OnOne Software Perfect Photo Suite 6.1 Review

Perfect Photo Suite 6.1 bring together onOne Software's most popular products and can be used as a stand alone photo editing suite, or as a compliment to Photoshop and currently costs around £169.

Tools for layering, masking, improving portraits, applying creative effects, creating depth of field effects, adding frames and resizing are all included in the package, drawing from onOne Software's entire range of software products.

If using this package as a stand alone editing suite, the layers module form the central hub, where effects can be layered in a similar way as can be performed in Photoshop. A layers palette resides on the right hand side of the screen and the same kinds of blending options found in Photoshop are also present.

Applying alterations within the software takes a couple of clicks, but some effects can take a while to load and apply, so this software may be a little frustrating to use on older, slower computers.

Layers & Perfect Mask

Within the layers module, Perfect Photo Suite incorporates the perfect mask tool, which provides tools for easy separation of objects from their backgrounds. Automatic subject detection does a reasonably good job in most cases of isolating your subject and the mask can be refined quite easily using the add and subtract tools provided.

Using Perfect Mask from the layers module provides a simple way of separating objects from their background.		The layers module can then be used to combine images, or the layered images can be output in .psd format for editing in Photoshop.

If using this package as a compliment for Photoshop, then you have two options... either run each individual module directly from Photoshop, or export layered images in Photoshop .psd format for further editing.

Perfect Portrait

The Perfect Portrait module uses face detection technology to automatically find faces in the frame and apply skin softening effects that should result in more flattering portrait images. Effects can be applied in a completely automated fashion, or can be adjusted to taste. Multiple faces can be detected also, so it can be used quite effectively on group images too.

In use, the face detection works well with faces looking back towards the viewer, but less so with faces in profile, so some manual adjustment may be necessary in these cases. A check box allows you to toggle between applying the effect to just the face, or the entire image in one click, which is very handy.

Effects 005

Face detection can sometime struggle with faces in profile, but it is easy enough to manually override.

A good range of effects to cater for male and female subjects, as well as babies and children are provided, allowing you to tailor the amount of retouching applied easily. A tool for isolating the eyes is also provided, so clarity can be retained where it is needed most in a couple of clicks. The strength of the effect can easily be tailored to your needs by adjusting the sliders before applying the final effect.

Examples of retouching on an individual

Original Image	Contrast Reducer	Default Skin Tune	Freckle Saver	Heavy Retouch
Shine Reducer	Skin Only	Subtle	Warm

Examples of retouching on a couple

Original Image	Contrast Reducer	Default No Skin Tune	Default Skin Tune	Heavy Retouch
Shine Reducer	Skin Only	Subtle	Warm

Effects

The effects module provides a huge range of preset creative effects. The strength of each effect can be tailored to your tastes using the slider provided. There are so many different ones to choose from, that it may take a while to find what you're looking for. Fourteen categories including Black & White, Borders, Colour & Tone, Darkroom, Detail, Film, Glow, Landscape, Movie Looks, Photo Filters, Portrait, Textures, Vignettes and Vintage effects are available to wade through, providing plenty of choice. Each effect is easy to apply and to undo, as these effects are applied as an adjustment layer, which can then also be exported to edited in Photoshop later. This approach also makes it possible to stack effects, to create your own look.

As there are so many effects available to choose from, simply browsing them can take up quite a bit of time. It may have been useful to give many of the effects more descriptive names, as names like 'Brandon' and 'Katy' don't give much of a clue of the final result.

Here are some examples of each, applied with default settings.

Black & White

The black and white effects supplied certainly give more pleasing results than discarding colour information alone will, and may save time faffing in channel mixer for many.

Original Image	Adele	Adele With Frame	Blue Filter	Casablanca
Chrome	Dawn Treader	Deep Blacks	Fade To B&W	Grainy Film
Green Filter	High Key	Infrared	Portrait Dark	Portrait Light
Red Filter	Roadie	Secret Formula	Snappy Warm	Tasty Glow
Warm Grey	Warm Grey Violet	Yellow Filter

Borders

Many of these borders will be of great use to those who like these kinds of effects. The functionality is somewhat duplicated by the frame module, which we'll look into later in the review.

645 Thick	645 Thin	Ansel	Antique Deckled	Black
Black Key	Black Round	Black Round Key	Courtney	Dano
Hassy Thick	Hassy Thin	Martha	Movie Camera	Platinum Brush
Russell	Sloppy Anne	Sloppy Bob	Sloppy Joe	Tab
Thin Mint	Vincent	White	White Key	White Round
White Round Key	Whitney Horizontal	Whitney Vertical

Colour & Tone

These one click adjustments should be appreciated, especially by novices looking for a quick fix. As the effects are applied as an adjustment layer throughout, editing this way is non-destructive too.

Original Image	Auto Colour	Auto Fix	Clarity	Contrast Only
Daily Vitamin	Dark Contrast	Dark Darkener	Darken Highlights	Darker
Decrease Contrast	Increase Saturation	Lighten Shadows	Lighter	Local Contrast Boost
Midtone Darkener	Midtone Pop	Purify Highlights	Tonal Contrast	Turbo Boost

Darkroom

If you've ever tried recreating a cross-processed effect, or a decent sepia look, then these effects can be applied on one click.

Original Image	Add Grain Large	Add Grain Small	Bleach Bypass	Coffee
Contrast Mask	Cross Process Blue	Cross Process Green	Cross Process Yellow	Cyanotype
High Key Cool	High Key Warm	Orton Clean	Orton Hears A Who	Sabatier
Sabatier B&W	Sepia Toner	Split Blue Orange	Split Blue Yellow	Split Green Yellow
Selenium	Split Red Cyan

Detail

Effects to enhance detail and provide sharpening in one click. Again these should be especially useful for novices unsure how to get the best from their images.

Original Image		Amazing Detail		Midtone Sharpen
Portrait Sharpen		Simplify Man		Texture Booster

Film

One click film simulation effects for recreating the look of your favourite film stock. There is a fair amount of duplication between this and the Black and White and Darkroom effects, even if there are subtly different.

Original Image	B&W Film Negative	Colour Chrome	Colour Film Negative	Fuji Neopan 100
Fuji Neopan 400	Green Velvet (Velvia)	Ilford Delta 100	Ilford Delta 400	Ilford Delta 3200
Ilford FP4 125	Ilford HP5 400	Ilford PanF 50	Kodak Plus X 125	Kodak Tmax 100
Kodak Tmax 400	Kodak Tmax 3200	Kodak Tri X 400	Polachrome

Glow

For quickly adding a glow effect to portraits.

Original Image	Angel	Dark	Deep Forest	Dreamland
Glow Baby	Grunge	Hollywood	Rich Glow	Vibrant
Warm Highlights	White Soft	White Soft No Darks

Landscape

One click effects for improving the colour or contrast in landscape pictures. Special effects for simulating certain weather conditions are also included.

Original Image	Autumn	Blizzard	Drizzle Left	Drizzle Right
Drizzle Straight	Fog	Golden Hour	Krytonite	Magic City
Magic Desert	Magic Forest	Magic Ocean	Magic Sunset	Malibu
Radiance	Radiance Glow	Rain Left	Rain Right	Rain Straight
Snow	Spring	Summer	Sunglow	Vechio

Movie Looks

Whether it be a Batman style film poster, or a straightforward grunge look, this selection of effects provide the look in one click.

Original Image	Arkham	Blue Dawn	Cyberpunk	Day For Night
Dirty Money	Enter The Dragon	Fashion Passion	Faux HDR	Firenza
Frumpy	Grunge	Grunge Goddess	Havana	Hollywood Intensity
I Got The Blues	Just Enough Darkness	Lord Of The Rings	Moulin Rouge	Monday Cool
Monday Neutral	Monday Warm	Omaha Beach	Pastel Colours	Punch Drunk
Return Of The King	Thermopylae	Tijuana	Urban Sickness	Velvet Teen
Warm Fuzzy

Photo Filters

You'd be forgiven for thinking that is enough filter effects for one piece of software, but there are still many more. These aim to reproduce the look of traditional photo filters. The graduated filters may be amongst the most useful here.

Original Image	80A Cooling	81 Warming	85 Warming	Blue
Cyan	Deep Red	Fall Enhancer	Graduated Blue	Graduated Lavendar
Graduated ND	Graduated Red	Graduated Tobacco	Graduated Warm	Graduated Warm Cool
Green	Green Enhancer	Magenta	Orange	Polariser
Red	Red Enhancer	Skylight	Tobacco	Warm Polariser
Yellow

Portrait

A range of effects for improving your portraits, which should compliment the Perfect portrait module.

Original Image	Anime	Anime Bold	Colour Boost	Portrait Popper
Radient People	Soft Wash	Tootsie Glow	Tootsie Pop

Textures

You'll never be short of textures again, as Perfect Photo suite includes over 60 of them.

Original Image	Black Leather	Brocade Black	Brocade Cool	Brocade Corners
Brocade Warm	Brownie	Clean Paper	Cool Concrete	Cracked Earth
Cracked Paint	Croc	Crumpled Paper	Dark Clouds	Dark Concrete
Dark Text 1	Dark Text 2	Dark Text 3	Earth	Folded Paper
Folded Paper 8	Focusing Screen	Ground Glass	Itchy	Light Brick
Light Leak 1	Light Leak 2	Light Leak 3	Light Leak 4	Light Leak 5
Light Leak 6	Light Leak 7	Light Text 1	Light Text 2	Light Text 3
Paisley	Powerful Clouds	Rawhide	Recycled	Red Door
Red Floral	Rice Paper Light	Rice Paper Vignette	Rust	Scratched Film Dark
Scratched Film Light	Scratched Metal	Scratchy	Screen Door	Subtle Black
Tattered Paper Blue	Tattered Paper Grey	Tattered Paper Red	Warm Brick	Warm Concrete Dark
Warm Concrete Subtle	Warm Subtle	Warm Swirl	Warm Brick	Yellow Paper Dark
Yellow Paper Subtle

Vignettes

Darkened corners, lightened corners, with, or without frames. As with other effects, these can be applied in one click and adjusted afterwards.

Original Image	Big Softy	Big Softy Blur	Centre Spot	Centre Spot Normal
Edges To Black	Edges To White	Grunge Vignette	Grunge Vignette Light	Soft Edges
Subtle Vignette

Vintage

These effects, which replicate to look of old photography techniques, should be popular with those who like the look produced by Instagram, and other mobile phone apps.

Original Image	Flat Brown	Flat Grey	Flat Indigo	Avril
Brandon	Brandon With Frame	Cyan Red	Daguerrotype	David
David With Frame	Dirty Bird	Dirty Bird With Frame	Good Ol' Blue	Good Ol' Blue With Frame
Honky Tonk	Honky Tonk With Frame	Inky	Inky With Frame	Insta Lomo
Insta Lomo With Frame	Katy	Lavender	Lavender Cream	Lavender With Frame
LoFi	LoFi With Frame	Lomo Soft	Lomo Soft With Frame	Mayor
Mayor With Frame	Modern Antique	Nero	Nicely Toasted	Nicely Toasted With Frame
Orange Blue	Pro X	Pro X With Frame	Robin	Robin With Frame
Soho	Soho With Frame	Straight To Heck	Toast Stained	Tijuana Sunrise
Tijuana Sunrise With Frame	Vintage Blue Yellow	Vintage Cool	Vintage Red Yellow	Vintage Warm
Vintage Wild West

That wraps up the effects on offer. As you can see, there are plenty of options to choose from. However some of the effects are duplicated in other areas of the software, which can cause confusion if you're looking to recreate a certain look again.

Focal Point

Also included within Perfect Photo Suite 6 is a tool for creating a selective focus effect. This tool opens in a new window and a 'focus bug' provides control of the effect by changing the angle and length of the legs and body of the bug.



Although the effect will never be a replacement for shooting your subject with a wide aperture lens, if used with care, the effect can be useful for blurring distracting bcakground details, focusing your attention on the main subject.

Although the effect will never replace wide aperture lenses, it can be used to effectively blur details in the foreground and background.		The effect of a toy lens of Lensbaby is also quite easy to reproduce using Focalpoint.

Overall, this tool is quite easy to get to grips with, and the effect produced can be quite convincing.

Photo Frame

Although many of the framing effects found in this module are duplicated elsewhere in the software, this module provides more control over the size and position of the frame, as well as providing many more options to choose from.

Frames styles are banded into groups depending on what effect they're recreating. Even so, quite a lot of examples from one group can look very similar to another from another group, so there is more repetition here.

The framing module opens in a new window to apply the effect and is pretty easy to use.

Below is an example taken from each group of effects.

Adornments – Office Supplies	Adornments – Photo Corners	Adornments - Scrolls	Adornments - Whimsey	Art Supplies - Airbrush
Art Supplies - Brush	Art Supplies - Canvas	Art Supplies - Crumple	Art Supplies – Indian Ink	Art Supplies - Marker
Art Supplies - Sponge	Art Supplies - Torn Paper	Art Supplies – Ripped Paper	Art Supplies - Watercolour	Art Supplies – Wood Block
Clean Inner Edge - Brush	Clean Inner Edge - Camera	Charcoal	Digital - Atomic Cloud	Digital - Bark
Digital - Confusion	Digital - Dots	Digital - Imaging	Digital - Magma	Digital - Paranormal
Digital - Pixel Grid	Digital - Zoom	Frameshop – Antique Embossed Blue	Frameshop – Grey Matte	Frameshop – Iron Oxide
Frameshop - Tigerwood	Frameshop - Woodstain	Frameshop – Acid Burn	Grunge - Cave	Grunge - Lines
Grunge - Scratch	Grunge - Rough	Grunge - Splatter	Grunge - Torched	Grunge - Weatherwood
Gurus – Dave Cross	Gurus – Jack Davies	Gurus – Kevin Kubota	Gurus - Malvre	Gurus - NAPP
Gurus – Vicki Taufer	Gurus – Vincent Versace	Holiday Frames	Layouts - Baby	Layouts - Bohemian
Layouts - Holiday	Layouts - Senior	Layouts - Wedding	Layouts - Whimsey	Man Made - Brickhouse
Man Made - Meltdown	Man Made - Wall	Office Supplies - Stamp	Organic - Amoeba	Organic - Crackle
Organic - Honeycomb	Organic - Sandman	Organic - Whisk	Organic - Willow	Photographic - Antique
Photographic - Camera	Photographic - Contact	Photographic Emulsion - Bronze	Photographic Emulsion – Film Clean	Photographic Emulsion - Film Cool
Photographic Emulsion - Film Decay	Photographic Emulsion - Instantfilm Type 55	Photographic Emulsion - Instantfilm Type 665	Photographic Emulsion - Instantfilm Type 779	Photographic Emulsion - Instantfilm Type SX70
Photographic Emulsion - Instantfilm Type Unknown	Photographic Emulsion - Film Large Format	Photographic Emulsion - Film Medium Format	Photographic Emulsion - Film Simple Blend	Photographic Emulsion - Film Slides
Photographic Emulsion - Film Viewfinder	Photographic Emulsion - Film Vignette	Photographic Emulsion - Film Warm Decay	Photographic Emulsion - Film Gold	Photographic Emulsion - Film Green
Photographic Emulsion - Film Neutral	Photographic Emulsion - Film Neutral Subtle	Photographic Emulsion - Film Purple	Photographic Emulsion - Film Warm	Typographic – Alphabet Soup

There are many more effects in each group, which results in lots and lots of repetition. Still many of the effects range from quite classy and effective, right through to tacky and gawdy, so there should be something for everyone here.

Resize

Those of us who've been around digital photography for some time will remember the old Genuine Fractals program, that promised to allow images to be printed at pretty much any size, without loss of sharpness or detail. The latest version of this is incorporated into Perfect Photo Suite 6.

It is quite easy to use. You specify the size and output medium and let the software do the rest. For example, if you wanted to produce an A2 print, simply select A2 as the size from the drop down menu and the correct printing output from the resolution. Saving the image will resize it to the correct dimensions, ready for sending for print. The software is equally at home reducing the size of images too, say for uploading to ePHOTOzine.

The resize module also opens in a new window, with drop down menus on the right for specifying output size and resolution.
		(Left) First of all, select your size from the menu. (Above) Then the output resolution. Once this is done the image will be saved at the correct dimensions and resolution.

Value for money

A lot of features have certainly been packed into this release of Perfect Photo Suite, combining onOne software's most popular products. It retails for around £190 for the full version or £95 for an upgrade from a previous version, which seems quite reasonable for what you get as it can be used as a standalone package, or as an enhancement for Photoshop, or similar editing programs. The value of this product certainly looks good when you consider that buying all the constituent parts of this package would cost around £385. This is also true if you could only see yourself using two or more of the packages contained within this software.

Verdict

Those looking for either a simple to use standalone editor, or a package to enhance what their current software offers should definitely find perfect Photo Suite delivers for a good value price.

The sheer range of effects and options presented can be mind-boggling, especially as there is a fair amount of duplication within the software. Given time to familiarise yourself with your favourite settings, this package becomes very easy to use, producing excellent results in a couple of clicks.

The onOne Software Perfect Photo Suite 6.1 is easy to use and has plenty of effects and features to choose from.

Pros

Plenty of effects and features to choose from
Easy to get to grips with
Can be used standalone, or integrated into other software's
Most effects applied in a couple of clicks

Cons

May run sluggishly on older/slower computers, even if they meet the minimum requirements
Lots of repetition within the package

FEATURES
PERFORMANCE
VALUE FOR MONEY
OVERALL

The Perfect Photo Suite 6.1 is available from the OnOne Software website for $299.95.

System requirements

	Mac OS X	Microsoft Windows
Latest Version	6.1	6.1
Operating System	OS X 10.6 or 10.7	Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo, Xeon or better processor(s)	Intel Core 2 Duo, Xeon or better processor(s)
Memory	4 GB RAM (8 GB or higher recommended)	4 GB RAM (8 GB or higher recommended)
Free Disk Space	4Gb	4Gb
Display	OpenGL 2.0 compatible video card with 256 MB dedicated video RAM, 1280x800 resolution	OpenGL 2.0 compatible video card with 256 MB dedicated video RAM, 1280x800 resolution
Optional Application Integration	Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6 Photoshop Elements 9 or 10 Photoshop Lightroom 2, 3, or 4 Apple Aperture 2.1 or 3	Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS6 Photoshop Elements 9 or 10 Photoshop Lightroom 2, 3, or 4
Other	Internet connection for activation, auto update checking, content downloads and tutorials.	Internet connection for activation, auto update checking, content downloads and tutorials. Adobe Flash Player 10 Microsoft .NET Framework 2 or higher
Supported Languages	English	English