This is followed by instructions to mark the tip of the nose, and the left and right corners of the mouth.ДЇigure 2: Marking the corners of the mouth. Helpfully, a close-up of a typical face shows you where to put these markers the text describing what youвЂ™re supposed to do also appears next to the crosshair cursor. YouвЂ™re first prompted to mark the left corner of the left eye, and the right corner of the right eye. The initial step: female or male?ДЄfter choosing the gender, the next step is to mark the main features. ( Click on all images to see larger versions.) The first step is to specify the subjectвЂ™s gender.ДЇigure 1. To test Portrait Professional, I used a photograph of a woman who is not model and is without makeup. Three-quarter views work just fine, with the program correctly interpreting the position of the eyes relative to the nose and showing a sample image from the correct angle for subsequent placement indications When working with profiles, however, it can have some difficulty aligning the feature elements: guidelines indicating the position of the nose and chin are sometimes off, with no obvious way to adjust them to their correct position.

The program doesnвЂ™t just work for straight-on portraits, it also detects three-quarter and even profile views. Version 10 now has optimizations specifically for pictures of children, activated by a Child button. This is a key step: Portrait Professional doesnвЂ™t just clear blemishes, it modifies the face based on a programmed appreciation of human beauty. When you open the program, youвЂ™re first asked to load an image, and then to tell the program whether the face is female or male. Normally $89.95, the Standard edition is on sale for $39.95. Now in version 10, itвЂ™s notable both for the high quality of its results and for its extraordinary ease of use: a wizard guides the user through each step of the setup process, and then straightforward, intuitive sliders allow us to control every aspect of the subjectвЂ™s appearance. Portrait Professional is a powerful application for enhancing and beautifying portraits of people. While the program works perfectly for straight-on and three-quarter views, it has more difficulty with profiles. But this is ultimately down to the operator, not the program: It can be as subtle as you want it to be. However, there are enough controls there to keep compulsive fiddlers happy for hours.Д¬ons: ItвЂ™s too easy to get carried away and produce over-smoothed results. Just mark out the position of the features, and the program will do its job.

Pros: Easy to use, elegant program that enhances photographic portraits with skill and sensitivity.

Portrait professional reviews