Cyberlink PhotoDirector 3
3 stars
$149.95, including VAT
Anyone familiar with Adobe
Lightroom pretends to be surprised when seeing PhotoDirector 3. They say
pretence is the best honest flattery, and we can see the reason why CyberLink
wants one part of Lightroom.’s actions. We have been fans of Adobe’s adjustment
tools for a long time, and we are impressed by the adding of lens’ profile
adjustment ability in the lastest version.
PhotoDirector 3may lack this
feature, but it has most other things. Even those who do not use Lightroom will soon get
used to PhotoDirector’s work stream:
import, paste tag, adjust, and export. The effective is Lightroom’s main
attraction and no difference here.
The application is divided
into three main parts: Library, Adjustment, and
Slideshow. Library takes care of organizational aspect, allows you to import
and paste tag for all photos, or just special folders. You can search for
photos based on many details from key words to EXIF data such as shooting speed and aperture. However, you cannot
search for photos taken by a special lens.
With Lightroom, you can
mark, discard, and rank photos. So long as you spend some time doing this for
all your imported photos, you cn quickly keep track of the nicest photos from
each event at later time.
Adjustment area is the place where you will certainly save most time for.
There are quite many options to see and adjust photos, including the useful
option to use the second screen for previewing adjusted photos at full screen.
If you do not have this luxurious thing, you can select the overall screen
separated from the original on the left or at the top, and effects of
adjustments on the right or at the bottom.
Being easy to shift between
the overall screen and effect, but unlike Lightroom’s layout with toolbars on the left
and right of photos, PhotoDirector only has
controls on the left.
You have the manual
adjustment option or option from preset list. Tools’ order is as the same as in
Lightroom; however, it
does not embrace what you need. It is easy to fix white balance bug, even with
JPEG, and Raw file from all famous cameras is also supported. Other tools
include tone, levels, colours, sharpening, noise reduction, and vignette correction.
Adjusting a slide bar
reminds of a real time update, but we find that it can take one or two seconds
to update photos on the second screen. By using regional adjustment tools, you
can quickly remove red eye and stain. The presence of Lightroom’s gradient
allows you to increase the contrast ratio in the sky as if there was virtual ND
filter. It is not subtle here as in Lightroom, but it does a good job. Rotating
and croping photos are also feasible, but there is no specialized straighten
tool to adjust light horizon.
Since PhotoDirector is not destructive, just adjustments are saved and
your original photo remains unchanged. You can save the adjusted photos as new
files, and there are many options when you click on Export button… In addition
to potision and file name, you can also choose output format, quality, and
size. You can prevent unadjusted photos from being compressed, resize photos
with special sizes (and prevent them being made larger than the original) as
well as auto-focus them. Since you can save the set-up under profile format, it
is easy to create some similar photo series – for example, creating photo
series to print and the one for Facebook. In fact, PhotoDirector allows
uploading directly on Facebook and has slideshow creation app allowing you to
create video HD for YouTube accompanied by
background music.
PhotoDirector 3 is a alternative option for those who cannot afford Lightroom. However, there
are things to improve. We like to see more screen shortcut keys in the next
version together with slideshow output option that can be embedded into your website. The Photoshop Elements’s latest
version has similar price, greater adjustment tools and layers support. It also
has easy automatic photo editing as well as the interesting Guided Edit mode for
creative results.
If you are considering
Lightroom but cannot afford it, PhotoDirector is a good choice for you. However, for those who want options
working with layers and masks, Photoshop Elements is a more profitable item.
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Photo
adjustment software. Windows XP
SP3, 2GB RAM, 128MB graphic card, 1GB disk space.
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