s easy to go too far with an adjustment and suddenly your image looks fake or digitized, almost like a 3D animation. Like most photo-enhancing filters, a little goes a long way and moderation is required. In the right hands, PortraitPro can be an awesome editing tool. In the wrong hands, it can return some ugly results. Additionally, PortraitPro appears to have some issues when one eye is covered by hair or a hat, or when the face is at a 3/4 angle to the camera. So in those situations, you’ll need to pay extra attention to your selections, and in the case where one eye is hidden, set all sliders for that eye to zero. My other issue with PortraitPro is that it does seem to be a resource hog.
As soon as I enter the plugin from Photoshop, the fan on my 2014 iMac (with the max amount of RAM) starts up and keeps going until I’m done. Some of the adjustments are slow, and on my machine, adjusting the outlines takes a moment as my computer catches up. Before & After Bottom Line Overall, I love PortraitPro 15 and the ability it has to retouch portraits quickly and easily. While I prefer not to use all of the features all of the time, such as face sculpting or skin lighting, things such as skin smoothing and eye retouching really help give my portraits a finished look. The learning curve is not terribly high and it is fairly easy to tell when you’ve gone too far. It’s become an essential part of my portrait workflow. See the three editions available.
The Studio version is a great value.
Here’s the basic retouching done by the default Female setting on PortraitPro. Simple retouching done in seconds. All Photos © Steve Bedell The first thing I thought when I saw this new update to PortraitPro was “What happened to Versions 13 and 14? I’m still on Version 12 and never saw anything about any other updates.” That’s because there aren’t any. Maybe Anthropics Software is superstitious about the number 13 and just decided to skip 14 as well. We’re on to PortraitPro 15 now.
In any case, I’ve reviewed and used previous editions of PortraitPro and have always found them to produce quite amazing results in a very short period of time. So with that said, I’ll run through a basic tutorial of just what this portrait photography software has done in the past and what changes have been made in the new edition. PortraitPro 15 comes in three flavors: Standard, Studio, and Studio Max. I tested the Studio Max Edition. The Standard is probably not of interest to serious photographers since it doesn’t process Raw files or have the option to use as a Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture plug-in.
The Studio Edition does all that and more, and the Studio Max version allows the very useful batch processing. The basic workflow is still the same. Either open the image up in PortraitPro or from Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture. You’ll be asked if your subject is a male or female, boy or girl. Once selected, you’re greeted with the familiar two-panel window that shows the original image on the left with the crayon-like outline of the vital lines and the retouched version on the right.
It’s easier to see the changes made by clicking on the “Flip to Before” button, top right. The transformation is so quick and dramatic it can be startling!
Much has been made about just how drastically the software makes changes to a person’s face. While that’s true, if you leave PortraitPro to its own devices, there are several presets such as “Female-No Sculpt” that will not alter the basic facial structure and you, of course, can make any type of custom setting you’d like.
The “Add” buttons are very useful, allowing you to do things such as “Widen eyes” and “Whiten teeth” in one click of the mouse instead of figuring it out in Photoshop. Much of the above has been covered in my previous reviews of PortraitPro so let’s move on to see what is new in Version 15. While not new to this version, the Skin Lighting Controls can help turn an average photo into something really special. Makeup Controls Things can get really crazy with PortraitPro 15’s new Makeup Controls. You’re talking to a guy who doesn’t know a bronzer from a blusher, so I was kind of navigating in waters I was unfamiliar with.
But have no fear, you have options galore and you can just choose controls, use sliders, and pick out colors for lipstick that even some Halloween makeup artists never dreamed of. And if that all seems too daunting, they have thoughtfully included four Makeup presets. Just press the button and makeup is done. (Believe me, it happens a lot faster than when most women “put their face on” in the morning!) I see portrait photographers using this very conservatively, while fashion and model photographers will probably lean on it a little more heavily. The Makeup Controls give you amazing flexibility. From subtle to outrageous, you can control mascara, lipstick, shine, and much more. Children Here’s something I really like.
Throw an image of a 10-year-old girl at PortraitPro and older versions will most likely turn her into a 20 year old. Not so with this version thanks to the Children feature. I was very pleased with the results it produced on my 10-year-old niece by using the default setting for Girl. It only made very minor changes to the facial structure, eyes, lips, etc., while it cleaned up the complexion. You can also choose “Child-No Shape” if you like. But since I liked the way it handled the 10 year old so much I figured I’d try it on an adult, or at least a 17-year-old high school senior.
The results I obtained by tricking PortraitPro were pretty much perfect for my conservative New England clients. I found my new “go-to” retouching for high school girls!
As always, you can modify about a million ways to get the result you want. Updated for this version, the Children default takes a more subtle approach to retouching kids. If you like your results subtle, like I do, try using it for adults, too! Skin Color Here again we are faced with several presets plus you can adjust and modify any amount you’d like. It took me a minute to find all the cool presets with names like Vanilla and Night Club.
They are located in a drop-down menu under the main Skin Color Controls menu. This again will come down to a case of “pick what you think looks good” for most photographers unless you are shooting for an ad or commercial work.
Selfie Distortion This is a good one. I was actually poking around looking for the “Fix Selfie” button and sliders. That job it turns out falls to the Lens Correction slider under the Face Sculpt menu that works as a tool to eliminate some of the so-called distortion caused by the camera being so close to your face. You can, of course, use it on any image you like, not just selfies.
Just one more face-shaping tool at your disposal. The Skin Color Controls has a drop-down menu that gives you several presets so your subject can look like they just came from the beach or they are ready for a night on the town.
Skin Lighting While that takes care of the new features, I should also add that while I was poking around with all the new stuff, I revisited the Skin Lighting Controls and was quite impressed by just what it could do. As photographers we take great care in lighting our subjects and I’ve always figured that is one of the things you’d better take care of “in camera.” Well, not so much anymore. With the Skin Lighting Controls you can actually add shape and dimension to your subject just by dragging around the “light” that looks like a big reflector in the program. You can make it bigger or smaller, add a left or right accent, and more. All in all, it’s one of the more useful tools in PortraitPro that you don’t hear so much about. Here’s an example of getting a little carried away playing with all the tools available to you. Want different colored lips?
Different hair color? Options are endless.
Conclusion To sum things up, Anthropics seems to be on a never-ending quest to give portrait photographers an automated answer to retouching drudgery. Whether you’re looking for a simple method to just soften blemishes and smooth skin or you want to go full gonzo and totally reimagine a subject, PortraitPro 15 is the tool you’re looking for. FYI Website: Pricing at press time Standard: $39.95 Studio: $59.95 Studio Max: $119.95 Upgrade pricing is also available.