Portrait Professional

Portrait Pro and Portrait Pro Studio
Developer(s) Anthropics Technology Ltd
Stable release 12.2.1 / April 19, 2014
Operating system Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows
Type Raster graphics editor
License Proprietary
Website http://www.portraitprofessional.com

Portrait Professional or Portrait Pro is Windows and Mac based portrait enhancement software targeted at professional and keen amateur photographers. Developed by Anthropics Technology Ltd and first released in July 2006, it has been in continuous development ever since. The current software, version 12 was released in March 2014. Portrait Pro and Portrait Pro Studio are image editors for Windows and Mac OS X, specifically targeted at editing portrait photographs.[1]

Rather than using brushes as a traditional image editor does, the user of Portrait Professional first describes where the face is in the picture,[2] then most of the transformations are done through sliders. One of the unique, but controversial[3] features is the ability to automatically reshape the face to fit a model of beauty.[4][5]

Portrait Professional Studio does the above and additionally handles raw files, 16 bit tiffs and color profiles. It is also available as a Photoshop plugin.

Features

Plugin

Portrait Professional Studio functions as a standalone, as a Photoshop plugin and as a plugin to Elements, Lightroom, and Aperture[6]

Language availability

Portrait Professional is available in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean and Japanese.

Cultural impact

The cultural impact of airbrushing software being readily available to anyone is a proliferation of airbrushed images being used on social media profiles and online dating sites. [7]

Portrait editing software such as Portrait Professional enables anyone to easily alter their own portrait photographs, making themselves look younger, with less wrinkles and blemishes.[8]

[9]

Previous versions

My Perfect Picture

Portrait Professional was originally known as My Perfect Picture.[10]

Version 4

The first version of Portrait Professional was version 4. It required a web server to process the image.

Version 5

Also required a web server to process the image.[11]

Version 6

Version 6 was the first version to run without needing a connection to a web server.

Version 8

Featured enhanced face sculpting and slimming, an improvement in user interface, color calibration and improved raw support in the Studio version.[12]

Version 9

Version 9 was the first version to feature ClearSkin ® skin improving technology and also to function as a standalone and as a Photoshop plugin. Other improvements included the ability to handle profile views, a batch mode, and an intelligent touch up brush.[13]

Version 10

In response to customer requests, version 10 featured improved plugin support for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, a new child mode, and an enhance skin only mode.[14]

Version 11

Released in November 2012, major improvements in version 11 included its automated face and feature finder, an improved handling of multiple faces within one session, and improved face contouring and slimming.[15]

Version 12

Released in March 2014, major improvements included the ability to change the lighting on the face, improved feature enhancing, and in the Studio Max edition only, an automatic batch mode with the ability to automatically determine age and gender of each face.[16]

Tools

Presets

Known as Saved Sliders or Presets depending on version, these are pre-loaded slider settings that have been determined to work best for a particular subject, for example to make a young woman look glamorous.

Touch Up/ Restore Brush

Use the Touch Up brush to paint over spots or blemishes in the skin that have not been eliminated automatically. Use the Restore Brush to paint over spots in the skin that have been removed, but that you would like to keep. Adjust the size and strength of the brush with the sliders beside it.

Batch Mode

Developed to particularly appeal to those photographers who retouch a high volume of photos.

Face Sculpt Controls

Subtly reshape the face to beautify facial features.

Skin Smoothing Controls

Improve the appearance of the skin. Also provides tools to let you refine the areas that Portrait Professional treats as skin.

Eye Controls

Improve the appearance of the eyes. Also provides an option to enable red-eye removal.

Mouth and Nose Controls

Improve the appearance of the mouth and nose.

Skin Coloring Controls

Alter the color of the skin.

Skin Lighting Controls

Enhance the lighting on the skin.

Hair Controls

Improve the appearance of the hair. Also provides tools to let you refine the areas that Portrait Professional treats as hair.

Picture Controls

Control various aspects of the whole image, such as brightness and contrast. Also provides a tool that lets you crop the image.

See also

Raster Graphics Editors

References

  1. ↑ BBC News: From mortal to model, visited January 03, 2007.
  2. ↑ Digital Photo News: Portrait Professional Review, visited January 03, 2007.
  3. ↑ Boing Boing:Creepy automated photo retouching software, visited January 10, 2007.
  4. ↑ New York Times: Looking Perfect, One Pixel at a Time, visited January 03, 2007.
  5. ↑ New Scientist: Beauty and the digital beast, visited January 10, 2007.
  6. ↑ Portrait Professional Support, visited 2 July 2014]
  7. ↑ Putting Your Best Face Forward: The Accuracy of Online Dating Photographs - Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916 PDF visited July 2, 2014
  8. ↑ Facebook Photos Airbrush away the age ABC News, visited July 2, 2014
  9. ↑ Market Watch 10 things dating sites won't tell you, visited July 2, 2014
  10. ↑ My Perfect Picture, visited 2 July 2014
  11. ↑
  12. ↑
  13. ↑
  14. ↑
  15. ↑
  16. ↑

External links