How good is Portrait Pro

JamieW

JamieW

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Jamie
Edit My Images
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like the title suggests?

I'm doing a few family photo shoots and currently have LR5 which I'm managing with. Is it worth investing in Portrait pro or even Photoshop to help with processing portraits and family photos? Basically are they better for this kind of processing?
 
Every advert I've seen for Portrait Pro shows very overdone processing, I'm sure it can be toned down as lots of people use it. But for me their own advertising puts me off.
 
Well I downloaded the trial and it wouldn't even startup so I've given up trying, and won't be bothering with it again

Not sure if that is any indication of the software as a whole, but it was enough to put me off as I wasn't sold on the idea of it anyway

As Phil says all the ad's seem to processed because they can rather than because they should, I was hoping to dial it right back and just use it for minor tweaks (as I've heard some people say good things about it in that capacity)

Have a go of the trial and see how you get on.
 
We use it from time to time in the studio. As someone said the default is way over the top, dial it back or make your own setting and it does a fair job.
 
Is it better than Lightroom though?
 
Trialled it way back but there is nothing you cant do in PS or even LR. It has a habit of creating plastic looking skin if you are not careful, distorting faces really badly. OK it can be dialled back but surely its reason d'être is that its quick and simple, and by the time you have dialled it back, it would probably have been better being done the conventional way anyhow.
 
Guess I'll stick to LR then! No point spending money on something I can already do with what I have o_O
 
Its OK. I got it at a good price at the photography show a while back. Whilst you may be able to do the same things in PS and LR, for people like me with limited talents in that department it makes the whole process very easy and the effects are adjusted by global or individual sliders. I would not have paid full price for it though.
 
You can't really do the same thing in Lightroom, the face sculpting would require free transform or warping which LR doesn't have. Lightroom also has limited selection ability, and you'd have to use negative clarity which isn't ideal. I'm not saying you couldn't get a similar-ish result but it would be a lot of work and time in LR and a few minutes in Portrait pro. Yes you can get plastic skin if you go mad, but as I said in my earlier post dial back the setting and it works fine.
 
I use it very occasionally but turn the face sculpting off and dial the sliders back ot avoid the plastic faces.
 
it is really easy to create your own presets that are exactly the same as the standard defaults but dialled back.....
 
Invest in Photoshop and learn how to use it. You don't really need anything else.
 
JamieW said:
like the title suggests?

I'm doing a few family photo shoots and currently have LR5 which I'm managing with. Is it worth investing in Portrait pro or even Photoshop to help with processing portraits and family photos? Basically are they better for this kind of processing?
Click to expand...

Depends what you're trying to achieve...

If you're just doing a few basic manipulations and a little bit of spot healing and eye enhancement then LR is sufficient. If you want to smooth out skin tones or tone down more complex lines / wrinkles / bags then you'll probably find that something else is much faster.

If you're serious about processing then you're likely to subscribe to photoshop sooner or later.

I bought PP and used it with everything turned right down but I now find it nearly as quick to use Photoshop and I certainly get better results.
Imagenomic Portraiture is very highly regarded and used (or at least promoted!) by some big name fashion photographers. If you're going to get any plugin then that's the one to go for, but learn a bit of skin processing in photoshop first.
 
Portraiture is my weapon of choice for skin smoothing and portrait enhancement. Portrait P{ro is fine but needs tweaking to get non-fake results.
 
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