A little simplistic, but for home
photo management, nothing else is as slick
Price: Free
Supplier http://picasa.googte.com.au
We use Picasa almost every day, so it’s
easy for us to become blasé about just how groundbreaking it is. It’s a photo
manager first and foremost, and nothing else is remotely this fast. Search
results appear quickly, drawing on anything from file and folder names to tags,
camera model and exposure settings. Scrolling through vast collections of
photos is extremely responsive, although HD video files can slow things down.
New photos in its watch folders are added to the library automatically, and row
format support is comprehensive.
Face recognition automates the process of
tagging friends and family. It’s astonishingly clever, recognising people
regardless of hats, glasses, weird facial expressions and tricky lighting.
There’s no sync with Facebook tags, though; online sharing is to Google+.
Mapping generally works well, but it’s only possible to view a selected folder
or album on the map - not the entire library. Picasa was one of the first
applications to offer non-destructive image editing, and this remains one of
its strengths. It not only avoids the need to keep multiple copies of photos,
but also means they appear with edits in place when using the excellent Picoso
Photo Viewer as the default for JPEGs and raw files.
We
use Picasa almost every day, so it’s easy for us to become blasé about just how
groundbreaking it is.
Colour correction is crude, with only four
controls to boost midtones and highlights, darken shadows and adjust white
balance. It isn’t up to the demands of raw processing, but it’s enough to
spruce up JPEGs.
Despite the non-destructive nature of these
edits, the Undo History is linear - you can’t go back to reduce a highlight
boost, for example, without first undoing all the other processes applied
subsequently. Basic text facilities and a blemish retouch tool are included,
although the latter is o destructive process - Picasa automatically creates a
backup in a hidden folder.
If you’re using a layer-based editor, we
recommend Picoso for management - it’s faster than anything else, and a
pleasure to use. Its editing functions are up to scratch for light use too.
Nik Software Snapseed Desktop
A streamlined selection of
sophisticated effects at a great price — the ideal accompaniment to Picasa
Supplier: www.snapseed.com
This editor is pretty much a direct port of
the superb Snapseed OS app. As such, it couldn’t be much further removed from
the complex editors Windows users are used to. It’s essentially a spice rack
for photos, with no toolbox, layers panel or library management.
Format support is limited, with raw support
relying on the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack. Export is in JPEG or TIF format,
with no option to resize the image, plus direct uploads to Facebook and Flickr.
We can live with these basic capabilities, but the Undo function works only
within individual effects.
The Tune Image module handles colour correction,
and while it doesn’t have the precision of raw editors — there’s no noise
reduction or dedicated highlight recovery control - there’s enough precision
for fine-tuning JPEGs. Local colour correction is superbly implemented, with
brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments applied to similar colours
within a circular area.
Format
support is limited, with raw support relying on the Microsoft Camera Codec
Pack.
There are only seven creative effects, but
their quality is outstanding, with an emphasis on retro film and selective
focus. The Vintage effect uses split-toning to skew colours, applies a texture
to resemble on old print, and rounds things off with saturation, brightness and
vignette controls. Grunge takes a similar concept to more extreme places. Drama
manipulates contrast of nearby pixels to simulate HDR photography, accentuating
skin textures, skies and other subtle details. Black-and-white and a choice of
vintage frames complete the Line-up.
Performance is responsive, thanks to a system
where the software creates a low-resolution proxy for editing and renders the
effects at full resolution only on export. On ¡OS this means full- resolution
previews aren’t possible; however, a Zoom In button has been added to the
Windows version. This slows preview performance, but it’s useful to have the
option.
Snapseed isn’t a replacement for a
fully-fledged editor, but what it can do it does superbly. It makes more sense
on the iPhone in conjunction with its camera, but using it with higher quality photos
shows its sublime ¡mage processing at its best. Plus, it’s very cheap.
Serif Photoplus X5
Many features don’t always make for a high-
quality product, as this package proves price $90.42
Supplier: www.serif.com
Serif has left no stone unturned with its
latest version of PhotoPlus, which brings together Photoshop-style editing with
Lightroom-inspired management and non-destructive colour correction. The
Organiser module’s library management functions ore more basic than those of
Lightroom. It can browse by folder, capture date or tag, but can’t filter by
metadata such as star rating or camera settings. Mapping is built in, but it’s
only able to show a slideshow of the photos for a certain location, and not to
select them for use elsewhere in the software.
The Organiser’s PhotoFix module for editing
images looks sophisticated, with white balance, highlight and shadow controls,
curved-based colour correction, and lens distortion and chromatic aberration
correction. However, noise reduction and colour correction aren’t up to Adobe’s
standards. Edits ore saved nondestructively for tweaking at a later date, but
the JPEGs are overwritten, with a backup of the original saved in a proprietary
format in a hidden folder.
The main PhotoPlus editor has its own raw-processing
engine, but support for the latest cameras is disappointing. Its controls are
crude, previews are slow, and processing quality is basic. You can send row
files through and then use PhotoFix to fine-tune colors - these are too many
hoops to jump through, however.
The
main PhotoPlus editor has its own raw-processing engine, but support for the
latest cameras is disappointing.
It’s more successful for layer-based
destructive editing. The main toolbox is well equipped with selection tools,
brushes and vector-drawing tools. The contents of the Effects menu bear an
uncanny resemblance to Photoshop Elements, but this is no bad thing. Its
adjustment layers for non-destructive colour correction go further than
Photoshop Elements with a wider selection of filters.
However, it Lacks time-savers, such as the
ability to toggle between complementary tools (such as Dodge and Burn) with the
Ctrl key. The Save As command can’t convert to a different format, and choosing
Export instead meant we had to navigate back to the required folder. These
might seem like petty quibbles, but small time-wasters quickly mount up.
To cap it all, Serif PhotoPlus XS’s effects
are noticeably slower to preview and apply than in other editors. That’s enough
on its own to knock PhotoPlus out of the running.
