16 reviews of Portrait Pro Studios 'I came here after receiving a promotional e-mail that offered a great Mother's Day deal. My daughter's school has their pictures done by this portrait company so I decided to give them a try. I am so glad we did! I have never been to a portrait studio that has gone above and beyond like Chris (photographer) and Sally did. Sometimes you need a tool to make things happen fast. This app works rather well, but with a few wrong clicks, you can go way too far! I reviewed PortraitPro.
Powerful Full-Body Shaping—in the Right Hands and Situations
Review by Jessica Maldonado
I previously reviewed PortraitPro 12 and 15 for Photoshop User and had high praise for both versions, so I had high expectations for PortraitPro Body. And it’s an impressive piece of software. Upon opening an image, you follow simple prompts to mark up the body structure/skeleton of your subject and then use sliders to adjust bodies from head to toe—I marvel at the algorithms that must underlie each slider. Then, there are additional Liquify-like tools for further sculpting, and a pared-down version of its parent-program’s facial corrections. As with the original PortraitPro, it’s also a ton of fun to use.
Yet, I’ve struggled regarding what to say about PortraitPro Body. As is always the case with retouching software, it’s far too easy to take it too far and get over-retouched, unrealistic results. Somehow the chances of this seem multiplied with full-body manipulation.
If you routinely have clients who ask to be morphed into perfection and you’re not a master of Photoshop, then you’ll find PortraitPro Body extremely useful. It came in super handy when I wanted to quickly composite my daughter into a shot of her Barbie Princess dolls: Nip in that waist! Elongate those legs! Done! Because the frivolity of the project allowed me to embrace the extreme retouching capabilities, it was awesome and guilt-free. Conversely, if you can be trusted to use it judiciously, all power to you, go for it. Use it to correct posture, to improve symmetry, or to save an otherwise great shot by adjusting a flaw in the subject’s pose. PortraitPro Body may eliminate the need to hire a professional retoucher for small corrections like these.
Somehow, there’s more of an ethical issue for me with body contour than with skin smoothing. Do ethics have a place in software reviews? My perspective on full-body retouching is that the artists who have a “need” to do it—and will take the time to do it well—already know how to do it in Photoshop, and don’t really need a dedicated piece of software to guide them along; they’ll move bit-by-bit making intelligent, anatomy-based decisions. I worry that people who are likely to use PortraitPro Body may be more apt to go overboard with thinning and reshaping. This is my opinion, and my lack of trust in human nature, more than an issue with the product, which is quite good. ■
A few days ago, I stumbled upon this piece of software that sparked my interest, so I decided to give it a try and review it. A quick spoiler: it is amazing!
PortraitPro claims to be the world's easiest portrait enhancement software. It works in a completely different way to ordinary airbrushing and photo editing software. The software is trained in human beauty, so you can edit your photo as much as required. Expert photo editing can be achieved by unskilled users in minutes. With PortraitPro, you can enhance faces as much as you want simply by moving sliders.
A great getting started window greets you and shows you what can be done, then it takes you to a quick step-by-step tutorial of each of the main features and tools. I loved this. It is very user-friendly and you'll never find yourself trying to figure the program out. Once you've followed this very quick and simple examples, you'll feel familiar enough to have a go without hesitation. In case you want more in-depth tutorials, they are available as well in the same fashion. So cool!
After you open an image you want to work with, the program marks automatically the key facial features in order to start working. You review this and have the opportunity to change and tweak the points to make it more precise if needed. Then, you're ready to start the transformation.
You have several sections to work with, each with its own set of parameters. It's incredibly intuitive, you even have a tip window each step of the way. You can't get lost here, even if you never used this kind of software.
The Face Sculpt section is the first one, with a very thorough set of parameters for you to tweak as little or as much as you want. Just moving sliders here and there, I find it amazing how well this works. I love how the results can look so natural without working hours on “liquify” tools to achieve the same results in other programs.
The Smooth Skin section a very easy to use and impressive section. You can refine what the app detects as the skin as well. The only thing I wish was a bit better was the brush. There are only two controls, and it's not easy to tweak it so it feathers naturally between what you guide to detect skin and the rest.
Most times, though, the auto-detection will work just fine and you won't have to edit the skin mask.
The Skin Lighting and Coloring is crazy good. A plethora of tools to better the lighting conditions in such an amazing and easy way I can't even describe the joy it brings you to turn a blah photo into almost a work of art. You can correct unflattering shadows, add dimension, and contrast by moving the 3D light source around your image. By manipulating these controls, you can further sculpt and accent features. And it works beautifully!
Next is the Makeup section. This one has incredible possibilities and variations. And it's so easy to use! I've been, for a long time, painting make up on portraits, since I'm not used to wearing make up and I find it annoying to put on makeup just to take a few pics. OMG, is this the PERFECT tool for that!
Not only is it easy and instantaneous makeup, you can tweak the points on the recognized features in case you want to perfect it. Every element of makeup can be applied and each one has several options for endless play.
The Eye section I found the trickiest. You need to be very precise with the tweaking of the eye area (and in this case you will most definitely need to tweak it) in order for it to work as intended. Having said that, it offers great possibilities, including changing eye colors, adding contact lenses and even different kinds of reflections!
The Mouth and Nose section is a simple, but effective one. It deals mostly with hues and contrasts of those features.
Next comes the Hair section, in which you can recolor, refine contrasts, shine and many more options. If you remember to use this subtly, it's incredibly useful.
The Picture section contains all the basic image parameters such as contrast, saturation, etc. so you can finish all your edits inside the program.
The last section is Layers, in which you can change the background and add overlays.
A couple of extras
You can save snapshots while your working, which is very useful (and, many times, necessary).
Also, if you feel like playing or want a quick start to tweak, you can use the Presets tab, which is full of options for you to try.
Portrait Pro Body Review
Conclusion
Portrait Pro Software Review
I must say, I'm really pleasantly surprised. Not only it's incredibly easy to use for anyone, it also works incredibly fast, which is SO important for a smooth workflow. Having tried so many programs, it takes more and more to be impressed, but this one definitely has won me over. If you're thinking of any scenario in which to need or want to enhance portrait pictures, you must try it!
Portrait Pro Software Reviews
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Barbara Din is a visual artist, graphic designer, painter, interior designer, crafter, musician and writer living in Argentina. Learn more about Barbara and her work at the following links:
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