For that price, I absolutely would buy it, even as a photographer who likes to keep programs to a minimum, and doesn’t like to fork out for new ones. I was pretty much sold on the program by this point, but I had a free version, would I actually pay for it? I was pretty surprised to see that it sells for around A$100, depending on which version you choose. While Portrait Pro can smooth out wrinkles and pores, it can also be used very subtly without loosing the natural look of your subject.Īfter playing with some faces, I thought all well and good but now the neck looks weird and the face and body don’t match, but turns out you can adjust those too. You can also batch process with the Studio Max version and work directly with Raw files. Portrait Pro popped up with the auto version, it gave her quite the tan and sparkly, but kinda spooky eyes. So I decided to put the program through its paces with a poorly lit, overly grainy, weirdly white balanced shot of a dear friend who looks lovely no matter how terribly I might light her. I had only been mucking about and I turned an unusable portrait shot into something the subject of the portrait really liked. That had me thinking this program certainly has potential. I won’t show you the results, because the before shot was a not exactly flattering lighting test, when I say not flattering, a beautiful woman looked more like a potato than herself, and I would like to keep the friendship. I did show my friend both images and she really liked the after shot. It was pretty fun, with a bit of practice I eventually turned my blonde, brown-eyed, no make-up friend into a saucy red lipped, blue eyed, red head vixen with an uncanny resemblance to pop star Kylie Minogue. I tested out the sliders and their effects, then went to town. The simple interface, and pop up instructions made it easy to just jump right in. This one had the correct number of eyes, so I started playing around. Rather than succumb to instructions I tried another image. It came up with an interesting eye situation and I thought, oh dear, this is not good. Portrait Pro did its thing and opened the before and its auto processed after image. All good things, but I’m not one for instructions and just opened the program with a test image. There are instructional videos, tutorials, a forum, a support page, and a manual to download on the website. The download and install were super easy, off to a good start. So this review is not three versions outdated and while there are a few changes it is fundamentally the same product. When our Digital Photography School editor offered a free download of Portrait-Pro 12 Studio Max to test out and possibly review I figured this was a perfect opportunity to see if this kind of thing is something that a cynic like me, I might actually find useful.Įditor’s note: we’ve been informed by the company that there are no versions 13 and 14 (they skipped those numbers) and the newest v15 was released Sept 17th, 2015 (after this review was published). I want my subjects to look like themselves, in their best light of course, but not like some barbie doll cyborg with lifeless eyes. I always preferred the natural before image to the over processed, plastic looking after images. I had looked into a retouching program briefly, but after clicking on a few sites I never got further than looking at the before and after samples.

I like to keep a natural look, using Photoshop only for any minor retouching needed. Working mostly in fine art portraits I’ve never felt the need to try a retouching program.

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